“To go in the dark with a light is to know the light./ To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,/ and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,/ and is travelled by dark feet and dark wings.” —Wendell Berry, “To Know the Dark”

Defying a diabolical wind, we walk around the town. Passing the priest’s front garden, you point out snowdrops dispersed on the lawn. Plúirin sneachta: “little flower of snow.” William Wordsworth described it as the “venturous harbinger of Spring”.

But it’s too soon to anticipate Persephone’s return from the underworld. Winter insists on shaping days, schedules, bodies: itchy pelts, raw-skinned faces, damp clothes, persistent coughs. Ah well, go deep, far into the silent woods and through the tumult of storms, marvelling at moon and stars in the crystalline night, all “dark feet and dark wings”.

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