December: Creative Platypus

December

Loving Christmas is easy
As a child;
You have to learn to hate it.
Business encroaches and
Seasons fall out of joint
The further finance forces you
From home.
Moloch always did hate children.

I tried to find the snow
That fell at Christmas
But it withered with the
Carols that Anglicans are
Too holier-than-thou to
Sing.
Or maybe it was just the
Commercialism Harvey blew
All the way to the windy side
of Thanksgiving.

There was no magic
In those eight lost years
When we hauled our own
Christmas trees from the
Jones' and set them up
Beneath the vault of a
Cathedral ceiling.
There was pain in every
Movement of the saw.

These words are blood upon
The snow.
They lead past the river to
Our exile.

Comments

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

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Seeing Beowulf Through Tolkien: The Platypus Reads Part CXCIX

After spending a few weeks wrestling with Tolkien's interpretation of Beowulf , I found myself sitting down and reading Seamus Heaney's translation of the text during a spare moment. I came to the place where Beowulf presents Hrothgar with the hilt of the ancient sword that slew Grendel's mother. Hrothgar looks down at the hilt with its ancient runes and carvings depicting the war between the giants and God and meditates on the fortunes of men. In a flash of insight, I thought: this is the whole poem! Let me explain. Tolkien believed that the genuine contribution of the Northern peoples to European culture was the theory of courage. The Northern heroes, at their best, were men who fought for order against chaos -a battle they knew they were doomed to lose. If they were true heroes, their souls would join the gods and aid them in the final battle against darkness and its monsters and again go down fighting, spitting in the face of the meaninglessness...

Platypus of Truth

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