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greatpoetry2010-12-06 03:11 pm
pyreneeees.livejournal.com) wrote in greatpoetry2010-12-06 03:11 pm
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Request: Christmas/winter holiday poems
Hello everyone! A friend just asked me for a poem that she could handwrite and put in a frame for Christmas, and I was personally horrified to realize I don't know any contemporary Christmas or winter poems. Gah! Please inundate me with all your favorite winter/Christmas/holiday poems, and I shall give you this lovely, hopeful Anne Sexton poem in return. Happy start of winter!
Snow
by Anne Sexton
Snow, blessed snow,
comes out of the sky
like bleached flies.
The ground is no longer naked.
The ground has on its clothes.
Trees poke out of sheets
and each branch wears the sock of God.
There is hope.
There is hope everywhere.
I bite it.
Someone once said:
Don't bite till you know
if it's bread or stone.
What I bite is all bread,
rising, yeasty as a cloud.
There is hope.
There is hope everywhere.
Today God gives milk
and I have the pail.
Snow
by Anne Sexton
Snow, blessed snow,
comes out of the sky
like bleached flies.
The ground is no longer naked.
The ground has on its clothes.
Trees poke out of sheets
and each branch wears the sock of God.
There is hope.
There is hope everywhere.
I bite it.
Someone once said:
Don't bite till you know
if it's bread or stone.
What I bite is all bread,
rising, yeasty as a cloud.
There is hope.
There is hope everywhere.
Today God gives milk
and I have the pail.
no subject
The River - Kevin Hart (http://anotherhand.livejournal.com/168377.html)
On the circle, far from "the sabbath" - Aonghas MacNeacail (http://anotherhand.livejournal.com/125486.html)
The White - Suzanne Paola (http://anotherhand.livejournal.com/123487.html)
December Night - W. S. Merwin (http://anotherhand.livejournal.com/112494.html)
no subject
last night i heard a choral piece based on this e.e. cummings poem
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower
who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see I will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly
i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and warm
just as your mother would
only don't be afraid
look at the spangles
that sleep all year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,
put up your little arms and
i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy
then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud
and my sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing
"Noel Noel"
by Dorothy Clutterbuck
Sweeping across the snows
Comes Christmas, Radiant Creature!
She's laughing as she goes. The shining holly fills her lap
Blue pages hold her train
Dear Time of lovely memories. So here you are again
There stand the glittering Christmas Trees
The Fires flame and glow
Soft fingers tapping on the pane
Are fairies, made of snow
The Bells ring out, The Carols mount
All the old songs are dear
The First Most Sacred Festival
The best of all the year.
Beautiful and one of my all time favourites
Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Re: Beautiful and one of my all time favourites
Re: Beautiful and one of my all time favourites
Re: Beautiful and one of my all time favourites
That is all kinds of wonderful. Thanks for enlightening my day.
no subject
no subject
Here's another I like; not really Christmassy but it always makes me feel wintery. It may be a little long to be put in a frame, but I suppose excerpts could be used:
Preludes
TS Eliot
I
The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.
II
The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.
III
You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters,
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed's edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.
IV
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o'clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.