Winter Solstice: 2010

Night People Rejoice: this is your time!
Day People Rejoice: your time is coming, beginning tomorrow!

This is the shortest day of the year, or from a different perspective, it will be tonight, the longest night of the year. It is also the first day of winter, or so say the powers-that-be, at least for this part of the planet. Other parts, other powers-that-be, other rulings.




Buddha on the hill . . .
From your holy nose indeed
Hangs an icicle
-- Issa --
From The Little Treasury of Haiku
Nobody has ever accused Issa of being overly reverent.



Going snow-viewing
One by one the walkers vanish . . .
Whitely falling veils
-- Katsuri --
From LTH



Snow in the Suburbs

Every branch big with it,
Bent every twig with it;
Every fork like a white web-foot;
Every street and pavement mute;
Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward, when
Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again,
The palings are glued together like a wall,
And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.

A sparrow enters the tree,
Whereon immediately
A snow-lump thrice his own slight size
Descends on him and showers his head and eyes,
And overturns him,
And near inurns him,
And lights on a nether twig, when its brush
Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.

The steps are a blanched slope,
Up which, with feeble hope,
A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
And we take him in.
-- Thomas Hardy --



Wind and Window Flower

Lovers, forget your love,
And list to the love of these,
She a window flower,
And he a winter breeze.

When the frosty window veil
Was melted down at noon,
And the caged yellow bird
Hung over her in tune,

He marked her through the pane,
He could not help but mark,
And only passed her by
To come again at dark.

He was a winter wind,
Concerned with ice and snow,
Dead weeds and unmated birds,
And little of love could know.

But he sighed upon the sill,
He gave the sash a shake,
As witness all within
Who lay that night awake.

Perchance he half prevailed
To win her for the flight
From the firelit looking-glass
And warm stove-window light.

But the flower leaned aside
And thought of naught to say
And morning found the breeze
A hundred miles away.
-- Robert Frost --




No. 1316

Winter is good -- his Hoar Delights
Italic flavor yield --
To Intellects inebriate
With Summer, or the World --

Generic as a Quarry
And hearty -- as a Rose --
Invited with Asperity
But welcome when he goes.
-- Emily Dickinson --
from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
edited by Thomas H. Johnson









In the wintry moon
Gales raging down the river
Hone the rock-edges
-- Chora --
From LTH



My very bone-ends
Made contact with the icy quilts
Of deep December
-- Buson --
From LTH

The Winter Solstice: December 21, 2009

While this poem was dated by Hardy, on December 31, 1900, I think it serves equally well for a poem set on the Winter's Solstice, the shortest day of the year, when Night has achieved its greatest victory over Day and it seems as though the days of the sun and warmth shall never return.

Yet, as the Taoists tell us, when any particular condition (day/night, wet/dry, cold/hot) has gained its greatest extent, its eventual defeat is embedded within that victory. For while December 21, 2009, may be the shortest day of the year, December 22 shows us that all is not lost, for we are now moving towards the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year.

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
…..When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
…..The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
…..Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
…..Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
…..The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
…..The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
…..Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
…..Seemed fervorless as I.

At once a voice arose among
…..The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
…..Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small
…..In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
…..Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
…..Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
…..Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
…..His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
…..And I was unaware.

-- Thomas Hardy --