WINTER SKY

Great winter sky, drowned, trackless,

the image of our days in which we plunge

morning after morning, in joy or horror,

but mostly in the muffled evanescence

of the spirit sleeping upright:

no doubt one should not cast the stone

at anyone-this would not merely

92 be unjust-but the stone you cast

at others would blind you: the sky

so vast, so little of it seen-and trackless,

as if its purpose was really

to lose you within it: in works, in days,

in books, in faces, in desires

unsatisfied and satisfied,

in appetency and inappetency, never

reaching anything, hoping perhaps

to emerge one day behind the angel

brandishing his sword of flame.