Improvisations: Light And Snow: 07

The day opens with the brown light of snowfall And past the window snowflakes fall and fall. I sit in my chair all day and work and work Measuring words against each other. I open the piano and play a tune But find it does not say what I feel, I grow tired of measuring words against each other, I grow tired of these four walls, And I think of you, who write me that you have just had a daughter And named her after your first sweetheart, And you, who break your heart, far away, In the confusion and savagery of a long war, And you who, worn by the bitterness of winter, Will soon go south. The snowflakes fall almost straight in the brown light Past my window, And a sparrow finds refuge on my window-ledge. This alone comes to me out of the world outside As I measure word with word.