Poems for St Lucy's Day

Saint Lucie's Day

Midwinter comes and in the North,
the light denigrates into inky royal blues
so often tinged with dark grey
closing over us in squid-ink darkness.

There are lights there in the pitch-purpleness,
Sparkles of light coming and going
Some ever so long dead by millions of human years,
One perhaps a star that led the wise to find Wisdom itself!
They gaze at us in seeming coldness and we watch back,
hoping that something there will save us,
answer our deepest fears and calm them.

And does it? Can they bring the lux et tenebris,
the banishment of wrongs and righting of the good,
will they lay straight paths in the heavens for us to climb?
We cannot know, but we sense in light,
in hope, a sign of better horizons.
This our Lucy, light of martyrs, light of innocence and youth
does for us in bleak mid winter.
Her feast day gives us joy, a sparkle of human stars
On this planet loved by Christ, this dwelling place of God!

@Fr Robin Gibbons Dec MMXVII

Poem on Saint Lucie's Day by Thomas Merton

Lucy, whose day is in our darkest season,
(Although your name is full of light,)
We walkers in the murk and rain and flesh and sense,
Lost in the midnight of our dead world's winter solstice
Look for the fogs to open on your friendly star.

We have long since cut down the summer of our history;
Our cheerful towns have all gone out like fireflies in October.
The fields are flooded and the vines are bare:
How have our long days dwindled, and now the world is frozen!

Locked in the cold jails of our stubborn will,
Oh, hear the shovels growling in the gravel.
This is the way they'll make our beds forever,
Ours, whose Decembers have put out the sun:
Doors of whose souls are shut against the summertime!

Martyr, whose short day sees our winter and our Calvary,
Show us some light, who seem forsaken by the sky;
We have so dwelt in darkness that our eyes are screened
and dim,
And all but blinded by the weakest ray.
Hallow the vespers and December of our life,
O martyred Lucy:
Console our solstice with your friendly day.