I
This room by a late winter moon composed,
Curtained and carpeted in austere white,
This long familiar room has now disclosed
Something beyond the scrutiny of light.
At every window, arched by leafless trees,
The resplendent night looks in – no spider thread
Is spinning in this room of silences…
There is no sound when everything is said…
There is no sound but something I remember
That someone said a century ago
Has shifted in my heart like a flaring ember.
A voice that I have loved and do not know
Is speaking in this snowy room… almost
The immaculate stillness yields what I have lost.
II
The sleet taps silver hammers at the pane,
Building white cities, tenantless and splendid,
Under a winter sky- and once again
The mind returns upon itself, befriended
Only by fire, a spark against the frost,
Contriving a niche for golden summer, spinning
Its fragile house against an enormous host
That gazes at its end from its beginning.
Yet, briefly fortified, this puny mind
Climbs through the polar darkness to the sun,
Passing strange continents of stars, confined
No more by substance than the winds that run
Like waterfalls down the steep sky -no more
Than the drifting snow beyond its narrow door.
III
This room is now distilled like a winter rose
With cobwebbed frost on the windows, and the flush
Of fire-light on the shadowed walls… who knows
What dreams gather like bees, what visions hush
Their wings against this beauty now? I taste
An aromatic happiness, a peace,
Touching a petalled moment without haste,
Dwelling in contemplation out of lease.
O music, delicate as bells of snow,
O exquisite laughter, softer than a cloud,
You are the architecture of this slow
Serenity in the mind’s fantastic crowd;
New ramparts of defense you have designed
Against the gathering tumult of the mind.
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