David Wheldon
The first hard frost takes hold
The first hard frost takes hold:
in that night the stars are fierce
and the day which follows has a winter light.
Some people think that ages flow
one into the next;
against their evidence I know
that every age possesses life
and, like a life, has slender hold
on what it is: a life
to which another life is not a life
but some reflection in the mind.
On that first winter day a sparrow
lay upon the boarded floor
in sunlight in an unused room
high up in the house. Too weak to fly,
its body nourished, feathers sound
it lay a while in the open box
before the fire, took a drop of water
from the finger’s end
and died before our eyes.
The day was cold, and gave
to winter night a sparrow’s grave.
To be a witness at an age’s death
is astonishment: one is not within that pause
but every sense can feel it well: the starry sky,
the winter earth, the winter birds
culled by the cold: against the stars
a tremor of the air
and the age’s life
is gone. Nothing else is changed.
in that night the stars are fierce
and the day which follows has a winter light.
Some people think that ages flow
one into the next;
against their evidence I know
that every age possesses life
and, like a life, has slender hold
on what it is: a life
to which another life is not a life
but some reflection in the mind.
On that first winter day a sparrow
lay upon the boarded floor
in sunlight in an unused room
high up in the house. Too weak to fly,
its body nourished, feathers sound
it lay a while in the open box
before the fire, took a drop of water
from the finger’s end
and died before our eyes.
The day was cold, and gave
to winter night a sparrow’s grave.
To be a witness at an age’s death
is astonishment: one is not within that pause
but every sense can feel it well: the starry sky,
the winter earth, the winter birds
culled by the cold: against the stars
a tremor of the air
and the age’s life
is gone. Nothing else is changed.
Page(s) 53
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