Christmas Eve! Five
Hundred poets waited, pen
Poised above paper,
for the poem to arrive,
bells ringing. It was because
The chimney was too small,
because they had ceased
to believe, the poem had passed them
by on its way out
into oblivion, leaving
the doorstep bare
of all but the sky-rhyming
child to whom later
on they would teach prose.
R.S. Thomas (1913-2000), ‘Nativity’, Mass for Hard Times, 1992.
Peter May comments: 'This Nativity poem opens with a breathless excitement. The poets awaiting their muse, ready to be inspired to retell the great story of incarnation. But no sooner have the bells rung than they have missed the poem... Excuses follow - but the truth is that Jesus, the incarnate Word cannot be channeled in ways that tradition demands and we expect.
We are left with 500 poets looking in the wrong direction.... Are we ready to open our lives afresh to His birth in us? Have we too reduced the poem to prose?
Are we tempted to name and pin down the incarnate one so that we can grasp and understand, to shape the newborn to fit our lives, our world, rather than allowing him to shape us?'
0 Comments