After yesterday’s choice, another poem with a winter theme. Norman MacCaig wrote it in January 1968 and it is included in the great posthumous compendium of his work, edited by his son Ewen and published by Polygon.

DROP SCENE

Fit for a pantomime, my familiar landscape,

Now tiny twigs are flocculent with snow

And walls are coped with it and fields stare white –

A good place for Bad Uncles to recite

Atrocious rhymes to the Princess and her beau.

Through this goosefeathery water real water

Runs inky black. It made a chuckling sound

But now it sobs under its breath, slipping

Beneath gold streaks of the moon. And no birds sing

Under a sky whose clouds have gone to ground.

That’s where mine are. I watch their level whiteness

Comforting seeds that will make a new Spring day.

Yet though it’s in its pretty winter time

My mind’s made sad, too sad for pantomime,

By that one line of footprints going away.