two semi-famous poems

 Not quite up to a real post today; still sad about my friend's pending diagnosis and also last night I found out from my mom that my brother and sister-in-law have likely been exposed to COVID (the same old story: they were hanging out with friends they THOUGHT were being careful, but one set of the friends apparently was not as careful, and they tested positive). I'm simultaneously sad and furious about it. And it also tells me, I guess, that I have to go on in this shadowy half-life of very limited human contact for....I don't know, maybe another year now? They are emphasizing how the vaccine won't end it and we'll still have to mask and distance for a while and I just want to lie down on the floor and not get up for a long time because I am so lonesome and so tired.

But anyway. I always liked Sir John Betjeman's poem "Christmas," with its nostalgic tone that turns reverent at the end:

And I can't find an audio of anyone reading it, but I also like Edward Arlington Robinson's (yes, that Robinson, the one who wrote "Richard Cory") "A Christmas Sonnet (for one in Doubt)"

(And I admit, this year: I have been somewhat been wrestling with doubt, mainly as I stare into the abyss of my realization that yes, in fact, some day I am going to die, and I don't WANT to, I don't WANT that to happen, and I also don't WANT to lose other people I love)

But I like this poem, especially the comment about love and brotherhood being as far off as ever. Every year I hope, I hope that somehow things will get better, that people will wake up and start treating one another with more love, but I am always disappointed.

A Christmas Sonnet
For One in Doubt

By Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)

While you that in your sorrow disavow
Service and hope, see love and brotherhood
Far off as ever, it will do no good
For you to wear his thorns upon your brow
For doubt of him. And should you question how
To serve him best, he might say, if he could
“Whether or not the cross was made of wood
Where on you mailed me, is no matter now.”

Though other saviors have in older lore
A Legend, and for older gods have died –
Though death may wear the crown it always wore
And ignorance be still the sword of pride –
Something is here that was not here before,
And strangely has not yet been crucified.