BRINDIS

Leave the wine on the table. See how
a new winter  is distant and profound,
firewood and clouds, aridity and cold
appearing unfathomable and fantastic.
Let’s drink some more. That our souls
made of ashes and tulle, might be able
to untangle the infinite tangled scam of death:
That they  might enter this winter of the thorn,
that the threads of the spider web might be rent,
through the quiet white smoke that divides.
Our parted flesh will be forgotten
and rot insensibly, because we are
in an eternal penance of greyness.

Drink, for the air, the air is blind, drink and watch
the deep raw winter prolong itself
compelled by its cloudy light.
I am condemned and interred. My future
an inconsolable winter, dry and cold.