Carols
Carols
The old story
Revives in the dying year, when carols begin to play:
The familiar tunes open advent windows on scenes we know:
Stoic figures by the crib, and placid beasts in yellow hay:
No dung heap here – all is fragrant in our nativity show.
The church choir
Breathes life into these flat stained-glass figures,
Animating the pearly child and parents cool and trim
With rich cadence and rhyme and descants of heavenly singers:
No discordant beast is allowed to slouch towards our Bethlehem inn.
The congregation are moved to
Sing hallelujah, cheered by the gift of life,
The birth so bravely born, sweet Mary, with neither scream nor curse,
For all is calm and orderly, without a hint of strife,
And neatly done, for foreign kings, with sovereigns in their purse.
Carols:
Comfortable songs amid this northern winter chill.
We shepherds watch and pray each succeeding year:
Hoping that every newborn child will
Have a star, and rise above the clawing hands of poverty and fear.
So the old stories
Are replayed, sometimes redolent of dust. Reworked anew in Palestine,
In Baghdad, Belfast and Bombay:
Sing hallelujah for peace to hold its flimsy borderlines
While tidy shepherds kneel at prayer, to keep disorder well away.
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