Advent Sunday

The festive season has started. I've let my kids take over and as a consequence the Christmas tree is fully decorated and lit ( and it's not even December yet). One of my favourite Christmas poems is 'The Advent Calendar' by Rowan Williams :

Advent Calendar

He will come like last leaf's fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud's folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

b.1950

Darkness

I really can't believe how incredibly dark, gloomy and wet it is this morning.I'm interested in how a handful of words can produce an abundance of meaning.I've been re-reading the poetry of the Japanese Zen poet Matsuo Basho (1644-94).This haiku just about sums up the morning :

The sea darkening . . . oh voices of the wild ducks Crying, whirling, white

Wind

I'm sitting, trying to work;constantly distracted by the persistent wind and rain. What's happening up in Cumbria ( especially) and in other areas of the world where 'flood' is the word on everyone's lips? From the comfort and safety of my own space my mind wanders to church halls, pubs, schools ... then I think of a poem by Walt Whitman :

Patroling Barnegat

Wild, wild the storm, and the sea high running,

Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering,

Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing,

Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing,

Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering,

On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting,

Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting,

Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing,

(That in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?)

Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending,

Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting,

Along the midnight edge by those milk-white combs careering,

A group of dim, weird forms, struggling, the night confronting,

That savage trinity warily watching.



Walt Whitman ( 1819 -1892)

The Story Museum, Oxford

Heard today that The Story Museum will housed in a new building. Writing in The Guardian yesterday Alison Flood gives details :

Museum 'of story and storytelling' planned for Oxford

Pjs

I went into my local Costa for a coffee this morning and was followed in by a girl wearing Ugg boots and a pair of pajamas - what's that all about?This must have been one of the chilliest days of the year so far - at least the PJs were made of flannelette ! I know that there's a trend at public schools for students to wear their nightclothes at the end of the school day; I've just never seen it on my local high street.