Years ago, one of my university lecturers told me that he didn’t really read much that he enjoyed anymore – I suspect he’d been marking one of my essays – but there was a line of poetry he had read the other day that he thought was phenomenal. He then said it out loud, and what I remember him saying was just part of a sentence, just this:
“In winter, when the wolves have nothing to eat but wind…”
I have not been able to track this line down since, so I’ve almost certainly gotten it wrong. What I will never forget, though, was the way he stressed those three main W words that give the thought its shape and force. Winter, wolves, wind. Each of these was pained, almost: bleached and pummeled tight by the ferocity of the cold as they left his mouth. I was transported by the impromptu performance. I still am. Thank you, Jan.
All of which is to say, winter is coming. The days are darkening earlier, the skies are low and grey at noon, and I’m doing all the normal winter things once more. I’m hunting in closets for gloves and scarves. I’m shutting the window in the room where I work at 4.30 each afternoon when my neighbours switch on their inflatable Christmas dinosaur which plays the same few bars of Santa Claus is Coming to Town on a loop, and I’m getting Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves back on my PC. Soon I too will have nothing to eat but wind.