Equinox: Measure for Measure

A-dance as had their grandsires never sinned,

the giddy throng now treads the village green.

“Farewell forever to the Winter’s frost --

Let Summer be our air  forevermore.

Tear down the tower-clock of seasons’ whirl,

and let us frolic in oblivion,

our ever-noonday joys  unmarked, untimed,

and unreliev’d by memory of dark.”

But as our nature, from the Maker’s forge,

is blent of virtue, yet with vice annealed,

so shows the iron-bound justice of the Judge

in equal measure  of the Light, with Night.

Paean to the Equinox

 تُولِجُ اللَّيْلَ فِي النَّهَارِ وَتُولِجُ النَّهَارَ فِي اللَّيْلِ ۖ

 [Sura 3, ayah 27]

Hail Equinox!  Emblem of an equal King,

whose balance-pan lies level ‘neath the oak

where his hands  with open palms dispense

plain justice, to earl and churl alike.

Now doth the husbandman  fête Harvest-Home,

from sheavèd grain   bakes celebrating loaves,

and with sweet rising smoke salutes

the prospect of the fall of autumn leaves.

E’en as our Maker  sundered dark from light,

in one proportion, when the World began,

so too the equinoctial Judge sits throned,

and equably  divides the day from night.

Praise Him! whose broad hand shaped us out of clay,

and like the Equinox, parts night from day.

Autumnal Equinox

All summer long  we lay at ease

adrift  amid  the daffodils;

by dawn refreshed, and evening breeze,

the while  the Sun  the sky-dome fills.

Yet now behold,  the face of Day

confronted is  with that of Night.

And each upholds  its war-array:

there, of Darkness;  here, of Light.

Stark at noon  the balance stands;

th’ assailants are  of equal strength.

Yet mark how,  as each day  extends

it fades,  and lapses  in its length!

How too encroaches  on the brink

of twilight, when the birds seek rest,

the swarthy foe who smears his ink

alike on cloud-banks, and on nest.

Thus ever did the Gods contend;

thus e’er, the Giants  whirl the wheel

of Ragnarok, while sinews rend;

until at length -- the Noon must kneel.

Soon groan the lands ‘neath Winter’s torment;

in dark  the linnets  cease to sing.

Yet grant Lord, though the fields like dormant,

that from our ash,  may spring -- the Spring!

Vernal Equinox

As the nights recede, and the chill days lengthen,

finally something clicks within;

then Mister Bear   rumbles awake,

and lumbers forth  from his sleepycave,

blinking at all that light.

There is sunshine, sunshine  everywhere,

great golden buckets of it.

The bunnies splash about in it,

like otters in a pond.

“What a wonderful world,”

thinks Mister Bear.