Saturday 14 January 2017

Снегната страна/Snow country


                                                                 Echoes fall softly.
                                                                 The landscape’s baffled.
                                                                 Hawks scout the suburbs,
                                                                 extend their ranges,
                                                                 take what they can.

                                                                 Dogs, too, have reached
                                                                 some kind of limit,
                                                                 sit tight on boundaries,
                                                                 look out on fields,
                                                                 the hawk’s domain.

                                                                 None of them
                                                                 are waiting for spring.
                                                                 Snow is the present
                                                                 and will be
                                                                 until it’s no more
                                                                 than dust on distant hills
                                                                 then gone – as if the land
                                                                 has shifted beneath them
                                                                 and they are in another country.


Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips