Snowstorm in December / Ilya Shambat

Snowstorm in December

Snowstorm on winter evening
Air full of light and snow
Mind feels as though it's dreaming
As ground reclines below

Tree branches just like rivers
From their eternal source
Leading through air that shivers
Into the sea of earth

Branches overlaid with snow –
Fairy tales, like Renoir's
Paintings – together flow –
Past flakes that shine like stars!

Snow flakes here fly illumined
With light from a streetlamp
While from the sky exhuming
Winter night's cold and damp

As it falls on the ground
Under the evening sky
Makes bed of fluff and down
Where the trees' shadows lie.

Snow flakes on a December
In their chaotic flight
Make an orchestral chamber
Where music of the night

Resonates true and clear
And bursts into a song
Where passion, hope and fear
Carry the heart along:

Carry, to truths revealing!
Carry, to joys sublime!
Carry each Thought and Feeling
Into the heart of Time

And in eternal Now
In which resides true Peace
Make Essence merge with Tao
And bring eternal Bliss.

Snow, the exalted water!
Substance of life on high!
Earth's truth and heaven's daughter!
When brought into the sky

Turns into perfect matter
Each one unique, yet all
Crystalline, and they scatter
Everywhere as they fall!

Give us the truth of heaven,
Water congealed in height!
Take us to where you've traveled
On this December night –

Give us what you have mastered –
Place where the truth of life
Turns into alabaster
Crystals! To us arrive,

Each one unique, each real –
Perfect by its own code –
Soulful, incorporeal –
From its sublime abode

Falling upon the ground
And swirling on its course –
Carry your truths profound
And in them bathe the earth.

Water to heights exalted –
The place all poets seek –
Turns into truth embodied –
Each perfect and unique

Each beautiful and tender
And each reflecting light
Each to completeness rendered
And in it bathing Night

As snowflakes shimmer dancing
In chilly winter air
Heaven in them romances
Earth away from despair:

Snowflakes dress trees with beauty
And carpet breathing earth
Onto which is exuded
Truth of the soul's rebirth:

Water reaches the clouds
And there becomes attained,
And then falls on the ground
As snowflakes or as rain

To hide it in the cold
Or feed it in the heat
And the life's truth enfold
In rain, snow, ice and sleet.

Through every time and season
Through every night and day
Passion combined with reason,
Purpose combined with play –

Makes the accomplished matter
Which with the truth of soul –
The Noumenal unfettered
From the Phenomenal –

Brings the embodied splendor
And feeds what may exist
That on the earth is rendered
This divine painter's feast.

Total as life is total,
And unique, one and all –
Both anecdotal
And experimental –

Subjective and objective
Yin and yang, age and youth,
Passive and overactive
Make manifest the truth!

All elements combining
Makes what did not exist
Dualities refining
Where they like gene strands twist

Until they are most splendid
And then they all combine –
Finest and most candid –
Into the truth divine.

There passion turns to matter
And becomes absolute
There preconceptions shatter
And truths untruths refute

There Life strives for existence
Amid the strains of Time
There Seed strives through resistance –
There all becomes sublime!

There water reaches air:
There all is true and wise
There is true beauty there –
There is no room for lies!

There soul becomes embodied
And then the ground it flails
As though overloaded –
Which its new task entails –

Here to become its most – and
All of its gifts impart:
Unique and universal
In body, mind, and heart!

Upon an earth-shaped canvas
Painting sublime designs
In world we have, that has us,
Making the most of time:

That, being made of water,
And crafted out of ice,
Makes of the time's iota
What will transcend all times:

There, to complete life's substance!
In snow or in rain
And as the snow flake dances -
There, let the soul remain

To consummate the coming
And inspire yet-to-be
And, when the rain comes drumming,
Then let the winter flee!

Then let the sun come beaming!
Then let the life return!
And until then, be dreaming
During this winter storm!

Snowstorm on winter evening!
Both journey and the goal!
Both giving and receiving!
In you, the human soul!

~~
Ilya Shambat, 2005
from Intricate Fire, 2005

[All rights reserved - Used with permission]

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Poems by Ilya Shambat