1.
February wakes us, its accidental music,
the hailstones drum a waltz on the roof.
Away in the desert, compact planes
shower their targets in hails of fire.
The geese crawl across the ice,
a splay-foot waltz;
Through salted streets we file by twos
through a pretty promenade of lights,
towards the Imposition of Ashes.

2.
I who have slept beside you for a year,
and swept a year of embers from the grate,
and smoothed your brow of a year of care—
hungry I sit by, and hungry I wait;
craving of you my heart’s best boon:
that I might not spend these darkening years alone.