A Possible Prayer on New Year's Day - Poetry by Frances Bellerby

To the Light now invisible

Word now inaudible

Truth now unknowable

Pray for the appearance of shadows

Before this New Year’s Night.

For shadow trees on the cold null meadows,

Proof of the sun’s light.

And pray for each shadow to be delicate and precise

            as its tree.

Now and in memory.

Frances Bellerby (1899 -1975)

Taken from The Twelve Poems of Christmas, Volume Three, Selected and Introduced by Carol Ann Duffy