World’s stock of afternoons is running short
And summer’s light is turning golden brown –
It’s time to summon up our winter thoughts
Since poetry will always be our sport
And images, once mothered, won’t disown
Our afternoons, though old, though running short,
For in mind’s shadows metaphors hold court
And new dreams swarm. We fully own
It’s time to conjure up our winter thoughts,
New entities of if and how, the sort
That make us glad to live in winter towns
Whose broken afternoons are falling short.
We know, we know, it’s late for afterthoughts –
Regrets composted, failures set down,
Dead things that glitter up as winter thought –
But we have lived and fought and sought
And been and seen and known yet never flown,
Since we were made for thinking winter thoughts
In afternoons both sceptical and short.
