Saturday, December 09, 2006

Flying North

This week I'll be traveling over the cold windy sea into the night of a northern winter. I've been thinking about Yeats a bit recently, and was looking to see if he had written anything to take with me--something about geese perhaps, or cold lonely places. This isn't quite what I wanted to find, but it has its own charm:

The Realists

Hope that you may understand!
What can books of men that wive
In a dragon-guarded land,
paintings of the dolphin-drawn
Sea-nymphs in their pearly wagons
Do, but awake a hope to live
That had gone
With the dragons?

To anyone who finds him- or herself in a strange place this winter: I wish you warmth and happiness as the year draws to its close, and the earth (in the north, at least) pauses for a rest before turning back towards the light.