by Inge Pederson （Translated by Marilyn Nelson）

    Cold comes from every corner.

    It‘s snowing.

    And from the train Europe looks like

    a brittle romantic poem

    in which the lakes close

    their black moon-

    lost eyes and trickling

    roses can be lying on the ground

    around a perfectly ordinary house

    containing a perfectly ordinary family

    and then suddenly seep out

    like blood through

    a snow-white bandage.