Today, should you let fall a glass it would
Disintegrate, played off with such keenness
Against the cold’s resonance (the sounds
Hard, separate and distinct, dropping away
In a diminishing cadence) that you might swear
This was the imitation of glass falling.
Leaf-dapples sharpen. Emboldened by this clarity
The minds of artificers would turn prismatic,
Running on lace perforated in crisp wafers
That could cut like steel. Constitutions,
Drafted under this fecund chill, would be annulled
For the strictness of their equity, the moderation of their pity.
At evening, one is alarmed by such definition
In as many lost greens as one will give glances to recover,
As many again which the landscape
Absorbing into the steady dusk, condenses
From aquamarine to that slow indigo-pitch
Where the light and twilight abandon themselves.
And the chill grows. In this air
Unfit for politicians and romantics
Dark hardens from blue, effacing the windows:
A tangible block, it will be no accessory
To that which does not concern it. One is ignored
By so much cold suspended in so much night.