Hello, December!

—Anonymous Photos

FIRST SIGHT
—Philip Larkin

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth's immeasureable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.

It sifts from leaden sieves,


It powders all the wood,

It fills with alabaster wool


The wrinkles of the road.

It makes an even face


Of mountain and of plain, —


Unbroken forehead from the east


Unto the east again.

It reaches to the fence,


It wraps it, rail by rail,


Till it is lost in fleeces;


It flings a crystal veil

On stump and stack and stem, —


The summer’s empty room,


Acres of seams where harvests were,


Recordless, but for them.

It ruffles wrists of posts,


As ankles of a queen, —


Then stills its artisans like ghosts,
Denying they have been.

—Emily Dickinson

SNOW
—Louis MacNeice

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was


Spawning snow and pink roses against it


Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:


World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,


Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion


A tangerine and spit the pips and feel


The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world


Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes—


On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one’s hands—
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

DESERT PLACES
—Robert Frost

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it—it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less—
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars—on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places. 

LINES FOR WINTER
—Mark Strand

Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are. 

Today’s LittleNip:

A PATCH OF OLD SNOW
—Robert Frost

There's a patch of old snow in a corner


That I should have guessed


Was a blow-away paper the rain


Had brought to rest.



It is speckled with grime as if


Small print overspread it,


The news of a day I've forgotten—


If I ever read it. 

 Hello, December!

____________

It’s not too late to submit artwork to Sac. Poetry Center for Gone Wild: An Art Show to Benefit Sacramento’s Wildlife Care Association; they’ll be accepting work from 10am-2pm today. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about this and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa

Celebrate the poetry that is December!

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.