Winter is icummen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm.
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.
Ancient Music
Ezra Pound
Our winter’s journey begins. Again.
Balmy, jasmine scented summer evenings have given way to etched white frozen blades of grass soldiering silently, impervious border guards to stark and ice specked walkways. Soon, heavy boots will trod upon those paths carrying swaddled family and friends bound for the warming hearths that beckon from our homes.
Must we wait until spring for renewal?
Unlike the bear who share our woods, we’ll not give in to hibernation, no matter how tempting. Look no further than the following pages for the kindling to spark raging fires that will warm you to your core. Share them with another and you’ll have twice the warmth to take the edge off the chill.
With this issue, we give particular emphasis and honor to the poet.
It has been the poet throughout history that has shown us winter for what it is; a mere interlude, a test of our will and a testament to our longing. Poets damned winter’s calamitous blizzards, cursed frostbitten toes and bemoaned the absence of life giving sun.
The poet foreshadowed man’s earliest astronomers, calming the worry of the citizenry that coexisted with the shortening of the day. Long before any formal study of astronomy had taken hold in ancient Greece, the poet and playwright Aeschylus, noted through his Watchman that both winter’s and summer’s alternative advances were foretold by the stars.
No less than the Bard himself shouted out to Old Man Winter, “Thy breath be rude” in, As You Like it. Yet he wrote prolifically during the gray season. He knew that in the final argument, winter’s fury was no match for the passage of the days then weeks that would bring in the bounty once again.
So sojourn forward we must. Into the cold. The blustery. We stride upon our lanes, our chins jutting into the steely and unrelenting north winds, telling winter, “Give us your best shot”.
Is there not beauty in December? Wonder in January? Will we find no nourishment in February? The Romans did after all make this the shortest month of them all, can we not endure it?
What was it if not the siren and heat of the fire in Wilhelm Muller’s work that Schubert heard in developing the song cycle that united the poet’s words with his own poetic, if not melancholic, voice the composer would lavish upon Winterreise?
Weihnachtsmarkt may serve to freeze the tears shed for last summer’s passing. Yet the splendor that is winter and the promise to follow will delight you with shiny baubles and bagatelles crafted to lift your spirit, warm your heart and your mood.
It is with the best wishes of the season that I give to you,
Danse Macabre XXX
Weihnachtsmarkt.
Sincèrement,
Michael J. Solender
guest éditeur,
♥ ♠ ♦ ♣
An Online Literary Magazine™