\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 BVM Blues<\/b><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
It was nothing like that. \u00a0If there were choirs<\/p>\n
of angels it was more like singing in the ears<\/p>\n
of extreme fatigue.\u00a0 If visitors came<\/p>\n
bearing expensive toys, they mostly got<\/p>\n
in the way.\u00a0 The birth itself<\/p>\n
was hardly immaculate. \u00a0\u00a0 He emerged<\/p>\n
(but where was the midwife?)<\/p>\n
more like a mole rat, or a prize fighter –<\/p>\n
not a hint of the divine.\u00a0\u00a0 About the crib<\/p>\n
clung the beatific incense of dung.<\/p>\n
\n
So the nights warped into blur-<\/p>\n
suck-burp-wipe-wrap suck-burp-wipe-wrap…<\/p>\n
Old Joseph fussing around worse than useless<\/p>\n
(the real father conspicuous by his absence).<\/p>\n
And the worrying. \u00a0Knowing<\/p>\n
how boys grow up, get into trouble.<\/p>\n
The loneliness \u00a0\u00a0 If there was a star<\/p>\n
it was the ass, his hairy sympathetic face.<\/p>\n
If there was a miracle<\/p>\n
it was that milk came rushing to my breast.<\/p>\n
This is the draft of a poem I\u2019ve just written for a possible Christmas card,\u00a0\u00a0 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. \u00a0\u00a0Inevitably\u00a0 the \u00a0recent witnessing of our daughter Amy\u00a0 going through her first pregnancy and delivery has also crept into this poem \u2013 I had forgotten how very hard the first months can be for a new mother.\u00a0 Anyway, Amy\u2019s new baby girl, called \u201cThea\u201d (short for both \u201cTheadora\u201d and \u201cDorothea\u201d, both meaning \u201cGift of God\u201d) is now beginning to smile, as is her mother. And the grandparents are now also doing fine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 BVM Blues \u00a0 It was nothing like that. \u00a0If there were choirs of angels it was more like singing in the ears of extreme fatigue.\u00a0 If visitors came bearing expensive toys, they mostly got in the way.\u00a0 The birth itself was hardly immaculate. \u00a0\u00a0 He emerged (but where was the midwife?) more like a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-197","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":200,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions\/200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}