Going Back
(Christmas Day 2012)
Respectively intense or watered down,
Nostalgia flares to ignite worn desire,
As the outcast, lonely and depressed
Strain in the cold to boost the threadbare choir,
While the rational, who know that they know best,
Drink gluwein round an artificial fire.
The unfinished story of our Saviour's birth
Whispered by slaves in catacombs below
Imperial Rome, reached its Imperial height,
Built on Victorian pomp and snow on snow,
Has morphed into its pagan origins,
Leaving a puzzling Christian after-glow.
And we, against the flow, move back in time
Towards the rebel church he came to found,
Of radical upheaval and reform,
Good news emerging from the underground,
Affirming not conforming, marginal
Because of what we say, both heterodox and sound.