Читать книгу Ordinary Time - Michael D. Riley - Страница 18

The snow came down on his questions

one deliberate flake at a time,

giving them outline and form,

identical white dust from where

he stood, soon reconfigured by boxwood,

sycamore, frozen gingko and holly knobs,

a world waiting to be covered

and made perfect: a single question

after all, so cold and so beautiful.

Ferns of crystal frost grow up each pane

of the front windows, a tiny jungle of light.

“It’s beautiful,” he thought, “if you can

survive in it.” But why any overlay

of beauty, in a world where

skin freezes, burns, lays open, dies?

Yet it haunts us everywhere,

as the soul of things, the whisper

in every silence, the silence under every sound.

As the sun rose, the jagged branches

retreated one tiny limb at a time,

an outline traced in vapor, the memory

of a voice just past, or passing.

Christmas fell as snow on his roof, sills,

shrubs, and jacket sleeves. It painted the north

side of the chimney white. Each bare tree lifted

arms to the snow that was anything but snow

filling the air with so many points of light,

the air knew at last what it was.