And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year.
Between melting and freezing
The soul’s sap quivers.
There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time
But not in time’s covenant. Now the hedgerow
Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom
Of snow, a bloom more sudden
Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,
Not in the scheme of generation.
Where is the summer, the unimaginable
Zero summer?

Each rare ray cherished more than mid-summers's
As the north twists toward its shortest day
Darkness claiming more and more
We raise our face to any light
Cheeks burnished by brief brilliance.
Once a penitential season when light's flight bid us
To journey farther into shadows of our own soul
Now fixed on phantasms before a smoky flame
Preserving stilted stasis, suspended in empty space
Neither this nor that