Classic Poem

Mosques into snow-palaces; banks, bagnios
party headquarters and apartment blocks
acquire an innocence; L. S. Lowry figures
lean into flocked air;

spittle, pigeon-dung, dogshit and broken
glass, the layer of soot all iced over and
a new fall powders the cleaned crotches
of cobbled alleys.

Super, Gwydion says, and over the surface
boys skim and tumble where wheels can't turn
for these few unsmutched days. The ferry boats
are icinged toys

on rumpled silk of shoreless water. It's
a world for ideal children. Positive nastiness
surely can't be. Until the squeezed snowball
is made stone-hard,

the wind switches, cats make a sortie, coats
lose their ermine, birds are here, the dimension
of whiteness drips into slush and grime.
Back comes our dirty world.

Mosques into snow-palaces; banks, bagnios
party headquarters and apartment blocks
acquire an innocence; L. S. Lowry figures
lean into flocked air;

spittle, pigeon-dung, dogshit and broken
glass, the layer of soot all iced over and
a new fall powders the cleaned crotches
of cobbled alleys.

Super, Gwydion says, and over the surface
boys skim and tumble where wheels can't turn
for these few unsmutched days. The ferry boats
are icinged toys

on rumpled silk of shoreless water. It's
a world for ideal children. Positive nastiness
surely can't be. Until the squeezed snowball
is made stone-hard,

the wind switches, cats make a sortie, coats
lose their ermine, birds are here, the dimension
of whiteness drips into slush and grime.
Back comes our dirty world.