Christmas Landscape

Tonight the wind gnaws

with teeth of glass,

the jackdaw shivers

in caged branches of iron,

the stars have talons.

There is hunger in the mouth

of vole and badger,

silver agonies of breath

in the nostril of the fox,

ice on the rabbit’s paw.

Tonight has no moon,

no food for the pilgrim;

the fruit tree is bare,

the rose bush a thorn

and the ground bitter with stones.

But the mole sleeps, and the hedgehog

lies curled in a womb of leaves,

the bean and the wheat-seed

hug their germs in the earth

and the stream moves under the ice.

Tonight there is no moon,

but a new star opens

like a silver trumpet over the dead.

Tonight in a nest of ruins

the blessèd babe is laid.

And the fir tree warms to a bloom of candles,

the child lights his lantern,

stares at his tinselled toy;

our hearts and hearths

smoulder with live ashes.

In the blood of our grief

the cold earth is suckled,

in our agony the womb

convulses its seed,

in the last cry of anguish

the child’s first breath is born.