The night's drifts <br />Pile up below me and behind my back, <br />Slide down the hill, rise again, and build <br />Eerie little dunes on the roof of the house. <br />In the valley below me, <br />Miles between me and the town of St.-Jeannet, <br />The road lamps glow. <br />They are so cold, they might as well be dark. <br />Trucks and cars <br />Cough and drone down there between the golden <br />Coffins of greenhouses, the startled squawk <br />Of a rooster claws heavily across <br />A grove, and drowns. <br />The gumming snarl of some grouchy dog sounds, <br />And a man bitterly shifts his broken gears. <br />True night still hangs on, <br />Mist cluttered with a racket of its own. <br /> <br />Now on the mountainside, <br />A little way downhill among turning rucks, <br />A square takes form in the side of a dim wall. <br />I hear a bucket rattle or something, tinny, <br />No other stirring behind the dim face <br />Of the goatherd's house. I imagine <br />His goats are still sleeping, dreaming <br />Of the fresh roses <br />Beyond the walls of the greenhouse below them. <br />And of lettuce leaves opening in Tunisia. <br /> <br />I turn, and somehow <br />Impossibly hovering in the air over everything, <br />The Mediterranean, nearer to the moon <br />Than this mountain is, Shines. A voice clearly <br />Tells me to snap out of it. Galway <br />Mutters out of the house and up the stone stairs <br />To start the motor. The moon and the stars <br />Suddenly flicker out, and the whole mountain <br />Appears, pale as a shell. <br /> <br />Look, the sea has not fallen and broken <br />Our heads. How can I feel so warm <br />Here in the dead center of January? I can <br />Scarcely believe it, and yet I have to, this is <br />The only life I have. I get up from the stone. <br />My body mumbles something unseemly <br />And follows me. Now we are all sitting here strangely <br />On top of sunlight.<br /><br />James Arlington Wright<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-winter-daybreak-above-vence/
