Old Woman at a Winter Window

From squared-off quarters
through a frosted pane
I stare into the glittering
quartz of the air, marbled
with tiny streamers from
valiant chimneys down the valley.

It is as if we pit ourselves
against congealing it.
We claim these square ceiling and walls
and floor from the immensity
as all that have for us,
meaning, against the encroaching ice,

the ice that somehow 

signals another space, a fearful
glorious amplitude.

Old Woman at a Winter Window 

by Margaret Avison

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