Winter Apocrypha

Snow has settled on the marble slabs,
Where the gloom of the halls is like a miserly sign.
In icy embraces, the volumes sleep,
Swaddled in the silver mirage of winter.

The language of Latin has frozen in parchments –
A minted step into a snow-covered garden.
There, every line is a glass waterfall,
Sleeping in the midst of a dead valley.

But somewhere from afar, through porticos and columns,
A string resounds – a golden lyre,
Singing of the fire that covered the icons,
But the word fades on pale lips…

And the aristocracy of cold Gothic
Covers with silver the frozen years.