Who can fault a month that celebrates a day of LOVE and a long weekend for PRESIDENTS? Not me, at least not this year, while we are being inundated with snow storms and snow flurries and even more snow showers. Ode to February indeed!! Along with all that white bluster, there is poetry to read while curled up sipping hot chocolate, inspiring us through this short and lovely month.
Here’s one such poem to shut down sadness, in the most definitive manner, just in case your month isn’t going quite as winningly as mine…
Ode To Sadness by Pablo Neruda
Sadness, scarab
with seven crippled feet,
spiderweb egg,
scramble-brained rat,
bitch’s skeleton:
No entry here.
Don’t come in.
Go away.
Go back
south with your umbrella,
go back
north with your serpent’s teeth.
A poet lives here.
No sadness may
cross this threshold.
Through these windows
comes the breath of the world,
fresh red roses,
flags embroidered with
the victories of the people.
No.
No entry.
Flap
your bat’s wings,
I will trample the feathers
that fall from your mantle,
I will sweep the bits and pieces
of your carcass to
the four corners of the wind,
I will wring your neck,
I will stitch your eyelids shut,
I will sew your shroud,
sadness, and bury your rodent bones
beneath the springtime of an apple tree.
Nine Cent Girl 