Snowstorm

Snowstorm (from Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998)
Linda Pastan

Just watching is enough,
as if the eyes were two headlamps,
the body a stalled vehicle
in all this whiteness;
and every space is filled
and filled again with the silence
of pure geometry.
Until, as in a blink, the clouds
part, the fuse

of the sun ignites a passion
of melting, a roar
down the rooftiles,
and here comes the world
as it was, untransformed,
ordinary; and I am still
at the window, full
of a cold knowledge
I hardly understand.