Sodden ground chapped by the first frosts,
white snow spreads its white quilt to the distance,
and lays, along roofs and ramshackle thatch,
a padding of wool, iridescent with light.
Over bare fields comes the habitual lament,
across the desert of mournful silences,
where giant crows beat their slow wings
and advance starving, to prowl around the cottages.
But since the sky was blanketed in grey,
in the farmstead chuckled winter’s mirth,
for all were gathered there around the red hearth,
and love awoke, at evening, between lad and lass
to the bubbling, whistling thickness of the brew
that seethed like a stomach in its bronze cooking pot.