... and through three nights I embraced your waist, enemy of snow...
--Lorca
Like water overflowing fields, ice
in layers on the windowpane attracts
a fog of crystals, one on one,
until
unperishing beneath electric light
a few can bear examination by
my untrained gaze. Their patterns half-recall
rose-windows of another place: by stone
surrounded and inlaid with colored glass
made by a process I can't
understand
transmitting any light outside to me
prismed in darkness, standing,
gazing out
toward the west, in this direction: love,
how could I know the patterns of that glass
would be repeated here, in other light
or that these crystals,
temporal, dissolve
into another ritual when you
in amethyst, and whispering this way,
press fingertips against the double panes?
