Gossip in the Village by Larry Levis

Gossip in the Village

I told no one, but the snows came, anyway.

They weren’t even serious about it, at first.

Then, they seemed to say, if nothing happened,

Snow could say that, & almost perfectly.

 

The village slept in the gunmetal of its evening.

And there, through a thin dress once, I touched

A body so alive & eager I thought it must be

Someone else’s soul. And though I was mistaken,

 

And though we parted, & the roads kept thawing between snows

In the first spring sun, & it was all, like spring,

Irrevocable, irony has made me thinner. Someday, weeks

 

From now, I will wake alone. My fate, I will think,

Will be to have no fate. I will feel suddenly hungry.

 

The morning will be bright, & wrong.