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Laurie Lee - Christmas Landscape
Work rating: Medium

	Tonight the wind gnaws
	With teeth of glass,
	The jackdaw shivers
	In caged branches of iron,
	The stars have talons.

	There is hunger in the mouth
	Of vole and badger,
	Silver agonies of breath
	In the nostril of the fox,
	Ice on the rabbit’s paw.

	Tonight has no moon,
	No food for the pilgrim;
	The fruit tree is bare,
	The rose bush a thorn
	And the ground is bitter with stones.

	But the mole sleeps, and the hedgehog
	Lies curled in a womb of leaves,
	The bean and the wheat-seed
	Hug their germs in the earth
	And the stream moves under the ice.

	Tonight there is no moon,
	But a new star opens
	Like a silver trumpet over the dead.
	Tonight in a nest of ruins
	The blessed babe is laid.
	
	And the fir tree warms to a bloom of candles,
	And the child lights his lantern,
	Stares at his tinselled toy;
	And our hearts and hearths
	Smoulder with live ashes.

	In the blood of our grief
	The cold earth is suckled,
	In our agony the womb
	Convulses its seed;
	In the first cry of anguish
	The child’s first breath is born.
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