I was rummaging through some online poetry. A bit frustrated from reading inert poems which left me with no distinguishable trace of interest, I happened upon this poem, December Night by W.S. Merwin. The setting is what first hooked me. I’ve always been always intrigued by cold seasons. Don’t get me wrong. I love summertime: Relaxing on a beach, isolated from all the worries of the world, basking nonchalantly in the sun– That’s a nice slice of heaven, but there’s something about the ambience of the the cooler half of the year that electrifies my senses. I think the setting gives this poem a preemptive charge. Furthermore, Merwin brilliantly illustrates how the crisp coldness is amplified after the sun vanishes beneath the horizon.
The first two stanzas present the ferocity of the winter wind. How it’s potency not only causes plant life to freeze and die, but to die so fiercely that their death creates a atmosphere of it’s own. It’s almost as if these sudden, unanticipated deaths turn their dwellings into a mausoleum. An Eerie thought if widely applied.
In the third stanza we become aware that not all life has ended. We hear the chirping of birds. I believe this could be a symbol of our bodies shivering or beginning to freeze “kept awake by the moon”. Initially I thought this was meant to present a moment of enlightenment, I now infer from the final line that mankind is oblivious to it. We see it in no relation as a threat to our well-being, merely as an unfortunate event to organisms around us.
I enjoyed this poem from the start, because it baited me with a curious impression of seasons. Once I felt captivated by the setting, I established a humanistic disposition. Only to come to realize the narrator’s point of view was although profound and conscious, not in praise of mankind.
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