Ou sont les nièges d’antan?
François Villon
All sixty summers long the unseen snow,
drawn in and out of a smoke-grey cloud,
hung in the warm tides of his breath.
It settles now, softly as a shadow
along the locked length of his lung.
Snow, falling, weightless, muffles
air and masks a quiet sun.
His old house creaks and suffocates
oppressed by every summer’s snow, now fallen.
The winter ticks beside a coughing fire.
The sky is falling slowly, flake by flake.
No one can dig him out.
Before spring’s avalanche of breath, the rot
and timber in his chest will break beneath
the cliff crouched on the roof, and loose
that terrible abundance, death.