X-mas

A Christmas Song

by Norman Williams

Norman Williams

Christmas is coming. The goose is getting fat

                        Please put a penny in the old man’s hat.

                        If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do.

                        If you haven’t got a ha’penny, Gold bless you.

 

Tonight the wide, wet flakes of snow

Drift down like Christmas suicides,

Layering the eaves and boughs until

The landscape seems transformed, as from

A night of talk or love. I’ve come

From cankered ports and railroad hubs

To winter in a northern state:

Three months of wind and little light.

Wood split, flue cleaned, and ashes hauled,

I am now proof against the cold

And make a place before the stove.

Mired fast in middle age, possessed

Of staved-in barn and brambled lot,

I think of that fierce-minded woman

Whom I loved, painting in a small,

Unheated room, or of a friend,

Sharp-ribbed from poverty, who framed

And fitted out his house by hand

And writes each night by kerosene.

I think, that is, of others who

Withdrew from commerce and the world

To work for joy instead of gain.

O would that I could gather them

This Yuletide, and shower them with coins.

“A Christmas Song” from Poetry Foundation.

This site contains a lot of modernist poetry from the 30′s and later, for instance Basil Bunting. There are poems on such “unpoetic” themes as poverty, the world of finance, work, unemployment, money, etc.  The Guardian calls attention to  Bunting and other poets who have written on the theme of poverty.

 

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