Let’s talk about snow once more let’s say
its cardinal virtue is that it’s quiet
It knows how to be born with impeccable smoothness in the night
and when we wake we see it has claimed
the earth and the trees
The snow is all around you today, where will it go?
The snow that spins interminably around the city
and the house
will take off into thin air
again be cloud and water
then snow once more
You don’t have it’s easy adaptable nature
You’ll go on and die and be buried
You will be the clod of earth the snow settles on
Pacheco, José Emilio. "Insistence." Trans. George McWhirter. Selected Poems. Eds. George McWhirter and José Emilio Pacheco. New York: New Directions, 1987. p. 129.