Yesterday morning -15, tomorrow, 50. Tonight snow, tomorrow rain.
Quickly, a snow poem, while the snow is falling.
Before anyone from my past comes looking to take me to research rehab, here at last the citation for the Bonnefoy collection. The snow poems are from New and Selected Poems, Yves Bonnefoy, edited and translated by John Naughton and Anthony Rudolf, U. Chicago Press, 1995.
De Natura Rerum
Lucrèce le savait:
Ouvre le coffre,
Tu verras, il est plein de neige
Qui tourbillonne.
Et parfois deux flocons
Se rencontrent, s’unissent,
Ou bien l’un se détourne, gracieusement
Dans son peu de mort.
D’où vient qu’il fasse clair
Dans quelques mots
Quand l’un n’est que la nuit,
L’autre, qu’un rêve?
D’où viennent ces deux ombres
Qui vont, riant,
Et l’une emmitouflée
D’une laine rouge?
De Natura Rerum
Lucretius knew this:
Open the chest,
You shall see, it is full of
Whirling snow.
And sometimes two flakes
Meet, unite,
Or else one turns away, gracefully,
Into its humble death.
How is it that daylight shines
In some words
When one is only night,
The other, dream?
From where do these two shadows come
That advance, laughing,
One muffled in
A scarf of red wool?