we'll never be different or warmer or crazier than now

I thought: this is it. We'll never 

be different or warmer or crazier than 

now in this freeze, not 

refreeze either since

nothing will thaw. Like that mythic-real

long continuous of

the Little Ice Age dragging the terrified

through the late Middle Ages

into empty, those who—

The fields in shock, even birds

with so little to eat, song

for no reason, any notion of spring

receding to a pinpoint, how great longing

works a way out. The oldest

trees still speak

its narrow rings if you

take a saw and bear down

weeks, those trunks

a continent to cross.

It must be a kindness, sleep

coming first to the lost

in such cold. House

on a street, town where

day after day the minutes

froze to the clock, then

the clock iced over.

What eternity has to feel like,

hardly anything, no.

 

[Marianne Boruch {1950- } 'There Came a Point in the Brutal Winter', from Eventually One Dreams the Real Thing]