I need to start writing my Christmas poem for this year. I'm hoping this little exercise will help inspire me a little bit. Reading great poets and poems usually does. Lisel Mueller is one of my favorites. Her Christmas poem is gorgeous.
Saint Marty should be so lucky to write a poem like this.
Blood Oranges
by: Lisel Mueller
In 1936, a child
in Hitler's Germany,
what did I know about the war in Spain?
Andalusia was a tango
on a wind-up gramophone,
Franco a hero's face in the paper.
No one told me about a poet
for whose sake I might have learned Spanish
bleeding to death on a barren hill.
All I knew of Spain
were those precious imported treats
we splurged on for Christmas.
I remember pulling the sections apart,
lining them up, sucking each one
slowly, so the red sweetness
would last and last --
while I was reading a poem
by a long-dead German poet
in which the woods stood safe
under the moon's milky eye
and the white fog in the meadows
aspired to become lighter than air.
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| I'm feeling inspired |
