COLD by Glyn Hughes

Tonight the brittle trees
rattled and snapped in wind and the stars broke
trembling, like shattered ice.
Logs and frozen heather creaked
and starlight shook under our feet.

My son and I went onto the moor,
walking under drapes of a low room.
A skull cracked underfoot;
a tarred roof winked; a snowball fell;
then quiet, that seemed to glow.
We came indoors when we had stared at snow.

Now we change our places at the hearth,
like penguins on an ice-floe. Draughts
enter through wall and roof: the swords
of cold sneak through our warmth
like poison threading liquid in a glass.

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