A summer carpet
On terraces of ice;
Domesticated
It could furnish a dream-room
In a house of rock –
Saxifrage forests
Tower half an inch
Into the mists;
Parabolic arrays
Of Arctic dandelions
Rise and set
Once a year;
Terracotta tablets
Bloom with the solar flares
Of lichen;
Milky ways
Of damask moss
Track the lost
Ghost-waters
Haunting the chambers
And cracked foundations
Of the ice palaces
That towered here,
Vanished, and rise again
In winter dark.
