The snow was the future perfect of snow.
The old assumption that it falls to ground
to hear yet again the story of oil
was a lie December suspended.
The snow was the perfect future of snow
and there were women that were not in it,
that didn't walk through its clinic of minutes
appalling its fall with cries and kerosene.
The future of snow was the perfect snow
abashing the men conceiving it shapeless
because it betrayed no women or lamps.
It was rather very shapeless and it
was also almost shapeless, orphaning
the course of river x til March returns.
It will be said of that river it was
almost very shapeless, save the women
often in it, and that it was alone
in winter, save the men upon it then.
It will have been seen to have been slowly
a flowing forward back to frozenness.
Something like how May comes on
from the invisible to divide flowers—,
as a bunch of free men and women slightly drunk
from humming standards they have never heard,
humming standards in a blind white prison
or on a bland white band of water.
The snow ___ ___ _____ ______ __ snow.
A flowing forward back to frozenness
as I will have been, seized from voice like ice
