POETRY: JAMES MATTHEW WILSON histories Call no man happy till he is dead. -Herodotus There were the winters-first, it seemed-lined up In memory. The winters when old people Began to die, the ones where snow would disrupt Tickets to warmer places, like a peephole On some more sensual world, suddenly stuffed shut. The winters when such whiteouts never came And his wife felt the fog and wind in the gut, As harbingers that all our human games Would sink beneath a deluge sent by gods. The January when his brother's heart Seizured beneath the surgeon's knife; the plod Of weeks his sister lay in bed, apart 107