The Moon In Winter

Shoulder to shoulder drifting, the cloud–floes
tumble in white disorder down the sky.
Diminished stars
blow to their ruin on the sky's bleak scaurs.
Two trees, like wrecks to mark despair,
Shake broken rigging in the freezing air.
But the bold moon, quickening her silver, solitary goes,
— Endeavour–hearted,
south, south, to seas uncharted,
cleaving black lanes of silence
through the jostling floes.