A spring still not free of winter sends snow to hiss
at the windows in the afternoon and the swirl carries
white petals from the plum trees away into the blank
sky over the valley as the jays watch from the branches
then in the morning cold fog with the voices of crows
echoing and the known smell of dry oak in the fire
I have gone I have gone what is it all to me
but haunting and denial and relic and division
hoarding its own language and disclosing nothing
as winter says nothing to spring nor spring to winter
nor the shuttered houses to the wordless year
arriving in its own place without knowing any other
I always forgot that something escapes me here
I always forgot something that escapes me here
it knows me when I appear and does not even turn away
by now I can read in the infant leaves the whole tale
of summer and on each limb foretell how the fruit will ripen
but that is only the past which comes forgetting
Traces
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