FIRST DAY OF DECEMBER

At ten in the morning, surfacing

from dreamless sleep to electric light

on the sofa in casual despair, I

go to make coffee and look out

of the kitchen window, at the white

snow and the black trees

and the dim red bricks and the gray clouds

and the mud on the ground

where snow finds its bleak apotheosis. I

turn on the radio, and

they are singing about Christmas

and advertising, offering that redemption

through gift giving without a cross

- such a strange revulsion it evokes,

this enforced cheerful happiness

in the voices repeating 'It is Christmas' -

while the landscape

etches itself to my mind with

all the devotion of an ear-worm

converted to sight.

01.12.2017