as a Christmas poem ...

KENNETH REXROTH
A SWORD IN A CLOUD OF LIGHT

Your hand in mine, we walk out
To watch the Christmas Eve crowds
On Fillmore Street, the Negro
District. The night is thick with
Frost. The people hurry, wreathed
In their smoky breaths. Before
The shop windows the children
Jump up and down with spangled
Eyes. Santa Clauses ring bells.
Cars stall and honk. Street cars clang.
Loud speakers on the lampposts
Sing carols, on juke boxes
In the bars Louis Armstrong
Plays White Christmas. In the joints
The girls strip and grind and bump
To Jingle Bells. Overhead
The neon signs scribble and
Erase and scribble again
Messages of avarice,
Joy, fear, hygiene, and the proud
Names of the middle classes.
The moon beams like a pudding.
We stop at the main corner
And look up, diagonally
Across, at the rising moon,
And the solemn, orderly
Vast winter constellations.
You say, “There’s Orion!”
The most beautiful object
Either of us will ever
Know in the world or in life
Stands in the moonlit empty
Heavens, over the swarming
Men, women, and children, black
And white, joyous and greedy,
Evil and good, buyer and
Seller, master and victim.
Like some immense theorem.
Which, if once solved would forever
Solve the mystery and pain
Under the bells and spangles.
There he is, the man of the
Night before Christmas, spread out
On the sky like a true god
In whom it would only be
Necessary to believe
A little. I am fifty
And you are five. It would do
No good to say this and it
May do no good to write it.
Believe in Orion. Believe
In the night, the moon, the crowded
Earth. Believe in Christmas and
Birthdays and Easter rabbits.
Believe in all those fugitive
Compounds of nature, all doomed
To waste away and go out.
Always be true to these things.
They are all there is. Never
Give up this savage religion
For the blood-drenched civilized
Abstractions of the rascals
Who live by killing you and me.

from sequence “The Lights in the Sky Are Stars”, The Collected Shorter Poems (New Directions, 1966)
1955

Meeting: November 2nd

Our third meeting will be on Wednesday November 2, at 7.30, upstairs at Waterstone’s in the Coffee Bar. Patrick Walker is on holiday, but Sasha will be on the shop front door from some time after 7.00.

Last month’s meeting worked very well – I felt (and I think others did also) that we gelled very well as a group. People read out poems they had written or that were important to them, and there was genuine discussion in response to this. It was a very positive beginning.

It seemed a good idea to continue with this at the November meeting, and hopefully build further. So, as I said last time, “we should bring along and be prepared to read a couple of poems, either we have written, or that we like strongly, or that we feel have influenced us. I hope we can share these, with people prepared to say something about what they read, and others able also to respond. (Though don’t anyone feel forced to participate more than they want!)”

And we really must plan what we can do in subsequent meetings, so we can work out a programme for future meetings. Suggestions of further poets to invite would be useful, and any other activities/events.

I will bring Membership Cards with me – these will give a 10% reduction in poetry books at the Bishops Stortford Waterstone’s. If you can’t make the next meeting, do tell me, and I’ll post one to you. I will need to charge for wine at the meeting (Waterstone’s, bless them, can run to soft drinks for us), so will ask for a voluntary contribution per glass of wine. We’ll also need to think if we invite poets of a similar system of voluntary contribution to give some money for expenses, even payment.