Louis Groarke: ‘Oak Leaves at Christmas Time’

Oak Leaves at Christmas Time

Puis çà, puis là, comme le vent varie,
A son plaisir sans cesser nous charrie,
(The wind, gleefully, pushing us, changing its mind
Forwards and backwards, all of the time.)
—François Villon, “La Ballade des pendus”
(The Ballad of the Hanged Men)

Oak leaves are the last to go
They hang from branches in the snow.
In tempest tossed, they feckless swing
And flap forlorn like dead bird-wings.

Like Villon’s dead men in a row
These lifeless leaves blow to-and-fro;
To icy twigs they hopeless cling,
Their fingers frozen as they swing.

Hung out to dry, in winter’s noose,
They dangle there, pried half-loose.
Like shingles slapping on a worn-out shed,
They clatter loudly overhead.

Through winter’s frozen charnel house,
The coyote stalks the famished grouse.
The pond ice breaks like broken bones,
Beneath the ground, seeds sleep like stones.

The wind is softer now; it only sighs.
Through shifting snow, deer struggle by.
Winter makes her harsh demands;
The leaves clap softly like dead hands.

As evening solstice marks the time,
The wind, indifferent, plays these chimes.
An old man asks where summer’s gone,
The highway traffic hurries on.

A Christmas jingle, in a tired key,
Weaves faintly through the sleeping trees.
No promise here of distant spring
That time unfolding may yet bring.

But ages past, in dead of night,
In straw and cold and firelight.
From linen flesh, unfurrowed fields,
A crying child, the Godhead yields.

A babe brought forth in sudden haste;
A ravished bride, completely chaste.
In swaddled clothes, by barnyard beasts,
The most is born the very least.

Where men were ruled by Roman sword,
The midwife cuts the fresh red cord.
Old Herod hails the bloody birth
As God bends o’er the brooding earth.

Louis Groarke