<blockquote>Ice is very cold and immeasurably slippery;<br>it glistens as clear as glass and most like to gems;<br>it is a floor wrought by the frost, fair to look upon.</blockquote>
<p>Norwegian rune poem:</p>
<blockquote>Ís ko,llum brú bræiða;<br>blindan þarf at læiða.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Ice we call the broad bridge;<br>the blind man must be led.</blockquote>
<p>A modern poem:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Metaclysma,<br/>
inter-world void.<br/>
No touch, no voice,<br/>
silhouette of black,<br/>
all other senses in lack.<br/>
Just eternal light.</p>
<p>I come to with limbs bound tight<br/>
in open silk-lined coffin.<br/>
Space between flight<br/>
from Eris's explosion<br/>
into metaclysma and now<br/>
left unwritten, just as blank.<br/>
Lights made dim as to not stain<br/>
my vision with a single face<br/>
of clergy self-proclaimed<br/>
caretakers, unworthy to be named.<br/>
To them, I think, I am a saint,<br/>
a goddess who made sacrifice<br/>
to give them this world that once was spring<br/>
but now sleeps under blanket of ice.</p>
<p>Tomorrow steeps my Holiday<br/>
where come commoners to pray<br/>
to the casket where I've lain<br/>
these five years, apparently,<br/>
for grace<br/>
or their fates to change.<br/>
Body strewn over a bed<br/>
in a darkened room, rubbing<br/>
my limbs to regain<br/>
five years of feeling,<br/>
halfway sedate<br/>
to keep aches from constructing<br/>
a tower in my head.<br/>
Maybe they wanted to reach the empty heavens<br/>
too, drop a rock to bust open the frozen canyons.</p>
<p>Jett,<br/>
I had not the strength<br/>
to your gentle hand hold on.<br/>
I suppose<br/>
I can only hope<br/>
you're haunting somewhere in these halls,<br/>
found a way these five years to cope<br/>
with this world I made for you but did not survive<br/>
to share. I think, unless I am deceived, I am alive<br/>
now, again, yours forever.<br/>
If you'll still have me as your wife.<br/>
If you'll still live with me on that mountainside.</p>
