Winter nears. Once more <br />the bear’s secret retreat <br />will vanish under mud’s floor, <br />to a child’s fretful grief. <br /> <br /> <br />Huts will wake in the water, <br />reflecting paths of smoke, <br />circled by autumn’s tremor <br />lovers meet by the fire to talk. <br /> <br /> <br />Denizens of the harsh North <br />whose roof is the clear air, <br />‘In this sign conquer’, set forth, <br />marks each unreachable lair. <br /> <br />I love you, provincial haunts, <br />off the map, the road, past the farms, <br />the more tired and faded the book, <br />the greater for me its charms. <br /> <br />Slow files of carts lumbering by <br />you spell out an alphabet flowing <br />from meadow to meadow. And I <br />found you always my favourite reading. <br /> <br />And it’s suddenly written again, <br />here in first snow is the spider’s <br />cursive script, runners of sleighs, <br />where ice on the page embroiders. <br /> <br />A silvered hazel October. <br />Pewter glow since frost began. <br />Autumn twilight, of Chekhov, <br />Tchaikovsky, and Levitan.<br /><br />Boris Pasternak<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/winter-nears/
