The three men coming down the winter
In brown, with tall poles and a pack of
At heel, through the arrangement of the trees,
Past the five figures at the burning straw,
Returning cold and silent to their town,
Returning to the drifted snow, the
Lively with children, to the older men,
The long companions they can never reach,
The blue light, men with ladders, by the
The sledge and shadow in the twilit street,
Are not aware that in the sandy
To come, the evil waste of
Outstretched, they will be seen upon the
Of that same hill: when all their
Will have been irrecoverably lost,
These men, this particular three in
Witnessed by birds will keep the scene and
By their configuration with the trees,
The small bridge, the red houses and the fire,
What place, what time, what morning
Sent them into the wood, a pack of
At heel and the tall poles upon their shoulders,
Thence to return as now we see them
Ankle-deep in snow down the winter
Descend, while three birds watch and the fourth flies.
Image - Pieter Brueghel,
Hunters in the Snow (1565)Kunsthistorisches Museum,
Vienna.
