A cloud of others covers
The city like the mist that shrouds
the Matterhorn each day
As if the people of the snowy town
Are themselves whited out by their storm.
A photo album sits dormant in the home
Of an English grandmother as she sips her tea
Reading the daily paper.
Within its pages under a Chinese cookbook and Spanish Abanico
Are the photographs of a town whose culture
Is mounted purely from the mountain.
And fitting too that her little grandson
Has opened the album to see memories of a weekend trip to Zermatt
Where the overcast sky has nearly blotted
the mountain from the image,
But still the thriving city rumbles.