Snow has covered the roads; all paths are blocked.
Before every door, great walls of white have gathered.
Snow has blocked the entrances; all doors are closed.
Before this imperial rule, the clumsy are imprisoned.
What a divine melody it is, the absorption of noise.
What serene scenery it is, the fogging of sight.
The world fades into its own breath,
The horizon loses its boundaries,
And every distant shape
Becomes a rumor of itself.
Outside waits a Siberian cold
That drives slumber from the blood.
The inferno of summer, its hellish temperature,
Relinquishes its throne,
And winter enters
In robes of solitude and silence,
Claiming the kingdom of the earth
For its ancient sovereignty.
The air turns to ice; I inhale frost upon the breeze.
The ground becomes ice; I walk on as I freeze.
Yet my lungs burn with fire; my feet know no fatigue.
The colder the world, the more luminous the furnace.
Each snowflake carries its own storm, quiet yet supreme.
Each snowflake falls from immeasurable heights, slow yet sublime.
They belong to those who shelter blizzards beneath their roofs,
To those who stand defiantly, forever resolute.
Like campfires in the darkness, whiteness born from blackness,
Unyielding against societal emptiness.
Heavy garments warm the flesh,
But never the mind.
To warm the mind
Requires a thick imagination,
Layer upon layer of impossible worlds,
A cloak woven from wonder without hope,
A sanctuary built from creativity born of cold sincerity.
Outside spreads an endless field of pale indifference.
Inside, red embers gather strength, generating their own momentum.
And summer awakens deliberately within winter.
The whiteness of snow is the darkness of my glow.
The harshness of snow is the reflection of my overflow.
I drift through dreams, from fantasies to daydreams.
I leap from vision to vision, from thoughts to dimensions.
I do not count sheep; I watch the snowflakes descend.
Winter is honest; winter is the strongest.
It separates borrowed fire from true fire.
Frozen rage does not shout; it burns beneath the surface.
Those without a flame
Gradually fade into complete frost,
While those who possess one
Burn brighter than before,
Feeding themselves upon the permafrost.
Every snowflake is an ash
Falling from a timeless heaven.
Every breath of cold air
Is a sacred offering.
Every trembling of the lungs
Recalls the ancient heart,
The primordial heart,
Bigger than cities,
Older than civilization itself.
Protector is winter,
The ancient ally of nomads.
The silencer of factories,
The burier of vehicles,
The calm conqueror of haste.
It places a white hand, colorless yet containing everything,
Upon the mouth of the human world
And restores an older order,
The order beyond tradition, written in the rhythm of weather.
And within that order
Begins the final feast of the mystical.
Ice buries wisdom away, becoming the wisest.
Silence extinguishes rebellion, becoming the most revolutionary.
Snow dismantles time, becoming the most eternal.
And the hidden fire
At the center of all things
Burns brighter than any childish sun.
― Atrona Grizel