A big moon hangs over the little northern city by the sea. Beneath it, the snow dregs gleam, and when I open the back door to let the cat out, the scent of earth is strong and cold and wet.

I work away at my work. But always there's that moon and that earth, whether I notice them or not.

First light unfolds--pale blues and greys, a skim of coral. Already the inky tree silhouettes have returned to mild-mannered bark and branch, and the moon hides behind a chimney.

I am winding down with War and Peace. The French have straggled away. The Russians have returned to burned-out Moscow. The dead are buried, and the living have discovered that they are still alive.

Meanwhile, the clouds spread their rosy cloak over my city. My city yawns and scuffles into its slippers. Seagulls veer and dive over a rippled bay. A cat washes a paw in a pool of lamplight.

* * *

Pierre . . . did not wait, as before, for personal reasons, which he called people's merits, in order to love them, but love overflowed his heart, and, loving people without reason, he discovered the unquestionable reasons for which it was worth loving them.

--Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace 

 * * *

Westron wynde, when wyll thow blow
The smalle rayne downe can rayne?
Cryst yf my love were in my armys,
And I yn my bed agayne!

 --anonymous, early sixteenth century

* * *

A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown

Walt Whitman

A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown,
A route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness,
Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating,
Till after midnight glimmer upon us the lights of a dim-lighted building,
We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted building,
’Tis a large old church at the crossing roads, now an impromptu hospital.
Entering but for a minute I see a sight beyond all the pictures and poems ever made,
Shadows of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving candles and lamps,
And by one great pitchy torch stationary with wild red flame and clouds of smoke,
By these, crowds, groups of forms vaguely I see on the floor, some in the pews laid down,
At my feet more distinctly a soldier, a mere lad, in danger of bleeding to death, (he is shot in the abdomen,)
I stanch the blood temporarily, (the youngster’s face is white as a lily,)
Then before I depart I sweep my eyes o’er the scene fain to absorb it all,
Faces, varieties, postures beyond description, most in obscurity, some of them dead,
Surgeons operating, attendants holding lights, the smell of ether, the odor of blood,
The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms, the yard outside also fill’d,
Some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some in the death-spasm sweating,
An occasional scream or cry, the doctor’s shouted orders or calls,
The glisten of the little steel instruments catching the glint of the torches,
These I resume as I chant, I see again the forms, I smell the odor,
Then hear outside the orders given, Fall in, my men, fall in;
But first I bend to the dying lad, his eyes open, a half-smile gives he me,
Then the eyes close, calmly close, and I speed forth to the darkness,
Resuming, marching, ever in darkness marching, on in the ranks,
The unknown road still marching.