After Frost at Midnight

Listen to Mary Kinzie reading this poem.

"Heard only in the trances of the blast"
—Coleridge

Moon rise, and no one wakened to notice how
Savage or hard the trances can sound from here
Where light picks out the deeper patches
Darkened by wind as if wind were knowledge.

Scraps rustle, stuck to a frozen canal where in
Summer, or later, there would be fragrances
Moved upward, felt by us as living,
Mingled with flecks of the chimney vapor.

Easy to think the cosmos grows poisonous
Or worse, while we improve: individuals
Marked out, despite our forlorn virtue
Eagerly wishing for nothing over.

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