poem

James Harpur: COMMENDED Christmas Snow

Never came that year, and yet
it came in other ways, remembering the light;
as porter suds frothing in the Garavogue
around a bridge, branches, a scuttled trolley.

It fell from lamps in Henry Street
illuminating tracer-lines of rain
and shoppers gripping rods of bright umbrellas
playing them like giant straining fish.

It shone as stars above the Sugar Loaf
lit up as cats’ eyes by the gaze
of a farmer, standing by a hillside gate
within the mercury lanes of Wicklow,

and as a candle in a small arched window –
but only some could see it – spirit
of a round tower, keeping vigil
for sleepers in the graves of Timahoe.

And when the sun emerged from night
snow came as seagulls swirled like bonfire ash
behind a tractor chugging
through slantwise fields near Baltimore.

It came as clouds descending through
the depths of the reflected stillness
of Bantry Bay, and as three harbour swans
turning their backs on the Atlantic;

and as sheets and pillowcases hung on lines
in Waterville, Bundoran and Elfin
by women biting clothes pegs, dreaming
of visitors arriving from the east.

And it was found as linen table-cloths
and drifts of icing smoothed on marzipan
in kitchens dimming into evening
in Desert Serges and Kilbree.

It gleamed as pure white circles of the host
for worshippers in churches lit at midnight
amid cities ablaze like fairgrounds
or villages as dark as silhouettes;

and it appeared in moon-insinuated waves
unrolling across Long Strand
rearing up like angels made of spray
roaring the word in syllables of breaking light

then sucking in their breath to whisper
It’s christmas, christmas, christmas ...