I
What a purple over there, on the crumbled side of the sky…

Snow must’ve come tonight, with color in his hands.

Silence is the name of all he sows.

Warmly dressed, Adam and Eve walk by on the path. Snow covers the grass, so their steps don’t crunch.

For them, the mist draws back its flimsy curtains: there’s a room between the trees, then another, then another.

A squirrel shakes himself, from too much light.

No one has ever come to these woods, even the giver of names. His grief over giving names has killed him off:

God who’s nothing now but snow.


III
...He’s touched up what the branches already drew; and the sky runs toward me, laughing like a child.


--from The Painter Named Snow; Yves Bonnefoy