‘No one will be in the house’ by Boris Pasternak

 No one will be in the house
But twilight. Just the same
Winter day in the gap
The gathered curtains frame.

Only swiftly beating wings
Of white flakes as they fall.
Only roofs and snow, and but
For roofs and snow – no one at all.

And frost again will start too sketch.
And I again will find despairs
Of last year whirling me back
To another winter's affairs.

And they again will sting me
With last year's guilt, the same,
Unexpiated. Lack of wood
Will cramp the window-frame.

Then suddenly the curtain
Will shudder at the door
And you will come in, like the future,
Making no sound on the floor.

And you will stand there wearing
Something white, no lace, no braid,
Something made from the fabric
From which snowflakes are made.


by Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к
(Boris Leonidovich Pasternak)
(1931)
translated by Jon Stallworthy and Peter France
Advertisement

Blind Noel by R. S. Thomas

Christmas; the themes are exhausted.

Yet there is always room

on the heart for another

snowflake to reveal a pattern.


Love knocks with such frosted fingers.

I look out. In the shadow

of so vast a God I shiver, unable

to detect the child for the whiteness.


by R. S. Thomas

from No Truce with the Furies (1995)

Snowflake Souffle by X. J. Kennedy

Snowflake souffle,

Snowflake souffle

Makes a lip-smacking lunch

On an ice-cold day.

 

You take seven snowflakes,

You break seven eggs,

And you stir it seven times

With your two hind legs.

 

Bake it in an igloo,

Throw it on a plate,

And slice off a slice

With a rusty ice-skate.

 

by X. J. Kennedy