THE GREAT FROST

(After Virginia Woolf's Orlando)

by Kevin J.B. O'Connor

 

 

So the birds turned to stone mid-air
and fell on the Earl’s head,

is that right? On the oxen’s rumps
and the palanquins.

Or was it the apparitions hanging
in the ice—

shagged osiers that struck
them dead,

a current livid among the roots,
transmogrified by the black sun,

itself frozen—like a dark cherry,
a chariot of unknown souls?

 

 

 

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