The New Compass: A Critical Review
Poems
Walter Martin
No two hexagonals
alike—
look
until Doomsday, frost-bitten
fingers pawing the diffident
crystals for the one exception.
No three-leaf clovers here, no X-
ray
coaxes a snowflake’s secret;
all the answers are a little
evasive, like places of pi.
Even W.A. Bentley
who
pursued “and still pursues” this
search, snow after snowfall fifty
odd winters in
glued to photomicroscope, knows
only
this: the specialist does
not admit defeat. The mutual
fund of wonder and bewilder-
ment increases
when none can say
why
flakes should be miraculous—
sheepishly symmetrical but
each one secretly chimaerical.
Whose
order closed the pit
that gaped wide yesterday?
And
can they not fall in it yet
whose feet are led astray?
Then
who put out hell’s fire?
or has it ceased to burn?
Can
you not smell the brimstone here,
not hear the loud alarm?
Those
who stand convicted,
raked by eternal flame…
If
all of these can be evicted,
where then shall we call home?
Wandering
up yonder,
what else is there to do
but
stand in the road and wonder
if heav’n be
empty too?
Martin, Walter. “Poems.”
The New Compass: A Critical Review 2 (December 2003) <http://www.thenewcompass.ca/dec2003/martin.html>