Happy Winter Solstice

[rejectomorph]

Very late, the stars come out. The clouds have retreated to the high mountains to feed the snowfields. As the sky clears, it grows colder, but not cold enough to freeze the captive rain that yet drips from the pines, splashing in the lingering puddles that reflect trembling starlight. Deep darkness prevails between sky and water. The sliver of waning moon must have risen by now, but it is lost in the mountain's clouds, like one of those hermit sages in a Japanese poem. Eventually, it will clear the foggy rampart and bring those rumpled turrets a foretaste of the swiftly following day. Should the sky remain clear, I might wake to see the trees dried, and the remnant of leaves scattered on the freshly nourished lawn. A sunny afternoon would please me now; a bright winter solstice to remind me of the turn toward summer, and mark the passage of this longest night.

A BLACK BIRCH IN WINTER

by Richard Wilbur


You might not know this old tree by its bark,
Which once was striate, smooth, and glossy-dark,
So deep now are the rifts which separate
Its roughened surface into flake and plate.

Fancy might less remind you of a birch
Than of mosaic columns in a church
Like Ara Coeli or the Lateran,
Or the trenched features of an aged man.

Still, do not be too much persuaded by
These knotty furrows and these tesserae
To think of patterns made from outside-in
Or finished wisdom in a shriveled skin.

Old trees are doomed to annual rebirth,
New wood, new life, new compass, greater girth,
And this is all their wisdom and their art --
To grow, stretch, crack, and not yet come apart.

---

Comments

Re: <b>A Summer Commentary</b>

[rejectomorph]

You are clearly more closely acquainted with Winters' work than I. In fact, in addition to the hardback book of his collected poems, I do have one volume called The Uncollected Essays and Reviews of Yvor Winters which contains some of his critical pieces, but I've only ever dipped into it from time to time rather than reading it through. But I've read enough of it to know that he was indeed demanding, even with (or perhaps especially with) writers he admired.

I had no idea that there were recordings of Winters reading. I would like to hear them. The town in which I live is a bit of a backwater, located north of Sacramento in the Sierra foothills a dozen or so miles east of the college town (and burgeoning mini-metropolis) of Chico. My current situation doesn't give me the chance to get away, as I am looking after my aged parents, who require daily attention. I would greatly appreciate a tape of the recordings.

I don't recall ever reading anything by Janet Lewis, though I have a couple of anthologies of modern American poetry in which some of her work might be lurking. I'll have to dig them out (most of my books being stored in boxes these days) and see. I'm actually less familiar with poetry than I'd like to be, having devoted so many years to other pursuits. Of course, the advantage to this is that now I get to discover as new many works I would undoubtedly have appreciated less had I read them when I was younger.