What a strange time is this.
Now, in these dark days,
We wait. We celebrate.
Down through the dark centuries,
Through the sadness and sickness,
Through the wars and rumours of wars,
Through the mists, darkly,
We wait. We celebrate.
As the darkness pushes in,
Creeping up the clockface,
The cold monster eating the daylight;
We wonder, in our deep cores,
If each day will even dawn.
But:
Into this dark season of despair
We plant a small seed of hope.
We celebrate the turning of the tide,
Which is both the lowest ebb and
The beginning of the return of
The sun into his daylight kingdom.
At first, nothing seems to have changed;
It is still, seemingly, the darkest hour,
The lowest, hopeless moments.
After all, it is only a tiny seed,
An obscure, rural birth.
And yet, and yet, AH! And yet!
The tide HAS turned, the clock is ticking,
The darkness slowly driven back
By the kingdom of daylight,
Dark's defeat made inevitable though
Still invisible in this dismal chill.
So we wait,
And we celebrate,
Rejoicing in the beginning
Of the end;
We celebrate, we anticipate
The soon-sprouting seed
Beneath the bare soil.
December 2006
