Hobart Nichols Jr, Winter

James Schuyler

	Dec. 28, 1974
	The plants against the light which shines in (it's four o'clock) right on my chair: I'm in my chair: are silhouettes, barely green, growing black as my eyes move right, right to where the sun is. I am blinded by a fiery circle: I can't see what I write. A man comes down iron stairs (I don't look up) and picks up brushes which, against a sonata of Scriabin's, rattle like wind in a bamboo clump. A wooden sound, and purposeful footsteps softened by a drop-cloth-covered floor. To be encubed in flaming splendor, one foot on a Chinese rug, while the mad emotive music tears at my heart. Rip it open: I want to cleanse it in an icy wind. And what kind of tripe is that? Still, last night I did wish— no, that's my business and I don't wish it now. "Your poems," a clunkhead said, "have grown more open." I don't want to be open, merely to say, to see and say, things as they are. That at my elbow there is a wicker table. Hortus Second says a book. The fields beyond the feeding sparrows are brown, palely brown yet with an inward glow like that of someone of a frank good nature whom you trust. I want to hear the music hanging in the air and drink my Coca-Cola. The sun is off me now, the sky begins to color up, the air in here is filled with wildly flying notes. Yes, the sun moves off to the right and prepares to sink, setting, beyond the dunes, an ocean on fire.

Today in 1843 – Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol goes on sale

Saint Lucy's Day

Lussinatta, the Lussi Night, was December 13. Then Lussi, a female being with evil traits, like a female demon or witch, was riding through the air with her followers, called Lussiferda. This itself might be an echo of the myth of the Wild Hunt, called Oskoreia in Scandinavia, found across Northern, Western and Central Europe.
Between Lussi Night and Yule, trolls and evil spirits, in some accounts also the spirits of the dead, were thought to be active outside. It was particularly dangerous to be out during Lussi Night. Children who had done mischief had to take special care, since Lussi could come down through the chimney and take them away, and certain tasks of work in the preparation for Yule had to be finished, or else the Lussi would come to punish the household. The tradition of Lussevaka – to stay awake through the Lussinatt to guard oneself and the household against evil, has found a modern form through throwing parties until daybreak. Another company of spirits might come riding through the night around Yule itself, journeying through the air, over land and water.

The Peaceable Kingdom by Fritz Eichenberg

To You, By Kenneth Koch

I love you as a sheriff searches for a walnut

That will solve a murder case unsolved for years

Because the murderer left it in the snow beside a window

Through which he saw her head, connecting with

Her shoulders by a neck, and laid a red

Roof in her heart. For this we live a thousand years;

For this we love, and we live because we love, we are not

Inside a bottle, thank goodness! I love you as a

Kid searches for a goat; I am crazier than shirttails

In the wind, when you’re near, a wind that blows from

The big blue sea, so shiny so deep and so unlike us;

I think I am bicycling across an Africa of green and white fields

Always, to be near you, even in my heart

When I’m awake, which swims, and also I believe that you

Are trustworthy as the sidewalk which leads me to

The place where I again think of you, a new

Harmony of thoughts! I love you as the sunlight leads the prow

Of a ship which sails

From Hartford to Miami, and I love you

Best at dawn, when even before I am awake the sun

Receives me in the questions which you always pose.