What can be offered to the afternoon
but words and words; there’s nothing new to say
and so I’m silent as the winter’s moon
with her half smile over the brilliant day.
The clouds have all been chased off by the sun,
her sole companion in an empty sky,
and I despoil blank pages one by one
that I might capture things that cannot die–
that beauty might be bound with phrase or word–
the immortal heavens immortalized
with rhyme; it is absurd, absurd, absurd!
for I could die voiceless and still these will be prized.
Look up. The glory, joy invincible, will rend
these lofty skies and life outlive this poet’s end.
Other poems on Moss Kingdom about winter:
The View From Winter, December 21: an Advent poem for the Winter Solstice, Praying in the Sanctuary of Snow, Winter Words: a poem about the uselessness of poems, The Prodigal Sun: a poem about how we love the Sun despite his philandering, After Walking in the Rain, All Sad Thoughts Are Banished: reflections on Roethke’s death at the Bloedel Reserve, Of Edmund and Aslan, Winter Staves by Rusten Harris, Liturgical Time by Rusten Harris,“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, A Seduction: in Four Seasons, Not One of Us Tried to Remember by Duncan King