Winter’s Breath

Samuel Karl

Awarded Literary Submission: Second Place

This is a poem I wrote one night while sitting outside during a snowstorm. A central theme of my poetry is often the worry that technology and modern life has alienated us from authentic poetic expression, thus the telling lines: “I realize that physics offers me no power! / That biology and politics make me so dour!” I also wanted to make it clear that the modern age is not only separated from authentic poetry, but that we’ve drifted on away from religious experience as well. Thus, we’re thrown into a challenging situation: technology gives us no fulfillment and so too religion offers no answers as well; however, I don’t see this as a bleak situation. Rather, the opposite is true. The modern life gives us more possibility to express different kinds of authentic experiences. This poem is a reflection on the historic movement of poetry across time and the accompanying philosophic reflections on it.

Winter’s breath bears down upon a lonely hermit What joy or pain for him, does great Zeus permit? Up to a calloused gravel grave, the traveler walks. The dead and the lost, do they too have poetry talks?

As I sit in this darkened sphere, with hazy blue smoke drifting slowly upwards, I ask myself, in a grieving way: “Poor souled fiend, are you not like the herds? Your soul begs and pines and weeps and smiles. Yet you, are you that soul who lives and beguiles?” Alas, I to myself speak true. Am I no more than an emoting hue? Does this beating heart have the tint of Blue? Does poetry, even once, compel me to do? Did machinery and clothes ever lead me to rue? Alas! My own thoughts drift onward, floating slowly up in the hazy evening chill. It’s wintertime, you see, And Zeus is off to Ethiopia for holiday And Jove is in the manger on a different day And my purse is clinking in a rather joyous way And business is on halt these months, and today! Today, O! I feel the bitter cold alongside me Wherein the fluttering of God and Economy Subside slowly with the pang of a chill upon my Spine and my feet weep in the frozen Earth. Today, poetry has welcomed me back unto her hearth And the wide blank sky offers me a pen to ink And hollow gilded books offer me nothing to think And the shallow heart of the Earth ceases beating And I, my own breast, commence to heating.

Oh! Wide and wise divinity, I feel as though there is no more enmity Between us two. At last! In this grave hour, I realize that physics offers me no power! That biology and politics make me so dour! Freed from these, I see the great wonder Of a world where poetry shows me her dower!

Blue the sky where flies Faust on a mantle. Though Zeus is gone, his here is torrential. Oh! Power expressed at last. Zeus! Grant me Not to have a past, but be charity embodied.

Gone, the hermit passes by the grave unweeping. A smile upon his face shines out, one he will be keeping. For the grave unmarked, noted a life worth leaving. And poetry talks with the dead, shows him much of being.