Earth grown old, yet still so green,
Deep beneath her crust of cold
Nurses fire, unfelt, unseen:
Earth grown old.
We who live are quickly told:
Millions more lie hid between
Inner swathings of her fold.
When will fire break up her screen?
When will life burst thro’ her mold?
Earth, earth, earth, thy cold is keen,
Earth grown old.
Christina Rossetti
God in the darkness, God beyond our knowing,
patient creator, seed in secret growing,
rock of the living water ever flowing:
come and renew us.
God in the darkness, God in all our grieving,
friend of our tears, companion never leaving,
drawing us past the limits of believing:
come and renew us.
God in the darkness, God of holy dreaming,
giver of hope, and pledge of our redeeming,
Spirit of truth, our memory and meaning;
come and renew us.
Elizabeth J. Smith from Run, Shepherds, Run
Poems for Advent and Christmas by L.William Countryman
This poem originally appeared here, where you can read the circumstances in which it was written.
It is time. From deep within
my inner dark a sudden
fierce tightening calls out.
Be still, I say. Be quiet.
This child will come
will find the light
will be the light
new in my life, but now
I want to keep him close
keep him mine alone.
A huge force squeezes me again
taking me beyond the lighted space
into the dark of inwardness
focussed only on the pain
forgetting self and any joy
to come from such gigantic toil.
Someone cries inside my head
and anxious faces swim and fade
and leave my eyes alone to look
and marvel at a miracle
as something infinitely huge and small
is born, and lifted to my arms.
My heart is broken and remade.
My son looks up. His black eyes gaze
on heaven one last lingering time
before they close against my breast.
We are alone, and all the world
shrinks to a tiny, distant speck
as swelling joy fills all my soul.
I hold him close. My son is born.
©C.M.M. 28/11/08
Rend the heavens, come quickly down –
Can we mean it? In the dark
to ask the God to come like this
would have us tremble at the presence
sought that Sunday as we sang.
Behold, thou wast angry and we sinned –
dear God, we try, we know our sin,
we see too clearly where we are.
The veiled women weep, the bomb
explodes on distant soil:
we worry lest our own are there,
care less about the ruined lives
among the debris of our wars.
All our deeds are like a polluted garment –
hung about us in the cold
as if we fear our nakedness,
would do anything to hide.
The child dies at the hands of those
whose task is care and love
while we, appalled, avert our eyes
from innocence betrayed.
We all fade like a leaf
and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away –
light little things in the face of creation
and yet, and yet …
Lord, we continue. You have never
swept us from the face of earth.
We love and beget and children
lovely children, innocent and clean
come naked into the world
in your eternal promise of what can be.
Your Son will come, again, again
and we have hope, another chance
to use your world in precious ways
to hold your people to your face.
As tiny fingers clasp round ours
we reach into the dark and feel
the strength of love enfolding us.
The heavens are rent as if a cloud
were parted at the end of rain
and light will come too bright to tell –
we sing again. Come, Lord, and soon.
©C.M.M
ADORING VIRGIN ADORING
The night we invaded the gallery
it rained and the snell wind
clawed through your clothes
and it wasn’t really night –
just late. ‘We close in
twenty minutes,’ said the man
and we chorused, variously,
‘We know’ ‘We’ve come to see
the Botticelli’ – as if he’d
painted only one – and then
we pounded up the spiral stair
under the glooming busts
and burst into the empty room.
And there she glowed
from a wall on our right
the pale face surrounded by
transparencies of flower
in pink. Floating. And we
stopped. The face was one
you might see reading on a bus –
not archaic or distant but
concerned, as if remembering
as she gazed, not at the child
but over, round and through.
Remembering or looking to
the piercing both of hands and soul?
Or was she seeing inwardly
the flaming eyes that greeted her
as problematically blessed
and hearing as she knelt to pray
the distant sound of snowy wings?
We stared in quiet until the room
was filled with unseen Gabriels
and then we heard approach not wings
but ordinary feet -‘It’s time’-
and smiled at this young messenger
and drifted into the wild rain
under a sky whose stars were dimmed
as lights and tinsel took their place.
© C.M.M.
Look, God, look
in the vastness of your dark
hear this song
in the chorus of the world
where I sing
for the glory of your coming
held by love
as the music pours from me
a flame within
as the night falls around me
hear my prayer
and come through the darkness
hold me waiting
as you wait to be born.
C.M.M.
See – on the globe’s curve
where the land ends in darkness
and mankind’s small flame-light
meets the black of the ocean
where the long dusk of summer
is the dream of a heartache
and the warmth of the sun’s light
is lost in the wind blast –
this is where hearts turn
eastward in longing
cry for the Christ-light
to illumine their bleakness
wait for the journey
to lead them to growing
once more believing
the sun will return.
©C.M.M.
love blooms bright 