Winter Poem

Tonight the wind gnaws with teeth of glass

The jackdaw shivers in caged branches of iron

The stars have talons

There is hunger in the mouth of vole and badger

Silver agonies of breath in the nostril of the fox

Ice on the rabbit’s paw

Tonight has no moon, no food for the pilgrim

The fruit tree is bare, the rose bush a thorn

And the ground is bitter with stones

But the mole sleeps and the hedgehog lies curled in a womb of leaves

And the bean and the wheat seed hug their germs in the earth

And a stream moves under the ice

Tonight there is no moon

But a star opens like a trumpet over the dead

And tonight in a nest of ruins the blessed babe is laid

And the fir tree warms to a bloom of candles

And the child lights his lantern and stares at his tinsel toy

And our hearts and hearths smoulder with live ashes

In the blood of our grief the cold earth is suckled

In our agony the womb convulses its seed

And in the last cry of anguish

The child’s first breath is born