Improvisations: Light And Snow: 07

The day opens with the brown light of snowfall

And past the window snowflakes fall and fall.

I sit in my chair all day and work and work

Measuring words against each other.

I open the piano and play a tune

But find it does not say what I feel,

I grow tired of measuring words against each other,

I grow tired of these four walls,

And I think of you, who write me that you have just had a daughter

And named her after your first sweetheart,

And you, who break your heart, far away,

In the confusion and savagery of a long war,

And you who, worn by the bitterness of winter,

Will soon go south.

The snowflakes fall almost straight in the brown light

Past my window,

And a sparrow finds refuge on my window-ledge.

This alone comes to me out of the world outside

As I measure word with word.