The aspen is clothed,

Its limbs reach toward heaven

Alight with rime and worship:

A great one has passed

At ninety nine years–

The lives that are touched

At ninety nine years–

Mine, my grandfather’s,

The time overlaps,

spreads over the landscape

So that all are touched,

All are clothed.

It is zero today,

And I wanted to write

That hell is cold–

Until I saw the aspen

Clothed in hoar frost.

All the world has become

The aspen, outlined in ice.