Coming to Winter

Deeper into the frozen wood.
In the clearings, never resting,
Aching, in armor ever rusting,
Under sparse branches, where the guttural thrush
Spills from cold throat reluctant evensong,
He goes;
The shadows from their embryos grow long,
Netting the snowfall, black on white like lead.
The hedgehog in the hollybush
Lies curled and dead.
Under the jigsawed ice the rude
Swift water flows
Deeper into the frozen wood.

Long gone the wharf, the waving favors
After the warm-thighed homeland kisses
And the white sparkle in the wine.
Long gone the red cheeks of the eglantine;
Far behind the sunburned quince,
Far, far behind his happy saviors
Walking in their tents of tresses,
And the firm handshake of the prince.
The crow’s-feet chill to metal in the mud.
Deeper into the frozen wood.

The stillness and the columns and the failing
Eye of the sun, the sudden clatter
And dead echo of hoof on casual flint.
Sliding from branches with a hollow mutter,
Great sheep of snow come tumbling; his cheek stings
In burning zero of wind that rives the blood.
Over and gone the softsea sailing
Across a hardly rippled past
Where fishes flew in rainbows and their wings
Were sunbeams; gone the marigold glint
Of high dayspring on the brassed
Pooprail and his own starred chest.
Deeper into the frozen wood.

Deeper into the frozen hour
Inexorably driven, the flower,
Brittle upon a stem of ice,
Tinkles like a child’s device
Brushed by the hoary fetlocks’ featherings.
Gone, gone the landing on the brumal shore,
The vacant strand, the search, the roar
Of rollers on the stove-in hull.
The one lone gull
That followed him inland, on frost-chopped wings
Long dropped to ground; the wave
Farewells in vain to deaf and travelled far,
Though still the slowly clotting flood
Edges his path to the lip of its own grave
Deeper into the frozen wood.

Now the long sidling upward creeps and all
The ground grows dim, though still the topmost spray
Of tallest tree clutches a feather of day.
The last black stream-blood stiffens in the fall.
The air sets thick. Only the painful keen
Of iron hinges follows him on his way
Upon a silent horse no longer seen.
The walls of glass close in, where his old eye
Meets his own hardening arteries with the sigh
Of frosted love. Then with a clang
The night bolts to. We only guess,
Lounging beside that silver sea
By which the burnished quinces hang,
How in that utter dereliction he
Goes steady as he should,
Questing into his whole life’s wilderness,
Though never to return with No or Yes.
Deeper into the frozen wood.