• The lamps breathe yellow light upon the snow;
    Each lacy puff of breath is lost in moonlight.

    We’ll go together, cross these frozen wastes,
    Eyelashes bristled thick with tapered ice,
    And careen into oblivion. Shall passersby
    Be shocked to hear our wild yells
    That echo in the empty city streets,
    Muffled by the hush of silent snowbanks?

    Yes, we’ll go together
    Past rows of houses, wreathed and locked.
    I can hear the drone of fireside conversation
    And Christmas carols playing on a distant gramophone,
    Like siren-song to weary hearts—
    But the promise of nostalgia is built on transient memories,
    And crumbles at a touch.

    So we travel on—we have no choice—
    And make the best of what we’ve clung to,
    These old reminders of our shadowed pasts:
    Of families long since scattered, or broken from the outset,
    Of winter nights spent yearning for a better year to come.

    We’ll go together, not brooding on what’s past,
    But striking forward in our old toboggan
    That carves a spattered path down icy roads,
    To destinations undiscovered.

    And in this deathly cold, this reverential silence
    Our faces glow with life;
    Our voices cleave the air.