SOLO OF THE WINTER NIGHT

The eyes are not yet all worn out with looking. The way the window frames the garden keeps the colonnade of trees from moving, the trees of darkly lit December. Across the black and frozen midnight river (the river frozen in whose memory?) no glimmer yet -- no, the light has not yet returned to the echo-empty tower. The saw-tooth ridges of the eastern hills are still all black, the sky is lowering; but powdered by the darkness a snowy glance deploys the silver cavalry. Years are buried under bits of time. Adoze in the mouth of the fireplace, night oozes warmth -- and the notes of an ocarina fall like snowflakes onto dreams. Night falls asleep. Smoke rises from the village. The last of the burned-up morning stars. I still regret our faces have not built a nest in the memory of trees.