Christmas 2017

Bleak Midwinter

We miss it mostly;

things are so ordered that

we are led to mislead.

We think it’s about babies 

and the new hope that’s theirs. 

So we cheer 

and shout cheers and chant song. 

But 
be with baby -
for more than the herald’s hark -
and what you will know is the fear.
You want, you need
a safer, an unmuddied, 
a less muddled world 
(not this one).

For in this, our world 
bones break and shrieks shock,
and there is worse still, all ways. 
We miss - we manifestly miss -
that sheer cheer 
is not the gift of it.

Before our baby can grow,
strong-limbed and fierce in joy
so as to rise to heaven’s all,
heaven falls, is sullied 
by earth, by bloody earth,
and there is fright,
and the one of Gd must flee,
as scared as anyone.

What this is not is new.
The world has been up-down-side 
since humans had their way;
Gd knows Gd must
(shall we say?) cope, put up with us,
and does, and so we hope.

And in that hope is cheer, for sure,
but cheer with fear,
one equal chord.
And this we know we need,
and this we laud, we sing, sing out,
sing loud, as loud as angels,
and as bright as stars
(we are not lost).

So, yes, stand stable and 
choose cheer; yet 
be not led to shed too soon 
the fears, the flight-fright 
that’s there, and still is here 
for us, as was for him (for even Him); 
His tears and ours - 
and the multiplication thereof - 

these are its gift.