A Toast

Wishing all my readers a very Happy New Year!



A Toast! - Lang Leav

To new beginnings
             in fear and faith
             and all it tinges.

To love is a dare,
             when hope and despair
             are gates upon its hinges. 

Song of Three Smiles

 

Song of Three Smiles - WS Mervin

 

Let me call a ghost,

Love, so it be little:

In December we took

No thought for the weather.

Whom now shall I thank

For this wealth of water?

Your heart loves harbors

Where I am a stranger.

Where was it we lay

Needing no other

Twelve days and twelve nights

In each other’s eyes?

Or was it at Babel

And the days too small

We spoke our own tongue

Needing no other?

If a seed grow green

Set a stone upon it

That it learn thereby

Holy charity.

If you must smile

Always on that other,

Cut me from ear to ear

And we all smile together.

Christmas Snow

 

Heart highs reading this. (Snow-swoon!)


Snow - Gillian Clarke


The dreamed Christmas,
flakes shaken out of silences so far
and starry we can’t sleep for listening
for papery rustles out there in the night
and wake to find our ceiling glimmering,
the day a psaltery of light.

So we’re out over the snow fields
before it’s all seen off with a salt-lick
of Atlantic air, then home at dusk, snow-blind
from following chains of fox and crow and hare,
to a fire, a roasting bird, a ringing phone,
and voices wondering where we are.

A day foretold by images
of glassy pond, peasant and snowy roof
over the holy child iconed in gold.
Or women shawled against the goosedown air
pleading with soldiers at a shifting frontier
in the snows of television,

while in the secret dark a fresh snow falls
filling our tracks with stars.

On the 13th Day of Christmas...

We wouldn't really thank our true love for bombarding us with this array of shenanigans now would we!

On the Thirteenth Day of Christmas My True Love Phoned Me Up... - Dave Calder 

Well, I suppose I should be grateful, you’ve obviously gone
to a lot of trouble and expense – or maybe off your head.
Yes, I did like the birds – the small ones anyway were fun
if rather messy, but now the hens have roosted on my bed
and the rest are nested on the wardrobe. It’s hard to sleep
with all that cooing, let alone the cackling of the geese
whose eggs are everywhere, but mostly in a broken smelly heap
on the sofa. No, why should I mind? I can’t get any peace
anywhere – the lounge is full of drummers thumping tom-toms
and sprawling lords crashed out from manic leaping. The
kitchen is crammed with cows and milkmaids and smells of a million stink-bombs
and enough sour milk to last a year. The pipers? I’d forgotten them –
they were no trouble, I paid them and they went. But I can’t get rid
of these young ladies. They won’t stop dancing or turn the music down
and they’re always in the bathroom, squealing as they skid
across the flooded floor. No, I don’t need a plumber round,
it’s just the swans – where else can they swim? Poor things,
I think they’re going mad, like me. When I went to wash my
hands one ate the soap, another swallowed the gold rings.
And the pear tree died. Too dry. So thanks for nothing,
   love. Goodbye.

The Universal Hymn of Love

 
                                                      


Christmas Morning - Eugene Field

The angel host that sped last night,
Bearing the wondrous news afar,
Came in their ever-glorious flight
Unto a slumbering little star.

'Awake and sing, O star!' they cried.
'Awake and glorify the morn!
Herald the tidings far and wide--
He that shall lead His flock is born!'

The little star awoke and sung
As only stars in rapture may,
And presently where church bells hung
The joyous tidings found their way.

'Awake, O bells! 't is Christmas morn--
Awake and let thy music tell
To all mankind that now is born
What Shepherd loves His lambkins well!'

Then rang the bells as fled the night
O'er dreaming land and drowsing deep,
And coming with the morning light,
They called, my child, to you asleep.

Sweetly and tenderly they spoke,
And lingering round your little bed,
Their music pleaded till you woke,
And this is what their music said:

'Awake and sing! 'tis Christmas morn,
Whereon all earth salutes her King!
In Bethlehem is the Shepherd born.
Awake, O little lamb, and sing!'

So, dear my child, kneel at my feet,
And with those voices from above
Share thou this holy time with me,
The universal hymn of love.

Christmas Eve

 

 

Nativity - Louise Gluck

It is the evening

of the birth of God.

Singing &

with gold instruments

the angels bear down

upon the barn, their wings

neither white

wax nor marble. So

they have been recorded:

burnished,

literal in the composed air,

they raise their harps above

the beasts likewise gathering,

the lambs & all the startled

silken chickens ... And Joseph,

off to one side, has touched

his cheek, meaning

he is weeping ---

But how small he is, withdrawn

from the hollow of his mother's life,

the raw flesh bound

in linen as stars yield

light to delight his sense

for who there is no ornament.

 

Lines for a Christmas Card

Short, but definitely not sweet. Ho ho ho!



Lines for a Christmas Card - Hilaire Belloc

May all my enemies go to hell,
Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel.

Winter Stars

 

Winter Stars - Sara Teasdale

I went out at night alone;

 The young blood flowing beyond the sea

Seemed to have drenched my spirit’s wings—

 I bore my sorrow heavily.

But when I lifted up my head

 From shadows shaken on the snow,

I saw Orion in the east

 Burn steadily as long ago.

From windows in my father’s house,

 Dreaming my dreams on winter nights,

I watched Orion as a girl

 Above another city’s lights.

Years go, dreams go, and youth goes too,

 The world’s heart breaks beneath its wars,

All things are changed, save in the east

 The faithful beauty of the stars.

Winter Solstice

Ironic isn't it, that in this winter season, our celebration focuses on light.


'Wring Out My Clothes' - Fraincis of Assisi

Such love does
the sky now pour,
that whenever I stand in a field,

I have to wring out the light
when I get
home.

Holly

Holly - Seamus Heaney

It rained when it should have snowed.
When we went to gather holly

the ditches were swimming, we were wet
to the knees, our hands were all jags

and water ran up our sleeves.
There should have been berries

but the sprigs we brought into the house
gleamed like smashed bottle-glass.

Now here I am, in a room that is decked
with the red-berried, waxy-leafed stuff,

and I almost forgot what it's like
to be wet to the skin or longing for snow.

I reach for a book like a doubter
and want it to flare round my hand,

a black letter bush, a glittering shield-wall,
cutting as holly and ice.

Snow Fall

'There is nothing to do
But drift now, more or less
On some great lovingness...'

 

Snow Fall - May Sarton

With no wind blowing

It sifts gently down,
Enclosing my world in
A cool white down,
A tenderness of snowing.

It falls and falls like sleep
Till wakeful eyes can close
On all the waste and loss
As peace comes in and flows,
Snow-dreaming what I keep.

Silence assumes the air
And the five senses all
Are wafted on the fall
To somewhere magical
Beyond hope and despair.

There is nothing to do
But drift now, more or less
On some great lovingness,
On something that does bless,
The silent, tender snow.