Relief

[rejectomorph]

The glare from January's low afternoon sun sent me squinting about town. Things are only half there on such days— one side brilliant and stark and the other darkly shaded. On such days I eagerly await sunset, and the dusk when the sky turns cerulean and the moon brings its soft glow. The assault is over until tomorrow, and my eyes can rest. Starlight and lamplight soothe my senses, and the world, no longer piebald, becomes a serene and subdued place. The harsh contrasts are gone. The ordered constellations count the dark hours here in the big shade of Earth. Soon I will go watch Orion rise from the pines, and the crescent moon sink down the opposite side of the dome. I'm glad the winter nights are so long.




Sunday Verse

This Bread I Break

by Dylan Thomas


This bread I break was once the oat,
This wine upon a foreign tree
Plunged in its fruit;
Man in the day or wind at night
Laid the crops low, broke the grape's joy.

Once in this wine the summer blood
Knocked in the flesh that decked the vine,
Once in this bread
The oat was merry in the wind;
Man broke the sun, pulled the wind down.

This flesh you break, this blood you let
Make desolation in the vein,
Were oat and grape
Born of the sensual root and sap;
My wine you drink, my bread you snap.

Comments

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

I miss going out to see the night sky here in the city. I could go out onto the building's deck, I suppose, but there's so much light. Over a few streets, at my son's place, there's a much darker sky. I should make sure to go over some clear night.

I'd never seen that poem before. It was Dylan Thomas who converted me to poetry, when I was 16 or so and first read Fern Hill.

[rejectomorph]

I just stumbled across that one for the first time myself. Apparently Thomas wrote so many poems that we will never run out.