Snowed In
Bare trees, bare shrubs in blossom,
Far off, on the water meadow,
The air turned whitish too,
Swans camouflaged to the point
Of perfection, invisible,
While hunger compels
The little dark muntjac deer
To trespass on hedged lawns -
Exposed-, their eyes dazzled
When the sun’s rays erupt,
Flashing in so much white,
Their wary ways fluffed.
2
But for milkman, laundryman
Who braved the lane cut off
Slushed and iced into stillness,
No lesser white intrudes,
Newspapers, post suspended.
What moves is the wind,
Cloud-mass now thick, now broken,
Small birds astir to shake
Flake-laden twiglets, foraging;
And, beyond the snow’s dominion,
Glib tongues as ever wagging
Of their need for so-called war.
3
It is the housed and fuelled
Who feel, suffer such need:
One oil-well craves another,
Then more and more, then all.
Snowed in, the Eskimo
Made their ice age suffice,
Snow-warmed like polar bear,
Most humanly could laugh.
White peace, white poetry
Flowered in that cruel light -
Till even they were pampered,
Manned the machines of greed.
4
Eaves, branches dripping now
Have pushed the newspaper home,
With it, the chill that numbs,
Our normality, thawing.
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