Snow Dance for the Dead

Dance, little children it is holy twilight

Have you hung paper flowers about the necks of the ikons?

Dance soft but very gaily on tip-toes like the snow

Spread your little pinafores

And courtesy as the snow does

The snow that bends this way and that

In silent salutation

Do not wait to warm your hands about the fires

Do not mind the rough licking of the wind

Dance forth into the shaggy night that shakes itself upon you.

Dance beneath the Kremlin towers golden

In the royal

Purple of the sky

But not there where the light is strongest

Bright hair is dazzling in the light

Dance in the dim violet places

Where the snow throws out a faint lustre

Like the lustre of dead faces

Snow downier than wild-geese feathers

Enough filling for five hundred pillows

By the long deep trench of the dead.

Bend, little children

To the rhythm of the snow

That undulates this way and that

In silver spirals

Cup your hands like tiny chalices

Let the flakes fill up the rosy

Hollows of your palms

And alight upon your hair

Like kisses that cling softly

A moment and let go

Like many kisses falling altogether

Quick cool kisses.