Unburied
tomorrow
from Christian metanarratives
the mid-winter solstice.
December 21;
the shortest day
over the longest night.
Two lovers
are by the Channel
divided
to different beds
to tongue tastes
to timed beats
to unfamiliar scents
as Yuletide days
burn twelfths to gray ash;
their bodies
are sea
cleaved.
Come!
cross the water
and release
with lively touch
tresses thick
and winter's dew,
unctuous upon the crag,
the timely solar orb
to stir the frozen ground
on our rocky shelves
and chopped bowels.
On 25th,
Christ's star is risen:
the king's light dispersed
in lengthening days
in opened flesh
in loosening chords untied
in sinews gnawed through
in desire's wanting hotly flayed!
60 seconds were daily added,
to when
in the 100 Year Gallery,
love to know,
would in solstice
ultimately lay.
For now as then,
our emboldened play
in days delayed
has been
love's lacerating torment!
Jan 1, 2019
Jan 1, 2019 at 12:05 AM UTC
Unburied
tomorrow
from Christian metanarratives
the mid-winter solstice.
December 21;
the shortest day
over the longest night.
Two lovers
are by the Channel
divided
to different beds
to tongue tastes
to timed beats
to unfamiliar scents
as Yuletide days
burn twelfths to gray ash;
their bodies
are sea
cleaved.
Come!
cross the water
and release
with lively touch
tresses thick
and winter's dew,
unctuous upon the crag,
the timely solar orb
to stir the frozen ground
on our rocky shelves
and chopped bowels.
On 25th,
Christ's star is risen:
the king's light dispersed
in lengthening days
in opened flesh
in loosening chords untied
in sinews gnawed through
in desire's wanting hotly flayed!
60 seconds were daily added,
to when
in the 100 Year Gallery,
love to know,
would in solstice
ultimately lay.
For now as then,
our emboldened play
in days delayed
has been
love's lacerating torment!
In this poem the Christmas period is informed by a BBC Radio 4 programme on the mid-winter solstice. Two events are conflated, a lover's yearning to be with his absent lover and the solstice drawing out the long nights and lengthening days.
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