Tonight the wind gnaws with teeth of glass <br />The jackdaw shivers in caged branches of iron <br />The stars have talons <br />There is hunger in the mouth of vole and badger <br />Silver agonies of breath in the nostril of the fox <br />Ice on the rabbit’s paw <br />Tonight has no moon, no food for the pilgrim <br />The fruit tree is bare, the rose bush a thorn <br />And the ground is bitter with stones <br />But the mole sleeps and the hedgehog lies curled in a womb of leaves <br />And the bean and the wheat seed hug their germs in the earth <br />And a stream moves under the ice <br />Tonight there is no moon <br />But a star opens like a trumpet over the dead <br />And tonight in a nest of ruins the blessed babe is laid <br />And the fir tree warms to a bloom of candles <br />And the child lights his lantern and stares at his tinsel toy <br />And our hearts and hearths smoulder with live ashes <br />In the blood of our grief the cold earth is suckled <br />In our agony the womb convulses its seed <br />And in the last cry of anguish <br />The child’s first breath is born<br /><br />Laurie Lee<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/winter-poem-3/
