Storm

The snow visits us,

taking little bits of us with it,

to become part of the earth,

an early death and an early return —

like the filing of tax forms.

And all cou can say after adding up

column after column: „I'm not myself.“

And all you can say after the long night

of searching for one certain scrap of paper:

„It never existed.“

And when all the lamps are lit

and the smell of the stew

has followed you upstairs

and slipped under the door of your study:

„The lute is telling the story

of the life I might have lived,

had I not —“

In my study, which is without heat,

in mid-January, in the hills

of a northern province — only

the thin white-haired volumes

of poetry speak, quietly, like

unfed birds on a night visit

to a cat farm. And an airplane is lost

in a storm of fitting pins.

The snow falls, far into the interior.