Unceasingly, the snow falls,
an endless, plodding, wretched skein,
onto the mournful, endless wretched plain,
frozen with love, burning with hatred.
Endlessly, the snow falls,
like a moment –
monotonous – in a moment;
the snow falls, the snow drops,
monotonous, on the houses,
on the barns and their walls;
the snow falls and falls
smothering the cemetery, the hollows of tombs.
Apron of ill-starred seasons,
on high, violently loosened;
apron of evils shaken
by gusts over hamlets on horizons.
Frost descends, deep in the bone,
and wretchedness to the depths of the fold,
snow and wretchedness deep in the soul;
snow, weighted and diaphanous,
deep in cold hearths and unlit souls,
that wither away in the hovels.
At the crossroads of twisting tracks,
villages in solitude, like death;
great trees, spangled with frost,
along their cortege through the snow,
interweave their salty boughs.
Old windmills, where white moss collects,
appear like traps,
suddenly erect, on a mound;
below, the canopies and roofs
in the squall, against the wind
since November, struggle on;
while endlessly the snow, full and weighted
drops to the endless plain drear and wretched.
Thus the snow departs into the distance,
in every corner, on every path,
always the snow and its shroud,
the snow, barren and pale,
in roaming rags of madness
across the boundless winter of the world.