Cool pressure of prescience, this snow
Against the familiar, gritty pavements
Of New York. A piano plays rapidly
And in ignorance; accumulations
Deepening throughout the night.
What we have lived has lived us.
No nighttime music lusters the street:
Only scales, left hand, right,
As steady as this snow, ascent
And descent, the way lovers talk
To themselves at night, higher, lower,
Always searching for the opposing touch,
The steady snow, these lucent attitudes.
Crystallizations at some further remove.

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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 8 Number 4, on page 49
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