One Christmas was so much like another,
in those years around the sea-town corner now
and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices
I sometimes hear a moment before sleep,
that I can never remember
whether it snowed for six days and six nights
when I was twelve
or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights
when I was six.
All the Christmases roll down
toward the two-tongued sea,
like a cold and headlong moon
bundling down the sky that was our street;
and they stop
at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves,
and I plunge my hands in the snow
and bring out whatever I can find.
In the end it turned out to be a snowball fight