WEBVTT

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This is called
"Function of Blizzard."

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God's goose, neck neatly
wrung, is being plucked.

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And night is blacker
for the plethora

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of black feathers except
when, in an air tower beam,

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black feathers turn
suddenly white as snow,

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which is what they are.

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And in the blind
trajectory, travelers

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scream toward their silence.

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Black ruins of arson in the
Bronx are whitely redeemed.

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Poverty does not necessarily
mean unhappiness.

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Can't you hear the
creak of bed slats

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or ghostly echo of
childish laughter?

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Bless the needle plunging
into a pinched vein.

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Bless coverings-over,
all forgettings.

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Bless snow and chains beating
on the undersides of fenders.

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Bless insane sirens
of the fire department

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and the Christmas
whirl of alarm lights.

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Bless even three infants
locked in a tenement in Harlem.

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God's bosom is broad.

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Snow will soon cover
the anguished ruin.

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Bless snow.

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Bless God who must
work under the hand

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of fate, who has no name.

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God does the best He can,
and sometimes let snow

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whiten the world as a promise.

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As now of mystic comfort
to the old physicist,

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a Jew, faith long since
dead, who is getting

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high-lonesome drunk by the
frosted window of the Oak Room

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bar in the Plaza.

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And bless me, even with
no glass in my hand

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and far from New York, as I
rise from bed, feet bare, heart

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freezing, to stare out at the
whitening fields and forest,

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and wonder what item of the past
I'd most like God to let snow

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fall on, keep falling on, and
never weight, melt. For I,

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like you, am only
a man after all.

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[APPLAUSE]

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