MARILYN NELSON (translating Inge Pederson)

Wound

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 waiting in the ground
around a perfectly ordinary house
containing a perfectly ordinary family
and then suddenly seep out
like blood through
a snow-white bandage.