Quote of the Day (Poet Patrick Kavanagh, With a Memory of an Irish Christmas)

“My father played the melodion
Outside at our gate;
There were stars in the morning east
And they danced to his music.
 
“Across the wild bogs his melodion called
To Lennons and Callans.
As I pulled on my trousers in a hurry
I knew some strange thing had happened.
 
“Outside in the cow-house my mother
Made the music of milking;
The light of her stable-lamp was a star
And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle.”—Irish poet and novelist Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967), “A Christmas Childhood,” from Collected Poems (2004)