Poems April 1992
Cissy’s song
The child writes her verses. Bookish snow
Falling beyond her windowpane
Dances elusively: dropping rain
In remembered summer of short ago
Played no descending games, and so
She scribbles away as much for the sake
Of remembered cadence, as for the ache
Of seeing one last falling leaf
Summer had held in unyielding fief,
A motif she will take:
“One last flake that refuses to linger
Pirouettes down on my outstretched finger.”
Again she picks up her pen. The snow
Inscribed behind her windowpane
Dances allusively: winter’s reign
Over remembrances cannot slow
The backward-running streams that flow
Up from the brimming past to creep
Into the present, where from deep
In their undreaming sleep, they make
Figures of innocence jingle and shake
And leave in their wake
One last leaf
It refuses to linger,
And pirouettes down on her outstretched finger.
She turns to her desk, at a time of no
Snow: summoned up on her windowpane,
Returning in moments of refrain,
As if with her breath, words come and go
With just enough childish warmth to break
The cold white heart of a frozen lake
Her thoughts are lost in the cold of time
But two last lines, glittering with rime
Fifty years afterward startle awake
One last flake,
One last flake that refuses to linger
Pirouettes down on my outstretched finger.
—John Hollander
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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 10 Number 8, on page 41
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