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The Snow Village
by Glyn Maxwell
The Snow Village - Glyn Maxwell
The Snow Village
In the age of pen and paper,
when the page was a snow village,
when days the light was leafing through
descended without message,
the nib that struck from heaven
was the sight of a cottage window
lit by the only certain
sign of a life, a candle,
glimpsed by a stranger walking
at a loss through the snow village.
All that can flow can follow
that sighting, though no image,
no face appear – not even
the hand that draws across it –
though the curtains close the vision,
though the stranger end his visit,
though the snow erase all traces
of his passing through the village,
though his step become unknowable
and the whiteness knowledge.
from The Nerve (Picador, 2002), © Glyn Maxwell 2002, used by permission of the author and the publisher.