åppås

Argentine snow yields lilies
on the levee of the marshes.
The dry season stupefied all,
the great billowy mass of virgas
crawled and blanketed all,
daggered the land
with shafts of sundust
and dwarfed the strongest burgas
we had seen in our days,
birthed the most radiant flowers.


Snowflakes the size of fists
pulverise the fields,
deposit frozen droplets
on the bending branches,
wisps of snow windcoil,
rage around the firs,
stilling the thoughts of movement
before they are even taken.


And such things the eye can't perceive
the photographs reveal
in a silver unguent of healing vision:
the dazzling drops of whiteness
silhouetted on a canvas of ice.


Stooped against the slanting current
the poet slogs on,
shards of rime boring through his brittle beard,
his breath drawing palpable vapour
in the still and fierce air.
His mind fixed on one purpose only:
a faint blue glint lost in the wilderness,
in the absolute necessity of snow,
a cerulean call to dive
into the unmistakable pallor of death,
a gaze which had pierced his very body,
calling for resolve and action.


The poet slogs on,
unperturbed, ready, percipient,
until he sees, in the squalls of snow,
the glaucous summon.
Now is the time.
The whiteout ceases,
and all around him for miles and miles
nothing can be discerned
but those spellbinding specks of blue.