Lisa Zimmerman
on winter poems
Cloudless Snowfall by Franz Wright
Great big flakes like white ashes
at nightfall descending
abruptly everywhere
and vanishing
in this hand like the host
on somebody’s put-out tongue, she
turns the crucifix over
to me, still warm
from her touch two years later
and thank you,
I say all alone—
Vast whisp-whisp of wingbeats
awakens me and I look up
at a minute-long string of black geese
following low past the moon the white
course of the snow-covered river and
by the way Thank You for
keeping Your face hidden, I
can hardly bear the beauty of this world.
After a Death by Tomas Tranströmer
Once there was a shock
that left behind a long, shimmering comet tail.
It keeps us inside. It makes the TV pictures snowy.
It settles in cold drops on the telephone wires.
One can still go slowly on skis in the winter sun
through brush where a few leaves hang on.
They resemble pages torn from old telephone directories.
Names swallowed by the cold.
It is still beautiful to hear the heart beat
but often the shadow seems more real than the body.
The samurai looks insignificant
beside his armor of black dragon scales.
Catalogue of Silence by Charlotte Matthews
There’s a new foal in the field beside the road,
and when I drive by, he is pacing back and forth
looking for something he will never need to find.
Next door, children skate on February ice, circling
each other in paths swept clean of snow.
In the Middle Ages, all the hours of the day, monks bent
over velum, illuminating the Bible: each E
curly as a ram’s horn, O holding dominion,
over the parable as if to say there is nothing
more wild than a mouth open in awe.
Once upon a time there was a mime, and each door
he closed never made a sound
even though he did it all the days of his life.