A Christmas Song

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, God 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.