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Morning (a sonnet)

In which I manage to say about Christmas a lot of the stuff that I most want to say about Christmas...


MORNING
It was dark before the dawn; the night
Reached back as far as memory, made a myth
Of day, a wish-fulfilment dream of light,
And shadows, all, of kin and ken and kith.
We went on shadow foot, each step more slow;
We climbed the hill and turned, and strained our eyes
To see the shadow valley sunk below
The creeping pallor of the blank slate skies.
No chirping chorus prophesied the break
Of morning; all those brooding mutterers
Were silenced by the cold. But in the wake
Of wind, the fallen leaves made susurrus
Of something sought, and fled, and close at hand,
That darkness cannot overcome, nor understand. 
Carolyn Whitnall, December 2013.


NOTES
  1. Isaiah 8-9 "And when they say to you, “Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,” should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living? To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn." (8v19-20); "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone." (9v2)
  2. The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud, 1913.
  3. Psalm 23 "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..." (v4a)
  4. Paradise Lost, John Milton, 1667.
  5. The Journey of the Magi, T. S. Eliot, 1927.
  6. John 3 "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." (v8); "...the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil." (v19b)
  7. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson, 2004. "I have loved the word 'susurrus' for a long time..." (p52) (And I have loved it ever since that sentence...)
  8. Matthew 6 "But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." (v33)
  9. Mark 1 "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel." (v15) 
  10. John 1 "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." (v5); "The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him." (v9-10)
  11. κατέλαβεν
  12. Edited to add (2019): On Twitter during Advent last year Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney called attention to some of the problematic ways in which “light versus dark” imagery in the Bible gets associated with a “good versus evil” paradigm without proper understanding or critique of the role that such binaries have played in producing and perpetuating racism. She also has a sermon transcript on this topic on her website. I would like to think that my poem steers clear of any such reductive associations to begin with, but I am not so skilful a poet that I can be sure other people will read it as I do. And either way, I am glad of the opportunity to point people towards a scholar whose work has taught me so much.

[Thumbnail image CC by chrisowenrichards on Flickr]
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