A poem for the dead of winter

The Park Drunk

He opens his eyes to a hard frost,
the morning's soft amnesia of snow.

The thorned stems of gorse
are starred crystal; each bud
like a candied fruit, its yellow
picked out and lit
by the low pulse
of blood-orange
riding in the eastern trees.

What the snow has furred
to silence, uniformity,
frost has amplified, made singular;
giving every form a sound,
an edge, as if
frost wants to know
what snow tries to forget.

And so he drinks for the winter,
for the coming year,
for all the beautiful tiny doors
in their craquelure of frost;
and he drinks
like the snow falling, trying
to close the biggest door of all.


Robin Robertson