I tried to write about it once before,
torpedo tuber of a frozen leave,
grey ice of grief,
and much, much more.
But then it seemed a stranger at the door,
a holder of all fleshly old belief,
a childhood's fief,
time's paramour.
How could so hulking and so hale a thing
or so I thought, bring me a sudden sinking
like a flame thinking?
It could not sing.
It seemed the most the brilliant dark could bring
of all my stuff. I could not hold it, drinking
it, yet winking
at its coming.
How could I see it is like a lined leaf,
fur-lined and limned with wrinkles even more
blown through my door
in the mind's grief?
And yet I knew the winter night was sinking
on winds that fell, and what they sigh or sing
is no live thing
to human thinking.