Long long I have looked for you,

snowshoeing across the world

across the wild white world

with my heart in my pocket

and my black-greased boots

to keep the cold out,

past cathedrals and pike marshes

I've tracked you,

so long I have looked for you.

In your star-blue palace

I wandered and could not find you

in your winter garden

I picked icicles,

my fingers burned on your gate

of freezing iron

I have the pain

of it yet on my palm,

through clanging branches

and black frost-fall

I dared not call

so I slide above worlds of ice

where the fishes kiss

and the drowned farmer

whips on his cart

through bubbles of glass

and his dogs prance

at the tail-end, frozen

with one leg cocked

and their yellow urine

twined in thickets of ice.

I stamp my boot

and the ice booms.

I have looked so long

I am wild and white

as your creatures, I might

be one of your own.