/lit/ - Literature

The last stanza is stolen from WH Auden. I wrote the rest this morning.

We felt it ere it came, the snow,
We smelled it in the air,
And felt its goose-flesh augury —
We knew — but did we care?

With hollow chests and muffled mouths
We craned our necks like holy men
Divining from the gathering clouds
Indeed the snow would come again.

And, as foretold by weathermen,
Our prime-time prophets on TV
The clouds descended from the hills
And loosed the wrath of entropy.

It clouds our windows with its breath,
It fills dark rooms with bleached half-light
It sugarcoats our neighborhoods
With vexing sheets of breakneck ice.

The interstate is bleachèd white,
Its twelve lanes blended into one;
This guide-ruled artery is stopped.
Across it, herds of reindeer run.

From supermarket parking-lots
Arose a cry of “All is lost!”
A wild, anarchic fury reigns,
The parking lines obscured by frost.

Wall Street is silent as the grave.
Our economic experts found
The bankers’ cars, stuck deep in drifts,
Like clockless ships have run aground.

The signs along the interstate
Without which none of us would know
By what name we must call our city,
Obscured now by illiterate snow

So that we are no longer sure
Quite where we are, nor can recall
Whether we are anywhere,
And if not — are we here at all?

Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs
Sitting on their speckled eggs
Eye each snow-enveloped city.