I stand, frozen in fear
What are these cold winds that blow about me?
The snow comes falling down like a trickle
Of water as only glass:
Only, a word that echoes through long hallways,
Long stone corridors, long stone
In the witch’s castle: “Come to me,” she whispers with crackling lips,
“Come to me” a soft hiss
Of smoke, burning charcoal. I saw him scratching
Paintings on the walls, I stopped to take his hand, and when we clasped
He vanished like a smoke – smoke hanging on the glittering icy faces
Of the frozen walls, smoke that drifted like a lazy haze throughout the halls:
“Wait,” I whispered, “Stop,” but it was the crackle of the air,
Or the emptiness of the room, or the only whispered quiet
Of a voice like chalky snow.

The witch dances round-about these halls; she raises her hand
And the moon bawls. “Why cry, my sweet,” she whispers, caressing
Her lovely neck, her swan-like body, frozen cheeks,
“For you are gliding through the waters, gliding in among the valleys,
Gliding through my heart.” In the murky dark
I despise her pinched up nose, her cracking lips, that very smooth-like guise;
‘Give back the moon,’ I think, ‘Redeem her from her suffering’
– How many times to embrace her delicate wrists,
How many times to clasp her little fist
Into my heart? I have gazed up at the darkness, stealing her away,
While the clouds engulfed her in a thick and heady fog.

A fog is clouds on earth. I walk through the dark ways, the piers, the water
Stays about the lapping shore. Angles, odd angles, and paintings
Score the music whispering through my mind: it is golden ages, Greece,
The faint sap of silver trees that I gather in my palms
Like melting snow; I rescue dripping time. My dripping tears
Murmur like the waves and freeze with my fears – a long call
Echoes back and forth across the empty place, and the street-signs
Are tattered and the neon-lights
Are going dim. The passers-by have stopped their meandering,
And the avenue is like a bed-rock stream: it was all a dream,
These little shops, this lapping dock, and beyond, from far and away,
Across the waters, a little, percolating scream.

The hiss of making tea.
At dawn.
The sterile door, chipped plaster
White and heady like
My white and heady mind;
The water boils in little macerated clops
And chops my lips; my hands hiss
Where errant flecks of steam
Scream across my skin. I add the leaves
And watch the thick spread ink-stain
Spread across the time. The line
Of purity is broken, a concoction mixed
Speaks poison to my lips, and I grip
In ready hands, conspiring
Sugar and the lime.