On the nights that ring out in crystaline silence,
crisp and biting as january darkness
and clear and brittle as frosted starlight,
we waltz like the ruffled lace of snowflakes,
sweeping our trains
and swirling in vain
as though this twilight atmosphere
were a ballroom striking midnight,
where streetlamps pour the gold
of rusting chandeliers
to light these quivering moments
which, like champagne flutes in the hands of shock,
are flung into fears
as deep as the graves of innocent debutantes:
fallen from heaven before they arrive,
and I walk through your snowdrifts,
through the shards of broken glass
with one slipper
and one numbed, deadened,
bleeding foot.
