Snow

On looking out the window
I saw the antic swirl,
The filigree, short-lived insects.
Lit up orange round the streetlight,
Aging everything beautifully,
And slowing, like particles under water,
To a fabulous dust.
A snowflake peered in cockily
And died on the glass;
And beyond, the streetlight stood:
Old style, swan-necked and pronged
It was a hopeless and wonderful sight.
A film began, or rather ended.
A man walks away under the lamp,
With these frozen specks whirling down,
Somehow like the dust of time
Falling on him, and everything about him, mocking him
From the wonderful springs of love and inspiration
To the lazy, wayward summers of diversion and intrigue
The time mislaid, the autumn adagios
To frosted temples, upturned collar, wet shoes and defeat
Under a streetlamp with Beethoven in Largo maybe
Off he goes out of the light, into the gloom,
Where all the characters go eventually, and. cut.

ROBBIE