Winter Solstice

Gerald Bullett's lifewas marked by war. He served in the First World War for four years in histwenties, and then worked for the BBC in London during the Second World War, inmiddle life.

Like many authors, theunique insights brought by such terrible exposure gave him a philosophical bentof mind, and a longing for peace, a liking for what came out at times of quiet.This was never far away in his works, either as a major theme, or at the veryleast consistently present in the background.

Perhaps nowhere was thismore the case than in this long poem, first published in 1943. Taking as itstemporal locale the very middle of winter, with all the quiet and stillnessthis predicates, Bullett enters the mental space where the rush and hurry ofthe world are left behind, and the mind can seek fresh deeper understandings, expandinginto a rarely approachable zone.

Taking in creativity,desire, love, pain and the unnameable workings of the spirit, he essays aprofound philosophical meditation. That we cannot ultimately say all thatperhaps needs to be said, that we are stymied by feelings of powerlessness and ofour unimportance when all is said and done - these are to him indicators of themystery which we will never divine, and perhaps never should.

But also WinterSolstice gives brief glimpses of beauty - of low light and warmth, ofsnow-covered fallow land and bare trees, of the survival of tiny birds inwinter's harshness, but most of all of the value of quiet, and its gift ofinsight.

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