Remember when it snowed?
Remember when it snowed!

You went, blinded, with him,
alone into the snow.
It seemed there was no one else
in that white, enfolding world,
although those blurred faces passed you
on the road.

Remember when it snowed,
and never forget that day;
the snow lay thick as an expected death,
white as a starched funeral pall
with the cruel creases ironed in,
and, at the heart of the cold,
there was your beating desire,
your little flesh-pump of life?

Remember, and never forget it...
remind yourself, and never forget
your naked little blue-tongued flame of life,
and his vast and killing coldness,
his hard black ice,
invisible
on the murdering road;
his deep and faceless whiteness at the edges,
his blinding blankness out of the curving shadows.

Never forget it, oh silly fool!
his frozen distance,
his deep and impenetrable indifference,
his solid and petrified persistence.
Remember your own little flicker,
you idiot,
and never forget
his vast and killing...
his grinding continent
of ice.