Poetic: Snow
incorrigibly plural snowflakes
I wake up most mornings with a deep sense of the multiplicities of things, and a bafflement at how we can ever comprehend any of it. I find Louis Macneice’s Snow quite inspirational.
The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.
World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.
And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes –
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one’s hands –
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.
the starry, starry skies
and the snowiness of snow.
the infinity of lists
and the galleries of libraries.
little lives too full to grasp.
legions of dead too lost to see.
a babel of language and love.
a topos of inexpressible ineffability,
ad infinitum, this pluralistic world