Monday 14 January 2013

Ice on the rabbit's paw - Weekly Poem - Laurie Lee 's Christmas Landscape


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,
The bean and the wheat-seed
Hug their germs in the earth
And the stream moves under the ice.

It's the obligatory blogger's snowy post and as the photographs seem to  fit so well with one of my favourite poems I've used them to illustrate the first four verses of Laurie Lee's Christmas Landscape.

1 comment:

  1. Love the poem--makes winter sound beautiful, but harsh, but ends on a peaceful note with the mole and hedgehog curled under the leaves the stream moving under the ice.

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