lovelessness walks through the world

 

Art by Andrew Maccara

December 16 is a date I always associate with getting out of school for the Christmas holidays ; somehow I remember it as that date from way back in first grade. What a joy it was then!

The garden is cut back for the winter; all those lovely flowers and bushes are sleeping under the soil.

Hopefully, so are many bumblebees and caterpillars.

Here's a really depressing but beautiful poem by Ingeborg Bachmann:

On the Plazas of the City at Christmas

"Silent night, holy

night, when the bough flies from the tree

and is hung everywhere, when

from tables the crusts fly,

when the gifts begin to tremble

because lovelessness walks through the world,

because it snarls at you, barks at you from the snow,

and the silver ribbons rip and the tinsel rustles silvery,

and the silver and gold, and a golden word

come to you on which you choke

because you have been sold and betrayed,

and because it does not suffice that for you

one is redeemed who once died."

-   Ingeborg Bachmann, On the Plazas of the City at Christmas

    Translated by Peter Filkins

 

Artist:  Margaret Loxton