In another time the choice
might have been depicted as two gates:
Open the one, and it is winter.
Snow covers the cobbled pathways, the spires,
the December markets shrill
with lettuces. Snow covers the butcher's stoop,
the little chapel. The iron gates at the far edge of the city, of sleep—
I thought I saw you there.
Open the other, and it is winter.
I can tell because the lion's mouth is filled with snow.
In a room, my lover presses a photograph of the city
against glass, and fastens
the back of the frame, which has hinges also, and opens
and closes.
Richie Hofmann is the recipient of a 2012 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, New England Review, the New Republic, Yale Review, Poetry, and the New Yorker, among others. He has received, most recently, the John Ciardi Scholarship in Poetry from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Peter Taylor Fellowship in Poetry from the Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop. He is currently finishing his MFA in poetry at Johns Hopkins University.
