Cut the heat

From The Garden by H.D. [aka bisexual avant-garde modernist poet Hilda Doolittle]:

O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air -
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.

Cut the heat -
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.

Heatwave or no heatwave, it's the Mid-summer Solstice, the longest day, Festa Junina, Sommersonnenwende, Uttarayana, Saint John's Eve, Majstång, Litha...

...whatever you call it, the nights start drawing in from here on, folks!

Ghost-grey

"The days are short,
The sun a spark,
Hung thin between
The dark and dark."
- John Updike


Ghost-grey the fall of night.
Ice-bound the lane,
Lone in the dying light
Flits he again;

Lurking where shadows steal.
Perched in his coat of blood,
Man’s homestead at his heel.
Death-still the wood.

Odd restless child; it's dark;
All wings are flown
But this one wizard’s - hark!
Stone clapped on stone!

Changeling and solitary.
Secret and sharp and small,
Flits he from tree to tree,
Calling on all.
- Walter De La Mere, The Robin


It is Yule, Montol, Brumalia, Lohri, Yalda, Koliada, Dongzhi, Midwinter's Day [whatever you choose to call it], the Winter Solstice - the longest night - today.

Good news, however - the days get longer from here on!

Roll on Spring...

Beaming forth

I love to see the summer beaming forth
And white wool sack clouds sailing to the north
I love to see the wild flowers come again
And mare blobs stain with gold the meadow drain
And water lilies whiten on the floods
Where reed clumps rustle like a wind shook wood
Where from her hiding place the Moor Hen pushes
And seeks her flag nest floating in bull rushes
I like the willow leaning half way o’er
The clear deep lake to stand upon its shore
I love the hay grass when the flower head swings
To summer winds and insects happy wings
That sport about the meadow the bright day
And see bright beetles in the clear lake play
- John Clare (1793-1864)

The festival of Fors Fortuna, Ukon juhla, Sommersonnenwende, Klidonas, Enyovden, Kresna noč, Sankthansaften, Drăgaica, Midsommar, Lithe, Midsummer Day - whatever you call it, it's the Summer Solstice, the longest day.

It's all downhill from here, dear reader...

The weakening eye of day

I leant upon a coppice gate,
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to me
The Century’s corpse outleant,
Its crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind its death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead,
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited.
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
With blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew,
And I was unaware.

- Thomas Hardy

Midwinter, the Shortest Day, the Longest Night, Dongzhi, Makara Sankranti, Yaldā, Yule - it's the Winter Solstice! Look on the bright side - it's all uphill from now on, and Spring will be here before we know it...

The Summer in his pride

[click to enlarge]

To Summer
by William Blake

O Thou who passest thro’ our vallies in
Thy strength, curb thy fierce steeds, allay the heat
That flames from their large nostrils! thou, O Summer,
Oft pitched’st here thy golden tent, and oft
Beneath our oaks hast slept, while we beheld
With joy, thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair.

Beneath our thickest shades we oft have heard
Thy voice, when noon upon his fervid car
Rode o’er the deep of heaven; beside our springs
Sit down, and in our mossy vallies, on
Some bank beside a river clear, throw thy
Silk draperies off, and rush into the stream:
Our vallies love the Summer in his pride.

Our bards are fam’d who strike the silver wire:
Our youth are bolder than the southern swains:
Our maidens fairer in the sprightly dance:
We lack not songs, nor instruments of joy,
Nor echoes sweet, nor waters clear as heaven,
Nor laurel wreaths against the sultry heat.

It's Midsummer's Day, the Summer Solstice.

Nights start drawing in from this point on, dear reader.

Sigh.

The dark time of the year

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart’s heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year.
- T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

Montol, Brumalia, Lohri, Yalda, Koliada, Dongzhi, Mid-winter's Day, whatever you call it, the Winter Solstice - the longest night - is today.

Roll on Spring...

Sun refulgent

A Summer Invocation
By Walt Whitman

Thou orb aloft full dazzling,
Flooding with sheeny light the grey beach sand;
Thou sibilant near sea, with vistas far, and foam,
And tawny streaks and shades, and spreading blue;
Before I sing the rest, O sun refulgent,
My special word to thee.

Hear me, illustrious!
Thy lover me - for always I have loved thee,
Even as basking babe - then happy boy alone by some wood edge - thy
touching distant beams enough,
Or man matured, or young or old - as now to thee I launch my invocation.
(Thou canst not with thy dumbness me deceive.
I know before the fitting man all Nature yields.
Though answering not in words, the skies, trees, hear his voice - and thou,
O sun,
As for thy throes, thy perturbations, sudden breaks and shafts of flame gigantic,
I understand them - I know those flames, those perturbations well.)

Thou that with fructifying heat and light,
O'er myriad forms - o'er lands and waters, North and South,
O'er Mississippi's endless course, o'er Texas' grassy plains, Kanada's woods,
O'er all the globe, that turns its face to thee, shining in space,
Thou that impartially enfoldest all - not only continents, seas,
Thou that to grapes and weeds and little wild flowers givest so liberally,
Shed, shed thyself on mine and me - mellow these lines.
Fuse thyself here - with but a fleeting ray out of thy million millions,

Strike through this chant.
Nor only launch thy subtle dazzle and thy strength for this;
Prepare the later afternoon of me myself - prepare my lengthening shadows.
Prepare my starry nights.

It's the Mid-summer Solstice, the longest day, Festa Junina, Sommersonnenwende, Uttarayana, Saint John's Eve, Majstång, Litha...

...whatever you call it, the nights start drawing in from here on, folks!

Icy spears

I have remembered when the winter came,
High in my chamber in the frosty nights,
When in the still light of the cheerful moon,
On the every twig and rail and jutting spout,
The icy spears were adding to their length
Against the arrows of the coming sun

- from Winter Memories by Henry David Thoreau.

Yes, it's Midwinter's Day, the Winter Solstice, the longest night... everything gets better and brighter from this point on.

Or so they say.

Funny to observe?

From the Bilingual by Music website:

Midsummer's Day is one of the most important holidays of the year in Sweden, and probably the most uniquely Swedish in the way it is celebrated.

Raising and dancing around a midsommarstång pole is an activity that attracts families and many others. Before the maypole is raised, greens and flowers are collected and used to cover the entire pole. People dancing around the pole listen to traditional music and sing songs associated with the holiday. Some wear traditional folk costumes or crowns made of wild springs and wildflowers on their heads.

Music plays a big part at the Midsummer celebrations. The most famous song sung when dancing around the maypole is Små grodorna [which in English is “Little frogs”].

[Click here for footage of that.]

The melody originates from a military march from the French revolution La Chanson de l’Oignon (“The onion song”),with the chorus “Au pas, camarade, au pas camarade / au pas, au pas, au pas!” (“In step, comrade”). The enemies of the French at the time, the British, changed the text with condescending irony to “Au pas, grenouilles!” (“In step, little frogs”).

Små grodorna in Swedish:

Små grodorna, små grodorna är lustiga att se.
Små grodorna, små grodorna är lustiga att se.
Ej öron, ej öron, ej svansar hava de.
Ej öron, ej öron, ej svansar hava de.
Kou ack ack ack, kou ack ack ack,
kou ack ack ack ack kaa.
Kou ack ack ack, kou ack ack ack,
kou ack ack ack ack kaa.

English version (direct translation):

The little frogs, the little frogs are funny to observe.
The little frogs, the little frogs are funny to observe.
No ears, no ears, no tails do they possess.
No ears, no ears, no tails do they possess.
Kou ack ack ack, kou ack ack ack,
kou ack ack ack ack kaa.
Kou ack ack ack, kou ack ack ack,
kou ack ack ack ack kaa.

How bizarre.

However one chooses to celebrate, it is worth doing - for after today, the nights start drawing in once more...

Summer solstice/Mid-Summer

Look at winter with winter eyes

Winter Eyes
by Douglas Florian

Look at winter
With winter eyes
As smoke curls from rooftops
To clear cobalt skies.

Breathe in winter
Past winter nose:
The sweet scent of black birch
Where velvet moss grows.
Walk through winter
With winter feet
On crackling ice
Or sloshy wet sleet.

Look at winter
With winter eyes:
The rustling of oak leaves
As spring slowly nears.

Oh, how I love that last thought - for today is indeed the nadir of the year; the longest night - and everything from here on in will be getting lighter again...

Midwinter's Day aka the Winter Solstice.

The year's threshold

"This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year's threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath." - Margaret Atwood

Celebrate the light, dear reader - for tomorrow, the nights start drawing in again...

Summer solstice/Mid-Summer

The breath of night like death did flow beneath the sinking moon

Lines: The cold earth slept below
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The cold earth slept below;
Above the cold sky shone;
And all around,
With a chilling sound,
From caves of ice and fields of snow
The breath of night like death did flow
Beneath the sinking moon.

The wintry hedge was black;
The green grass was not seen;
The birds did rest
On the bare thorn’s breast,
Whose roots, beside the pathway track,
Had bound their folds o’er many a crack
Which the frost had made between.

Thine eyes glow’d in the glare
Of the moon’s dying light;
As a fen-fire’s beam
On a sluggish stream
Gleams dimly - so the moon shone there,
And it yellow’d the strings of thy tangled hair,
That shook in the wind of night.

The moon made thy lips pale, beloved;
The wind made thy bosom chill;
The night did shed
On thy dear head
Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
Might visit thee at will.

It's Midwinter's Day again. The longest night of them all.

However, that means that it is uphill all the way from here on - and Spring will be here before we know it...

Dance our ringlets to the whistling wind

"...since the middle summer's spring,
Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,
By paved fountain or by rushy brook,
Or in the beached margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind."

"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight."

- extracts from A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

It's Midsummer's Day, the Summer Solstice.

Nights start drawing in from this point on, dear reader.

Sob.

A magical thing

"I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December
A magical thing
And sweet to remember.

'We are nearer to Spring
Than we were in September,'
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December."
- Oliver Herford

It's Midwinter's Day, folks - the solstice, the shortest day.

Spring is indeed just around the corner; from tomorrow the days get longer...

The weight of flowers

The springy twigs arch over walls and beds
Of lilac buddleia, and the long flower-heads
Run down the air like valleys. Not by force
But weight, the flowers of summer bend our course.
- E.J. Scovell

It's Midsummer's Day, the solstice, the longest day. Enjoy it!



Downhill all the way from here, dear reader....

Sing, heigh-ho!

Blow, blow, thou winter wind
by William Shakespeare

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That does not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remembered not.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

It is Midwinter's Day; the Winter solstice; the longest night.

It all gets better from here. Spring is just around the corner...

It's Mid-Summer...

...and it's the fifth day in a row with temperatures above 30C!

Don't forget your fan!!









The Language of Fans

Summer solstice

Light squibs

The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
The world's whole sap is sunk;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr'd; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compar'd with me, who am their epitaph.
- John Donne

Winter Solstice - the longest night - is today.

Roll on Spring...

Clust’ring Summer?

The narrow bud opens her beauties to
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,
Till clust’ring Summer breaks forth into singing,
And feather’d clouds strew flowers round her head.
– William Blake

It's the Summer Solstice, dears! Midsummer's Day.

All downhill from here on, I'm afraid...

See our little lives go past

The Longest Night Of The Year
Mary Chapin Carpenter
They say that spring will come again--
No one knows exactly when.
Still the sun's a long lost friend
On the longest night of the year.

We stare into the firelight
While December beats outside
Where the darkest hearts reside
On the longest night of the year

So keep me safe and hold me tight
Let the candle burn all night
Tomorrow welcome back the night
It was longest night of the year

I used to think the world was small
Bright and shining like a ball
Seems I don't know much at all
On the longest night of the year

We press our faces to the glass
And see our little lives go past
Wave to shadows that we cast
On the longest night of the year

...It's uphill from here on!*

Winter Solstice

*From 4.38am tomorrow, to be precise