Lowell, Robert: New Year’s Day
New Year’s Day (English)Again and then again . . . the year is born To ice and death, and it will never do To skulk behind storm-windows by the stove To hear the postgirl sounding her French horn When the thin tidal ice is wearing through. Here is the understanding not to love Our neighbor, or tomorrow that will sieve Our resolutions. While we live, we live
To snuff the smoke of victims. In the snow The kitten heaved its hindlegs, as if fouled, And died. We bent it in a Christmas box And scattered blazing weeds to scare the crow Until the snake-tailed sea-winds coughed and howled For alms outside the church whose double locks Wait for St. Peter, the distorted key. Under St. Peter's bell the parish sea
Swells with its smelt into the burlap shack Where Joseph plucks his hand-lines like a harp, And hears the fearful Puer natus est Of Circumcision, and relives the wrack And howls of Jesus whom he holds. How sharp The burden of the Law before the beast: Time and the grindstone and the knife of God. The Child is born in blood, O child of blood.
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TranslationsHungarianÚjév napja Jánosy István |