I scratched out a design in frozen ground
how I envisioned the machine might work.
In fleeting moments I considered bound
to empirical laws the bright expound
while looking down from learned, lofty perch.

So simple though it seemed to me to be,
then growing greater in pugnacious detail.
The icy etching spawned complexity;
that I no more scrawled with branch of fallen tree,
but clawed each figure out with broken nail.

It might have been the keening winter wind
that lured me from my hearth and cup of spiced.
For cutting cold did flay upon my skin
as I wandered out of doors from warmth within;
bewitched by crystal song thread through the night.

Down hidden paths not seen on summer days,
nor revealed like flowers by spring’s thaw.
These frozen and malignly treacherous ways
seen not but under rare winter moon’s gaze;
on did I stumble, goaded by…