Christmas Card in a Poem

I don't do Christmas cards anymore, but for the last decade or so, I've done a Christmas poem instead as my seasonal message to everyone I care about (which includes all of you). 

The last couple of years I wrote English Madrigals, and before that there was a run of a few Sevenlings. This year, I felt that a Terza Rima, with its sound-echo repeating pattern, best suited the times. (Despite the fact that this Italian form is difficult to use in English because of the relative paucity of rhyme words available in a language which has, in comparison with Italian, a more complex phonology. But then, when did I ever like to make things easy for myself?) 

 So with this, please accept my warmest wishes for a day of peace and plenty tomorrow, whether you mark it as Christmas or simply enjoy a day of pause and rest, of cherishing yourselves and each other. 

 Kurt Vonnegut probably said it best: "There's only one rule that I know of, babies - God damn it, you've got to be kind.” After this difficult year, let us all look for kindness, and give it unstintingly. 

 Lights: Christmas 2020 

 In my hands is a small light, stuttering. 

it is a small light, but is not afraid; 

this hand-cupped star, pale-gold flame fluttering 

 It is a small light, and it does not say 

that every single debt is fully paid 

that all the darkness will be washed away. 

 This hard and hurtful year is now decayed, 

and hearts and hearths call out to bring you home 

all joys grow deeper when they are delayed 

 the festive tableaux set in polychrome, 

the small lights and the bright ones pierce the night 

the year is ebbing, leaving only foam. 

 And with Christmas Day finally in sight 

I wish you all compassion for this end; 

there may be no magic to make things right 

 but there is love, and kindness, here to spend: 

and there are other people; every heart 

carrying its own light; and so we bend 

 all the darkness away; and here, we start 

to put together what was torn apart.

November Sestina

Now November slips away, half gone already
the spring concedes to summer and the birds call
long into the cloudy warm-pink night.
The city lives and breathes, in days of beer and river water
and, everywhere, the open doorway beckons
and the year that hurt us has laid down arms at last.

So, now, we drink every latte like it is our last
that lesson lodged deep in our guts already
the dice roll of every unknown future beckons;
the chance geometry of shrouded angel’s call.
But here we still are, born and once drowned in water:
here we still are, holding candles to the night.

And now day is renewed, and the night
for us, is over, and fear ebbs now at last.
In joyful mass we all surge back to water
to swim and grow sun-reddened; forgotten already
the other dangers here under this sky. No call
to memory undoes the way life beckons.

Ahead, the season of the solstice beckons
the preparation for our shortest night.
The open shops all ply their siren’s call
in baubles, trees and carols first and last.
Perhaps, this time, the truth is known already;
perhaps we all have been renewed in water.

And here we do not give thanks in November; no blessing water
flows through our hands to wash us clean, or beckons
to bow our heads and own aloud our mercy. Already
we are forgetting the deepest ink of night.
The miracle and the sadness is the way nothing will last:
not joy but not pain either, and not sweet summer’s call.

The year that hurt us ends in a quiet call:
We live, and laugh, and hold each other, the water
sanctified with the release of hearts at last.
For other places, a different passage beckons;
and winter closes in with hard cold night.
With tender hands, we hold our gift already:

This bright blue sky, this future born already
this daily-stronger farewell to the night,
this star-point now from which a new year beckons.

2020 Ahoy

2020, folks. I mean, what can I even say that hasn't been said? It has been pretty damn terrible here in Melbourne, and we haven't had the worst of it by a long shot.

Here is a poem that I wrote a month ago that sums up what I think about this year so far. (It is far from the only poem I've spun from Our Current Troubles - if there is a silver lining to bushfires, a pandemic, loss of work, huge anxiety and fear, and climate change, I *suppose* it's a renewal of creativity).

I hope all is well with you as can be expected in these dark times. Let's all hope for better days to come.

A Madrigal for the Future We Appear to be Having, Whether We Want it or Not

There were those books that said bad things would come;
the stories and the experts on the shows,
dystopias enough for all, God knows.

And year on year on year the louder hum
the skies all speckled with the warning crows;
Too many ways to look for what's to come
the earth is changing now, and how it shows.

New foes arise to beat the battle drum
the tiny enemies in viral clothes,
the musk and mystery inside the rose.

The future's here: we knew it had to come
the world is weary of us, and it shows:
the past is prologue: everybody knows.