Here Lies But Ice

In dream or in vision, the difference not knowing, I was taken hence to a plain of ice where every blast cuts deep into the flesh, where the archangel white with the tips of his ten icicles stops all that flows – water and blood and time. I saw a man, a man it seemed to be, half-covered by sheets of ice, who sighed: “I had a son, the wind says he lives still, and he himself has sons. Warn them for me. Let them not also come to this place of suffering, where the limp sun lacks strength to live, or die. They must never come to this plain, whatever siren voice they hear sing songs for possession of a fair green land. Here lies but ice. Here lies but fallen snow