Winter roads

poem

Iris Shaw

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Pleasant as the winter half-light is

We are for home, the two of us

And as the others’ voices fade

Into the dark, we turn, and see our tracks filled in,

Erased by white indifferent snow.

The ground beneath us lies

In ice and silence all the winter long;

Yet we tread it roughly, to wake, alarm;

So easy is it to lose the paling road.

Somewhere a bell, echoless, tolls nine;

Yet here and home lie miles apart, and so

An embarrassment of minutes sprawls between

(Which never knew a clock, nor ever will)

And we are free to think of oddities:

Perhaps there lies another, stranger world

Behind the pink and greying earth

Against the falling snow.

Tell me: how will you mark where time goes

When all around it tumbles from the sky?

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