Another day the earth was destined to end passes by.
It goes by faster than other days, which is why I'm sat typing earlier the next
day, by GMT time. But it's not faster than every day. It was the solstice day.
The tipping point. There are always times when it seems the world ends. This
poem by John Donne has always evoked for me that sense of personal doom, so
sadly, beautifully linked with the winter pulse:
'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself
unmasks;
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.
Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next
spring;
For
I am every dead thing,
In
whom Love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean
emptiness;
He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death: things
which are not.
All others, from all things, draw all
that's good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they
being have;
I,
by Love's limbec, am the grave
Of
all that's nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so
Drown'd the whole world, us two; oft did
we grow
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us
carcasses.
But I am by her death (which word wrongs
her)
Of the first nothing the elixir grown;
Were
I a man, that I were one
I
needs must know; I should prefer,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea
stones detest,
And love; all, all some properties
invest;
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light and body must be
here.
But I am none; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser
sun
At
this time to the Goat is run
To
fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all;
Since she enjoys her long night's
festival,
Let me prepare towards her, and let me
call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since
this
Both the year's, and the day's deep
midnight is.'
And here I am, at the day's deep midnight, at my front room table: Mr is
watching Fringe
and handing me glasses of wine he has brewed. Rain hits the window glass. The
morning will be that fraction earlier. The night, a fraction further.
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