The day opens with the brown light of snowfall <br />And past the window snowflakes fall and fall. <br />I sit in my chair all day and work and work <br />Measuring words against each other. <br />I open the piano and play a tune <br />But find it does not say what I feel, <br />I grow tired of measuring words against each other, <br />I grow tired of these four walls, <br />And I think of you, who write me that you have just had a daughter <br />And named her after your first sweetheart, <br />And you, who break your heart, far away, <br />In the confusion and savagery of a long war, <br />And you who, worn by the bitterness of winter, <br />Will soon go south. <br />The snowflakes fall almost straight in the brown light <br />Past my window, <br />And a sparrow finds refuge on my window-ledge. <br />This alone comes to me out of the world outside <br />As I measure word with word.<br /><br />Conrad Potter Aiken<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/improvisations-light-and-snow-07/
