{"id":10225,"date":"2020-12-18T10:31:14","date_gmt":"2020-12-18T10:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=10225"},"modified":"2020-12-18T10:31:14","modified_gmt":"2020-12-18T10:31:14","slug":"poetry-james-harpur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2020\/12\/18\/poetry-james-harpur\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry: James Harpur"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christmas Snow<\/strong><\/p>\n

Never came that year, and yet
\nIt came in other ways, remembering the Light;
\nAs suds frothing in the Garavogue
\nAround bridge arches, a scuttled trolley;<\/p>\n

It fell from lamps in Henry Street
\nIlluminating tracer-lines of sleet
\nAnd shoppers gripping rods of sleek umbrellas
\nAs if playing giant straining fish;<\/p>\n

It fell as stars above the Sugar Loaf
\nLit up as cats\u2019 eyes by the gaze
\nOf a farmer standing by a gate
\nAbove Wicklow and its mercury lanes.<\/p>\n

It flickered as a candle in a window
\nIn the round tower of Timahoe
\nBut only some could see the eye of flame
\nProtecting sleepers in the graveyard.<\/p>\n

And when the sun emerged from night
\nSnow came as seagulls spiralling up
\nLike bonfire ash behind a tractor chugging
\nThrough slantwise fields near Baltimore.<\/p>\n

It came as shoals of clouds held still
\nIn the reflecting depths of Bantry Bay
\nAnd as three harbour swans
\nTurning their backs on the Atlantic;<\/p>\n

And as sheets and pillowcases hung on lines
\nIn Waterville and Elfin
\nBy women biting clothes pegs, dreaming
\nOf visitors arriving from the east.<\/p>\n

And it was found as ironed table-cloths
\nAnd icing knifed on marzipan
\nIn kitchens dimming into evening
\nIn Desert Serges and Kilbree.<\/p>\n

It gleamed as circles of the host
\nFor worshippers in churches lit at midnight
\nAmid cities ablaze like fairgrounds
\nOr villages as dark as silhouettes;<\/p>\n

And it appeared in moon-insinuated waves
\nUnrolling across Long Strand
\nRearing up like angels made of spray,
\nRoaring the word in tumbling syllables<\/p>\n

Then sucking in their breath to whisper
\nIt\u2019s christmas, christmas, christmas …<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>The Journey East
\n<\/strong>(Winter 2010)<\/p>\n

The car revving up, the three of us
\nwiping mist away to find a whiter world.<\/p>\n

Black-ice to Clonakilty \u2013
\ncortege of cars behind a spectral hearse.<\/p>\n

Strings of lights in Bandon, sapphire-cold,
\nand the stars are moving through the river.<\/p>\n

On Cork\u2019s Victorian viaduct, a train made of snow.
\nWe steam below the River Lee.<\/p>\n

Cork city crusts behind us;
\nthree swans on Slatty Water; feathery ice.<\/p>\n

The sun\u2019s last x-ray radiates the trees.
\nLights turn red in Castlemartyr.<\/p>\n

Diesel-slush road. Across the Blackwater
\nWaterford has drifted white.<\/p>\n

Inching mile by mile \u2013 through Iceland? Greenland?
\nWexford, another country.<\/p>\n

Dungarvan\u2019s glittery square:
\neach shop an advent calendar window.<\/p>\n

Beyond the Suir bridge the dark returns \u2026
\nbut angels are alighting on New Ross.<\/p>\n

Rosslare night; chalet on a ghostly estate.
\nSound of wind in chimney.<\/p>\n

Dawn ferry, sudden vibrations \u2013
\npropellers churn the sea to snow.<\/p>\n

The swell-swing up and down and up \u2013
\nO let the voyage finish now, and grant us solid earth<\/em>.<\/p>\n

From Pembroke Wales unfolds in white;
\na postbox in a wall, red as a berry.<\/p>\n

Below the Severn bridge \u2013
\nwater turned to bone!<\/p>\n

The Somerset Levels, crisp and even;
\nthe motorway accelerates the dark.<\/p>\n

The night re-icing the Yeovil road \u2013
\nnot now, not now we\u2019re nearly there<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Cattistock lumped with snow;
\nwood incense, curtains edged with gold.<\/p>\n

A house on Duck Street:
\nan outdoor light \u2013 a star that\u2019s stopped overhead.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"Epiphany<\/strong><\/p>\n

For twelve days the sky had been obscured.
\nThe guiding patterns of the constellations
\nLost behind a mesh of haze;
\nOur trackprints filled with sifting sand
\nLike a softly fading sequenced memory
\nOr the healing drift of doubtfulness.
\nAscending to a ridge I saw the torchfires
\nOf Ctesiphon burn like streaming hair
\nAnd taken unawares was struck
\nBy a sudden longing for my country, my people,
\nAnd such a pang for all things cherished
\nFor the sunlit gardens of my childhood.
\nReleasing tears of deep relief \u2013 or grieving \u2013
\nI heard the other two spontaneously
\nHumming a song of Zarathustra
\nAs we made our way on down the slope
\nAway from the dying vista of the future
\nTowards our past, closing in.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong>Seraphim of Sarov
\n<\/strong>(After a conversation between Nicholas Motovilov
\n<\/em>and Seraphim in November 1831)<\/em><\/p>\n

The day was born in twilight,
\ngrey above the forest glade,
\nthe earth deepening with snow
\nas snow kept falling from the sky;
\nthe fields pure white below the hill
\nbeside the River Sarovka.
\nI sat on a stump opposite him;
\nall I could smell was fir trees.
\n\u2018The only thing in life,\u2019 he said,
\nis to make ourselves a home
\nto welcome the holy spirit.
\nNothing more. All else will follow.
\nOur souls use words for prayer,
\nbut when the spirit descends
\nwe must stay silent \u2026\u2019
\nI glanced at him: imagine
\nstaring at the centre of the sun
\nand there you see someone\u2019s face,
\nlips moving, eyes expressive,
\nand you hear a voice speaking,
\nfeel your shoulders being held
\nby hands you cannot see;
\nin fact you do not even see yourself,
\njust a dazzling light, diffusing
\nand making the glade luminous
\nand the snowflakes layering the snow.
\nI felt such peace in my soul;
\nno words could express it.
\nAnd such warmth.
\nNo words can express it.<\/p>\n

Feature Image of Ben Bulben, Co. Sligo, Fellipe Lopes.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christmas Snow Never came that year, and yet It came in other ways, remembering the Light; As suds frothing in the Garavogue Around bridge arches, a scuttled trolley; It fell from lamps in Henry Street Illuminating tracer-lines of sleet And shoppers gripping rods of sleek umbrellas As if playing giant straining fish; It fell as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":233,"featured_media":10272,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[4659,4660,4786,7328,7329,7337],"class_list":["post-10225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-irish-english-poet","tag-irish-english-poet-james-harpur","tag-james-harpur","tag-poems-for-christmas","tag-poems-for-christmas-2020","tag-poet-james-harpur"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/233"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}