BVM Blues
It was nothing like that. If there were choirs
of angels it was more like singing in the ears
of extreme fatigue. If visitors came
bearing expensive toys, they mostly got
in the way. The birth itself
was hardly immaculate. He emerged
(but where was the midwife?)
more like a mole rat, or a prize fighter –
not a hint of the divine. About the crib
clung the beatific incense of dung.
So the nights warped into blur-
suck-burp-wipe-wrap suck-burp-wipe-wrap…
Old Joseph fussing around worse than useless
(the real father conspicuous by his absence).
And the worrying. Knowing
how boys grow up, get into trouble.
The loneliness If there was a star
it was the ass, his hairy sympathetic face.
If there was a miracle
it was that milk came rushing to my breast.
This is the draft of a poem I’ve just written for a possible Christmas card, It was probably influenced mainly by the proliferation of pre-Christmas material beginning to flood our letter box. This year I have been struck by the beautiful unreality of those ubiquitous Madonna-and-Childs (mostly Italian Quatrocento, but also the Bellinis and later Raphaels) in which the Christ child is presented as almost a five or six year old rather than a real neo-nate. In the portrayal of the Divine-cum-Human, the proportions seem to have traditionally been something like ten parts holy to one part human, so my little verbal sketch tries, perhaps too crudely, to redress the balance. Inevitably the recent witnessing of our daughter Amy going through her first pregnancy and delivery has also crept into this poem – I had forgotten how very hard the first months can be for a new mother. Anyway, Amy’s new baby girl, called “Thea” (short for both “Theadora” and “Dorothea”, both meaning “Gift of God”) is now beginning to smile, as is her mother. And the grandparents are now also doing fine.