Here the playfulness of icy dust shovel-snaps a torso straight
into a snow embankment. A gleeful grin and a neck brace. Here
judgment goes snow-blind as well as eyes, the severity of moods
swinging in manic cadence. The feeling of indeterminate absence.
So latch on to the unambiguous, the easy. Wake up angry
and bitter as the cold air, and warm with the thoughts of
clouds as snow to rain. Dance in the horrid wetness and curse:
"Fuck the traffic. The yard has turned to blackened slush."
They're the same, and again different. A graceful mess of knotted
curves, and again jagged black, an overhead cage perniciously
silent. Wind is beautiful, say, because in unmoving air how could
trees converse? What speaks more eloquently than leaf-whisper?
But there being no such thing as a soft rustle now, the sky
silent or deafening, in the numb howl of a snowstorm
not really a sound is perceived. Empty, the sum of a thousand
silences fallen from above, masquerading its entirety as alive;
What delights in the soulful lacks music. A brilliant orchestra,
the seats deserted, a neurotic conductor vanished and no word.
He was the romance. We've opened our ears to mere melodic
impossibility, our hearts to the chill of forsaken wood and metal;
This is the season we listen on a stage stripped of virtuosity--
for incandescent lines, for the most penetrating harmony.
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