Landscape by Louise Glück

Landscape

Time passed, turning everything to ice.

Under the ice, the future stirred.

If you fell into it, you died.

 

It was a time

of waiting, of suspended action.

 

I lived in the present, which was

that part of the future you could see.

The past floated above my head,

like the sun and moon, visible but never reachable.

 

It was a time

governed by contradictions, as in

I felt nothing and

I was afraid.

 

Winter emptied the trees, filled them again with snow.

Because I couldn’t feel, snow fell, the lake froze over.

Because I was afraid, I didn’t move;

my breath was white, a description of silence.

 

Time passed, and some of it became this.

And some of it simply evaporated;

you could see it float above the white trees

forming particles of ice.

 

All your life, you wait for the propitious time.

Then the propitious time

reveals itself as action taken.

 

I watched the past move, a line of clouds moving

from left to right or right to left,

depending on the wind. Some days

 

there was no wind. The clouds seemed

to stay where they were,

like a painting of the sea, more still than real.

 

Some days the lake was a sheet of glass.

Under the glass, the future made

demure, inviting sounds;

you had to tense yourself so as not to listen.

 

Time passed; you got to see a piece of it.

The years it took with it were years of winter;

they would not be missed. Some days

 

there were no clouds, as though

the sources of the past had vanished. The world

 

was bleached, like a negative; the light passed

directly through it. Then

the image faded.

 

Above the world

there was only blue, blue everywhere.