Winter Poem

Tonight the wind gnaws with teeth of

The jackdaw shivers in caged branches of

The stars have

There is hunger in the mouth of vole and

Silver agonies of breath in the nostril of the

Ice on the rabbit’s

Tonight has no moon, no food for the

The fruit tree is bare, the rose bush a

And the ground is bitter with

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

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

And a stream moves under the

Tonight there is no

But a star opens like a trumpet over the

And tonight in a nest of ruins the blessed babe is

And the fir tree warms to a bloom of

And the child lights his lantern and stares at his tinsel

And our hearts and hearths smoulder with live

In the blood of our grief the cold earth is

In our agony the womb convulses its

And in the last cry of

The child’s first breath is born