This poem was commissioned for Christmas about a decade ago, for the Sunday Express by its then-editor Martin Townsend. He blithely said to me ,"Write us a nice long poem about Winter, Mart." It took me a good few days. Probably one of my best ever.
THE WINTER
After western gales have done
Heaved the grey autumnal seas
Weakened an anaemic sun
Anaesthetised the bees
Drained the sap from all the trees
Substituted golds for greens
Covered summer's murder scenes
With a distant roll of drums
Winter comes, winter comes.
Like a surgeon to his rounds
Down a chilly corridor
Taciturn, he beats the bounds
Squeaky shoes upon the floor
Murmuring behind each screen
While the patient pale in bed
Strains to overhear what's said
Firmly then, but without fuss
Winter enters thus.
When the slate is clean at dawn
And at first, the frost seems light
Steaming off each sunlit lawn
Like a mistress taking flight
From a chamber not yet hers
Now the night draws in so early
And the north-east wind is surly
As the mask begins to slip
Winter cracks its whip.
Down the ginnels winter slips
Into country towns it knows
Paperboys blow fingertips
Stood on doorsteps, freezing toes
Kicking empty bottles over
Setting yappy terriers off
Then the cancerous buses cough
And it rains in panel pins
So a winter day begins
Under down-lands to the south
Where the chalkhill horses sleep
Trains speed from a tunnel mouth
Scattering crows and shaking sheep
On the windy downs, the dewponds
High above the Pilgrims Way
Keep their icy glaze all day
Neolithic farmers knew them;
Winter's wading through them.
Whistling near a lonely bandstand
Starching leaf-mould in the park
Greeting in an empty grandstand
Spectral sportsmen in the dark
But the boating pond is frozen
And the punts are put away
For some far-off summer day
In the brown and broken nettles
Winter settles, winter settles.
Yet, it makes its reparations
In the rose-gold frosty air
Smoky apple wood for perfume
Worn as if for some affair
Mulled in inglenooks with liquor
Dalliances suit the season
Need we look for any reason
Huddled by a crackling fire?
Winter kindles such desire
Even the imperious City
Peers out at the falling snow
While alarms shriek out a ditty
To deserted streets below:
“Wi-wi-wi-wi-we are waiting.
With our wilted mistletoe
Seasonal trading has been slow
Will no one invest in kisses?
What a waste of money this is.”
But the cabs will still be queueing
Passing Oxford Street's fantasia
And the chestnuts will be doing
In nostalgia's golden brazier
Time re-screens the past in sepia
For the wistful eyes of men
Did we not keep Christmas then
Better, in our long-lost youth?
Christmas of the past was cosy
Only winter knows that truth.
We forget the days more fraught
In the pub the world looks rosy
Filtered through a glass of port
Red as berries on the holly
It's the spirit we recall.
Christmas in the Baron's Hall
Loud with stories and charades
Winter lives on Christmas cards:
Coaching inns and horns hallooing
Horses, hounds, a stovepipe hat
Parcels, puddings, Bishop brewing
Was a Christmas ever that?
Crone in rags, her faggot bundle
Struggling in a snowy lane
Here such icons will remain
Hung in halls of old Decembers
Visions dancing in the embers.
How will winter wear its beauty?
Like the widow of an earl
Elegantly at her duty
Pale as a grieving girl
As the snowflakes fall at midnight
Cold confetti on her head
Ah, the year, the old year's dead
Underneath its snowy bier
Fields and farmland disappear
Sleep delicious, sleep profound
Swansdown swathes the woodland floor
Summer's somewhere underground
Sleeping depths un-plumbed before
While the spring remains in exile
Like a prince, long overseas
Not a whisper of a breeze
Nor a captain at the helm
Can return him to his realm
Daylight breaks on snowfall steady.
Silent swirling swarms of bees
Hide the huntsman, horse at ready
Waiting in a copse of trees
Flushed from cover comes the quarry
Muted horn, a creature calling
Trampled snow, the body falling
Winter goes in for the kill
Now the conquered land is still.
How does winter end its reign?
Like a guest who stays and stays
Leaves but then returns again
Without notice – and for days
Grudgingly, curmudgeonly,
In a harsh persistent wind
Chillblained feet and broken-skinned
Influenza on his breath
Winter dies a drawn-out death
But the earth will wake, the hedges
Turn to luminescent green
Wildfowl jostles in the sedges
While a buttery sun is seen
Warming up the frosty furrows
Watched in rolling early mist
Brandishing a bony fist
Winter glowers vainly back
Melting on the muddy track.
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Pic by Felix Theollier
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