Pirate Xmas: A Song

Here’s a bit of doggeral for singing:
"Pirate Xmas" --  

Ran out of Irish --
Drinking rum --
Pirate Xmas

Futility feeds into despair
Lack of hope fills that empty chair
Friends and family in disarray
Dead, distant,
Dreadfully dismayed
Under sentence
Ducking attack
Don’t count the blessings that we lack
Don’t count the blessings in arrears
Just bless, just bless
Find the needy and just bless
Pirate Xmas

Look beyond
Look beyond
Feed whom you can
Toast the rest
Pirate Xmas

Ran out of Irish –
Drinking rum –
Pirate Xmas

X marks the spot . . . .

--MD

I expect to revise this one, but the tune's in my head.
Feel free to sing as you wish.

Winter Solstice Beach Lit

Waterside reading/listening for the turning of the year.

Blow, West Wind, Blow

A bit of blarney for the season.

Robert Graves' "To Juan At The Winter Solstice"

TO JUAN AT THE WINTER SOLSTICE

There is one story and one story only

That will prove worth your telling,

Whether as learned bard or gifted child;

To it all lines or lesser gauds belong

That startle with their shining

Such common stories as they stray into.

Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues,

Or strange beasts that beset you,

Of birds that croak at you the Triple will?

Or of the Zodiac and how slow it turns

Below the Boreal Crown,

Prison to all true kings that ever reigned?

Water to water, ark again to ark,

From woman back to woman:

So each new victim treads unfalteringly

The never altered circuit of his fate,

Bringing twelve peers as witness

Both to his starry rise and starry fall.

Or is it of the Virgin's silver beauty,

All fish below the thighs?

She in her left hand bears a leafy quince;

When, with her right hand she crooks a finger, smiling,

How many the King hold back?

Royally then he barters life for love.

Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,

Whose coils contain the ocean,

Into whose chops with naked sword he springs,

Then in black water, tangled by the reeds,

Battles three days and nights,

To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore?

Much snow if falling, winds roar hollowly,

The owl hoots from the elder,

Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup:

Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.

The log groans and confesses:

There is one story and one story only.

Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,

Do not forget what flowers

The great boar trampled down in ivy time.

Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,

Her sea-blue eyes were wild

But nothing promised that is not performed.

--Robert Graves