Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve

Almost all is ruin –
the Mozart fugue that fails
its promise
of deliberate consolation,

the unending ticker and swish
of a sprinkler outside,
and the roads angry
with traffic

in last-minute errands
as the year breaks again,
breaks again
into its manifold terrors –

Christmas Eve and its solitudes
for the holy and the damned;
and the thin disguise the lonely wear
as if shirked by God

or shirked by friends
who vanish to gods
in small towns
where the earth’s bounty lies:

jungle, waterfall, placid lake.
But the earth is weary.
The thin earth
will admit it’s lonely

as it makes the jagged cliff its own,
the arid plain,
its bare spaces
where some still go.

 

(from Groundwork, Kwela/Snailpress, 2012)

Advertisement