Winter Solstice

My alarm goes off at 5.15am and I rise at 5.30am each weekday. This morning the BBC 5.30 news began with the announcement that it was the exact time of the start of the Winter Solstice. It's all downhill from here until Spring and I always see it as a turning point in the year. People observe this time of year in many different ways. I tend to reflect on the year that has passed and the season to come. This poem seems to encapsulate for me what is happening during this time. The poet is Welshman, Vernon Watkins, a one-time friend of Dylan Thomas, and a man who was being considered as Poet Laureate at the time of his death in the 1960's. Not widely read these days so I'd like to change that, if only for today. The poem is called 'Great Night's Returning':

Great night's returning, midnight's constellations

Gather from groundfrost that unnatural brilliance.

Night now transfigures, walking in the starred ways,

Tears for the living.

Earth now takes back the secret of her changes.

All the wood's dropped leaves listen to your footfall.

Night has no tears, no sound among the branches;

Stopped is the swift stream.

Spirits were joined when hazel leaves were falling.

Then the stream hurrying told of separation

This is the fire's world, and the voice of Autumn

Stilled by the death-wand.

Under your heels the icy breath of Winter

Hardens all roots. The Leonids are flying.

Now the crisp stars, the circle of beginning;

Death, birth, united.

Nothing declines here. Energy is fire-born.

Twigs catch like stars or serve for your divining;

Lean down and hear the subterranean water

Crossed by the quick dead.

Now the soul knows the fire that first composed it

Sinks not with time but is renewed hereafter.

Death cannot steal the light which love has kindled

Nor the years change it.