Brussels in Winter by W. H. Auden

Brussels in Winter

Wandering through cold streets tangled like old string,

Coming on fountains rigid in the frost,

Its formula escapes you; it has lost

The certainty that constitutes a thing.

 

Only the old, the hungry and the humbled

Keep at this temperature a sense of place,

And in their misery are all assembled;

The winter holds them like an Opera-House.

 

Ridges of rich apartments loom to-night

Where isolated windows glow like farms,

A phrase goes packed with meaning like a van,

 

A look contains the history of man,

And fifty francs will earn a stranger right

To take the shuddering city in his arms.