Robert Francis
Old Roofs
Old roofs that only yesterday
Were dingy indiscriminate gray
With no appreciable design
And not one clean-cut slope or line
Now startle and delight the eye–
Clear white against the winter sky.
Their surfaces are all intact,
Their corners sharp, their lines exact
As if their purpose was to show
The plane geometry of snow.
They look like problems waiting proof–
Your roof, my roof, any old roof.
Robert Francis, Robert Francis: Collected
Poems, 1936-1976, University of
Massachusetts Press, 1985.