The Snowbound City

I believe in this stalled magnificence, this churning chaos of traffic, a beast with broken spine, its hoarse voice hooded in feathers and mist; the baffled eyes wink amber and slowly darken. Of men and women suddenly walking, stumbling with little sleighs in search of Tibetan houses — dust from a far-off mountain already whitens their shoulders. When evening falls in blurred heaps, a man losing his way among churches and schoolyards feels under his cold hand the stone thoughts of that city, impassable to all but a few children who went on into the hidden life of caves and winter fires, their faces glowing with disaster.