It is is a little hard to stand witness

over the follies of the city.

Season after season they come

to admire us or to joke at our grave gaze.

Oh, we are revered and shown off by the guides.

Outside the city museum.

In the heat of summer, our surface hot under the blazing sun

we meet their gaze.

And now in winter we contract into our sober images.

The crowd marches by, eyes on the icy street.

Tentative steps crunch down the hill.

No thought of monuments or art

But rather of the need to stay upright.

We are ignored, superfluous, the luxury of a glance,

a sigh at the sight of our stern looks denied.

But nature takes pity on us

And crowns us, mantles our proud shoulders

and we stand as princes of the snowy city.