She received an NEA, and the Italo Calvino Prize from the Columbia University Translation Center. I step into a postcard scene, white embossed on white, in the glow of lamps still on in the grey morning light, the snow trackless, dazzling as a blank page. I hesitate, attracted by the wholeness, the quiet.
Gentle swells run unbroken over houses and yards, driveways, walks and street.
No hedges and fences, all detail gone, like a panorama seen from the air. No borders between states, between countries, and as you gain more distance, the mountains that showed as puckers, the ropes of water disappear, and all becomes like a dream, the vanity of human wishes medieval poets and philosophers saw on the way out. Buried under a huge mound the garnet shine of the car next door, and all green erased, even spruces and pines stand like white-robed monks in contemplation. Still, I hesitate, the silence beckoning, the beauty, a world united by snow. But as the cold seeps in to my feet, I wake to my breath, the blood congealing in my veins, and I push the shovel down, lift layer upon layer, feel for edge of grass and concrete, the curb dropping into the wide brick street.