Snowchild

    Snow whirls down in gathered rhythmic tide,
    Wrapping the world in soft white hide.
    The branches are bare, and the wind strong,
    And through the dancing crystals comes a song.

    The moon hovers and looks down from overhead,
    On a world in which everything save snow is dead.
    The light is pitiless, and the frost is stinging-
    And from the depths of the forest comes a singing.

    In a clearing that won't be there on the morrow,
    Someone pipes a song of joy and of sorrow.
    It is night, winter night, and the breeze wild
    Pauses to listen to the snowchild.

    She sits with legs folded on a white stone,
    Delicate as a winter flower, and all alone!
    She keeps time with her tapping feet,
    Time to the song's cold crooning beat.

    Her breathing flashes to her precise tune.
    Her hair is mist which has netted the moon,
    A cloud of curling silver, a soft icy shroud,
    Blowing around features neither humble nor proud.

    Of ice she seems carved, face a crystal mask.
    No sign such a face shows of her task.
    Her fingers dance over a flute like frozen snow,
    And her eyes are pools of silver shadow.

    Neither evil nor good, not human nor fairy,
    She plays a tune of the wind sighing airy
    Through underground caverns of unending ice,
    A light-sparkled, shivering paradise.

    Love has no place in the cool sweet mild
    Face and eyes of the piping snowchild.
    She hates neither, for what need has the night
    To hate when lost in music and light?

    Neither sympathy nor greed, compassion nor sloth,
    Ever touched this child, who is like a moth,
    That wind-driven insect of evening's name,
    Drawn to die in beauty, in flame.

    The song rises, unbearable. Faster tap her feet, 
    Playing out a rhythm, death-bringing, sweet.
    The air is a crystal globe, imprisoning the sound,
    The exquisite harmony, between sky and ground.

    And then the music, without warning, dies.
    It is a long moment before the wind sighs,
    Sighs over a stone cloaked in moon-shadow,
    Sighs over a tiny forlorn pile of snow.

    The glinting beams of the moon fall on a flute,
    That now lies, frozen forever, and mute.
    The east begins to brighten with the arrival of day.
    The wind sighs again, and the snow blows away.