time has moulded the stone

time has moulded the stone from the mountain I am

not allowed to climb, heavy with meadows and woods

with lapses of larches amid spans of fog, 

black spruces whose bark thaws as frost’s sleep creaks

I go there alone to plant my wintering seed

to perfect myself in that place ‒ on the one day 

I gather the few instants before the end,

somewhere ever nearer to my beginning