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Friday, December 25, 2009

Fast Day 134 December 25 2009 {Christmas Snow}




Christmas Snow

Shovel snow, hearty lads!
shovel, pike, and broom!
This song we do sing when the solstice yawns
and blows too much snow for man or beast...
an over-measuring of snow... for free
a cornucopia of ice!
So much that old Man North, Boreas,
a well-known Scrooge and miser,
stingy and cold to the boney zero,
is now acclaimed by all
an open-handed and generous man:
the Clement, the Giving, magnanimous!
this the song of the scrapers,
this the song of shovelers;
little boys throw snowballs
at pompous men in top hats!
And all the world's gone
topsy-turvy, upside down,
at this our Christmas time!
Come, truckers! come, pilers!
come sowers of salt!
The drifts grow high, O, fathers!
as high as grandfather Pine!
Sing ye no dirges now!
sing joyful litanies in
this harvest-time of snow!
the lamps of dawn are lit!
Sing, ho! 'tis Christmas!

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notes

I am not sure what to say about this poem. It is what happens when one begins to think about Christmas and snow and presents and trees when one has been reading about ancient Greece: it is sort of an antique snow shovelling, snow harvesting type of poem Hesiod ( author of Works and Days and second in fame to Homer ) would have sung as he shoveled the snows of his homestead.

Boreas is the North Wind, and instead of being a royal pain in the wedge, he is seen as sending a white Christmas and snowy gifts.
pike to push the ice with pointed staffs,
scrape to scrape ice, or to scrape snow off the surface of ice.
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1 comment:

Ruth said...

May the snow come lightly to you, dear Montag.

Happy Christmas.