Snowflakes in the Season of Advent

Snowflakes in the Season of Advent: A Reprise

In this frost-bitten Autumn of two thousand

Fifteen a raw wind gnaws at my heart’s shore.

Owls hoot, old tomcats screech, the cold wind whines,

And the black night demands that I break out

Of this bleak oubliette that walls me in,

This spirit breaking dungeon of decay—

Decay, dilapidation, age that grinds

The flesh and vomits out the chewed up soul.

White bones are gathering still whiter snow.

Old fruit is frozen under ice-stippled leaves.

Piñon, desiccated, pockmarks new snow,

And blood-red currants, frozen on the bush,

Are what is left of all last summer’s glory.

And now gray, hungry revenants are bringing

Offerings to the great sarcophagous Aion:

Jew hairs, scabbed little toes, Muslim foreskins,

And gurgling, pink hosannas of low grunts

In rituals of consecrated blood.

Away from bums and sterno sacraments,

Far from sour hecatombs of burning trash,

I’ve walked the ragged shores of the heart's lake

Until sin crawled out from the acid depths,

And the dark ripples, in sprawling periods,

Washed the sharp sand and smoothed the scattered stone.

As I write on these pages and scratch out

What I have scribbled, snow, gentle and clean,

Fall of large, wet flowers, whitens the air

With such cold beauty as I’ve seldom seen.

In the pale, icy silence, a coyote yips,

Another whines and howls. Was it like this

When old Courtaud, hungry and ravening,

Descended with hot breath into the streets

Of Paris? The wind carries nearby cries-

Is it that wolf’s breath felt by the young poet

As he shook in the fierce wind, his throat raw

From the harsh taste of anguish’s choke-pears?

But I was never young, always worn, old,

A cocklebur of fruitless scattering.

My mouth too tastes like cotton, and the spit

Coagulates against my throat. Time passes quickly,

Too quickly for this passage near its end.

Seasons have multiplied and passed away

In sprays of falling leaves. Tomorrows, full

Of ripeness and enticing promises

Of vague futurity, taunt the scored heart,

While nullity, stalwart, truest of all,

Does not withdraw its final invitation.

I wonder, as I used to, whether snows

Of years gone by are truly gone, or whether,

Through seepage, capillarity, a steady

Evaporation and drip, they, with all

The bits of time that they have touched, renew

Themselves and what remains of me, until I too

Am sucked up, poured down and titrated, only

To be lost in those waters out of which

Others, not I, will crawl onto dry earth.

Old flowers are dry. Once supple stubs are bent

Among paw prints, snake tracks, and tufts of feathers.

Earthward they lean, skyward they sprawl, dried out

At their season’s end. Snow will cover them,

Ice will break them, and a harsh, chewing wind

Will grind them into boneless dervishes.

Footprints and twigs are buried in the snow,

The ones erased, the others blanketed

With frosty, evanescent chastity.

The boys and girls of yesteryear are in

The ground, on shrouded gurneys, or deep under

Soft- hammered drugs and sterile blades, too stoned to know

Whether they are really living or dying,

Whether the clock is chiming or a code

Is being called. All are drenched in stupor.

Ah, silence, once there was a firmament

That separated clear light from the darkness,

And they and I stood in the silent cold,

Where, in our pure, enduring finitude,

We breathed the breeze, and pissed on the fresh snows

That opened, warmed, under our golden fluid.

Tell me where, in what country, on what wind

Or memory are the snows of other years?

Do they, like the wild wolf, live on the wind,

Or do they, like us, fall and melt away

In vanishment and eyeless transformation?