Christmas Landscape

Tonight the wind

With teeth of glass,

The jackdaw

In caged branches of iron,

The stars have talons.

There is hunger in the

Of vole and badger,

Silver agonies of

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

And the ground is bitter with stones.

But the mole sleeps, and the

Lies curled in a womb of leaves,

The bean and the

Hug their germs in the

And the stream moves under the ice.

Tonight there is no moon,

But a new star

Like a silver trumpet over the dead.

Tonight in a nest of

The blessed babe is laid.

And the fir tree warms to a bloom of candles,

And the child lights his lantern,

Stares at his tinselled toy;

And our hearts and

Smoulder with live ashes.

In the blood of our

The cold earth is suckled,

In our agony the

Convulses its seed;

In the first cry of

The child’s first breath is born.

This version is a transcript of the poet reading his own work on the

BC Radio 3 programme