Christmas Shopping

1: O Sprawling City-Scape of Bethlehem

Hither, thither, ant trails along the boulevards

Wrestle wrastle, antennae quivering,

Thieving their way through fluid molten lines of bustle 

Along the hedgerows of humankind

Who push and pull, scream and shout, yell and twist

Legs between waists and necks, ankles and fists

Yelling mine! That’s mine! 

All mine!

Mining for gold on a wet autumn-winter afternoon, 

a man has forgotten, temporarily,

Who he is and where he comes from.

He slumps into drab leaf slush, mashed down for a good night’s rest.

A party hat betrays a recent past: 

Burger King-man waits for a guardian angel to collect and set him on his way.

Help the homeless he mutters but don’t help me.

I do have some vestige of manhood about me. Somewhere.  

He mutters, searching in vain.

2:  We (are) Three Kings of Leyton Orient, (aren’t we)?

Not one, but a cluster of stars:

Orion’s Belt, they say, although no-one knows

Whether Orion had trousers to provide solace for his belt. 

Or not.

No beasts of burden at the stable either,

No waiting donkey ready to bear lode-stones of ivory, malachite or emerald,

No shepherds tending llamas, 

Or wise women haunting the ghostly plains of Aramathea.

Yet all surface, sweating profusely at the empty stable.

‘So what now?’ mutters one,

Tetchy boar-pig knocks into legs; unguarded, unwanted, unbidden:

‘Any room at the Inn?’

Behind those gilded windows, the tinsel, the glitter of all our yesterdays

Contravenes the staple diet of poverty:

There is apparent rest.

‘Come on in, there are plenty of rooms!’

They came, they saw, they wondered.

3:  Unto the U.S. a Boy is Born

A stealth bomber scurries out from the bed-sheets, 

In amongst the shops, planning revenge for an age-old hurt

Which she will put right,

Making all swell in the world.

Cast sin out where none existed,

Caste in iron, she bides her time until the shops shut,

The shutters are shopped and the off licence closes

(which it never does).

She faces the twenty-four-hour majesty of the out of town

Street light lined megapolis that is the retail site.

The square bakery, the odd bins, 

The garden centre for spiritual aspiration.

The pleadings for national unity, 

The thin-as-ice wafer-tokens, dispensed to impoverished school children

From far-off, near-by streets;

An agora for the anxious.

And yet: a secret whispered through our ages resists conclusion.

4:  A Many Happy  No-Returns Policy

And yet we step, trembling, closer to that seventh age,

With Burger King-Man, trouserless Orion and stealthy bombette all,

Blind but with partial misty-vision,

Deaf but with extra sensory perception which supersedes

Our default ignorance.

Frustrated at what is,

Sorrowful at what has been,

Anxious about what might be.

These are not the thoughts to enter Christmas-tide with.

But as the service unfurls,

The yearning, sonorous Christmas cadences probe tenderly

The membrane of those hurts expressed, yet un-expressed.

The spirit of possibility reveals our harbour,

Making that what has been, more settled;

Making that what is, more comforting;

And that what will be,  less fearful.

Amen.

More Christmas Shopping here!