Sonnets Askance
i.
"Ne had the apple taken ... taken been,
Ne had ... Our Lady a-been heavené queen."
The retrospective pieces fit too neatly
Too blatant a re-writing of history
As if the God/Creator simply craved
A way to damn us so we could be saved
By his own agent, something of a son,
Through whose death at our hands, our freedom won.
Better to think the apple made us free
To love him and each other fitfully,
Better than angels fixed in their degree,
Forging our brittle solidarity:
Ne'er had the apple been neither would we
Have been more than the blossom on the tree.
ii.
Exhausted by the ordeal of the knife
And fire but waxing faster than his son
Abraham sees his revivified wife
And wonders what advantage he has won.
Another angel: trouble on the ground
As if there were not enough overhead:
He hears the stage whisper of heavenly sound,
Trying to understand what is being said:
As many as the stars that he can see,
As many as the grains there are of sand,
Are promised but his fragile progeny
Is traumatised beyond what they can stand:
Still, what the Lord has promised must occur;
God is an act not a philosopher.
iii.
A promise flickers in the dying flame,
Flaring before the room is left in dark,
God will not grant another lightning spark,
Content to leave his people to their shame
- death, when it comes, is a catastrophe
Not lessened by the hopes of prophesy -
But being left is unlike leaving off:
The impulse is to promise and explain,
To lend collective meaning to the pain,
Vaguely adducing hope when times are tough:
Maidens will conceive and bear in due course
And one is set apart, a special force:
The people will rejoice if it prevails,
But be no wiser if the gambit fails.
iv.
Turned from the rising sun she kneels to pray,
God before nature at the break of day,
Bent on retaining the residual gloom
But restlessness assaults her Psalmody
As light behind closed eyes, brighter than day,
Transports her from her prayers and the room
Into a heavenly realm where a dark voice
Offers what seems to be a holy choice
Although, suspicious of her carnal need,
She hesitates before timid assent,
Knowing that both her families will be bent
On ostracising her for the misdeed:
But, blazing in her womb, the Spirit sears
Her with belief and all doubt disappears.
v.
He could not think what made him say "The lamb
Of God" when what he wanted to say was "The ram",
Religion being cruel to be kind,
Entwined with sin, the lot of humankind:
But he had heard his cousin's quiet voice
Cut through The self aggrandisement of men,
Secure in ritual for power's sake,
Telling his wondering audience to rejoice
As if the world was free to start again,
With promises he knew that they would break
Jeshua and he were poles apart on sin
And he knew soon he would have to give in:
He scarcely felt the hand that bids him bless
Him in a gesture of futile redress.
vi.
The planetary weather, glittering, slow,
Subverts the human sense of time and space
Rendering the wildest hurricane effete,
Although the converse seems to be the case
- The human record of catastrophe
Is nothing to a dying galaxy -
Each celebrated in the alien snow
And in a star exploding out of place,
Combining to produce a flawless sheet
Of frigid calm, misrepresenting grace
As if snow were on an aesthetic par,
Of equal beauty, to a glittering star:
But each needs each as both were made by him
Who knows them now, far from the cherubim.
vii.
Sing, angel voices in the Winter storm
The news you bring of charity and calm
For we have sung our penitential Psalm
And crave good news to keep us bright and warm
Although we know the price was dark and cold,
A lowlier birth than any we have known
In turbulence, far from your heavenly throne,
Of squalor unpromised in things foretold,
Easy to subvert with halo-ed veneer
When children's fancies should be set aside
To celebrate only with modest cheer
Knowing that God as man was crucified:
Our Christmas will turn bitter in the Spring
If we expect to crown this child as king.
viii.
Bad news always arrives sooner than good:
Soldiers despatched in haste always bode ill,
Not least when they ride out before the Spring
When keeping warm and quiet is their aim;
But Herod's fear is worse than his bombast.
All life below his tottering rank is fair
Game if killing it will keep him there.
They reach their cowering objectives at last
And murderously seal their master's fame
With innocent blood that questions who is king.
Is Herod suffering a lust to kill
Or one whose motives are misunderstood?
Against the precept that he would present,
We rank the outcome higher than intent.
ix.
Blood in the gold that only he can see,
Standing like un-dressed liver on a slab,
No better met head-on than like a crab,
A molten lump of jumbled cruelty.
Smoke from the frankincense meant to obscure
The craft of self-styled supplicants blows clear
To show the priestly tribute from the poor,
In exquisite attire, smooth yet austere.
Myrrh hovers at the edge of every crowd,
Not willing to be shunned as morbid fare,
Yet always presaging that final shroud
That splits its victim into earth and air:
Whatever they had brought would be the same,
The flaw His father wrought in heaven's frame.
x.
How clear the joyful bells across the snow
Made sweeter by the rarity of cold
As Winters wet and windy overthrow
The paradigm of Christmastide of old
Call most of us in vain to Midnight Mass,
Content with glib and clichéd caroling,
Grown ignorant of how Christ will surpass
Our mundane hopes, of why we pray and sing,
Yet when the bells fall silent and the elves
Have smothered Jesus in a scarlet coat
Making our memories of Him so remote
That we think we are here to save ourselves
He will be born again to save us all
Even if we no longer hear his call.
xi.
The blackened organ staves of knotted chords
Assault the plangent dissonance of the choir
Producing music few minds can retain
Or voices render, dismembering words,
Substituting intellect for desire,
Roughening the places that were made too plain
With coats of 19th Century sentiment,
A brightly coloured pageant, in the snow,
Surbiton layered on Florence on Palestine,
As if the stable were a monument
To public virtue and the status quo
Domesticating Christ and the divine:
What carols shall we sing or pictures paint
Wrought with humility and self restraint?
xii.
Long after cribs have given way to trees
With Father Christmas as our Winter king,
And gadgets as our only deities
And presents as the joys of which we sing,
When Bethlehem's star is dimmed beyond our gaze,
Obscured by smoke and artificial light
And angels decorate but never praise
Upon fading nostalgia's special night,
A glib reversion to the pagan ways
Before they were transmuted into love,
When people were intent upon the ground
And not what might be sent down from above:
Though God will have to save us from the elves,
More, we will need to be saved from ourselves.