Remembrance 2011

Gary Speed, MBE: the young men stand with red knees glowing
Perplexed as they applaud at Cardiff, Liverpool and Leeds.
He had it all; fame, kids, nice wife and home, success; still showing
Despite their grief, that these will never satisfy their needs.

Eleven eleven eleven; time to remember the dead and missing.
Black garbed crows with ribbons, wreaths and sticks
March fearlessly this time, ignoring boos and bitter hissing
Of the Muslims, students, and mad anarchists thrown in the mix.

We are not saved by this display of silent drinking and eating
Of scraps of desiccated bread and cups of inferior wine.
The precious act that we remember was totally sin-defeating
And it demolished yours just as it forever abolished mine

Water was there.

Water features prominently in the first six chapters of John's gospel - always signifying the 'old way'

I have written this short hymn around this theme. The tune is "The Lord is King! Lift up your voice!"


Water was there in great supply
In giant jars to purify.
At Cana’s feast the clear first sign;
The old surpassed by this new wine.

Water was there; the Baptist dips
While waiting for his own eclipse;
The word comes thund’ring from above,
“This is my son and him I love.”

Water was there for thirty-eight;
The years he’s wasted at Sheep Gate;
But no-one helped when water stirred
‘til Jesus healed him with a word

Water was there at Jacob’s spring;
The stranger told her everything.
Beside the well with roles reversed,
He quenched her everlasting thirst.

Water was there at Galilee;
Five thousand fed beside the sea;
But when the storm clouds showed their teeth,
It’s fit to trample underneath.

Chorus
The old has gone; the new is here
Dispatching doubt, defeating fear.
With trumpet sound and dreadful drums;
Behold the risen Saviour comes!

Cats of various sorts

Cats: the world, the flesh and the Devil.

We called her Kitten – just a farm cat loaned
for us to nurse with chloramphenicol
and food; for cats are never really owned
the way that dogs are or a Barbie doll.
She used to bring us gifts: a mouse’s head
or tail, but then she left. No debt was owed.
Her present world attracted her instead,
or else another pet killed on the road.

Beware the tigress, prowling and feeding deep
in the forest, needing her yellow stripes to steal
from her black back the drops of sun that seep
through darkness. Death is her dominion; feel
the blood congeal upon those amber teeth.
The taste of every future meal she knows.
She longs for flesh. Light fails to pierce beneath
the trees, so nothing shows and chaos grows.

The lazy lion roars a lofty yawn;
he lifts his paw and shakes his tawny mane
and contemplates his pride with studied scorn.
In certain ease the lord of air and plain
enjoys his comfort and his prey’s distress;
views his domain; displays his solemn power.
Vain, indolent and proud, he nonetheless
considers whom he might today devour.

Song from scripture

Song based on Philippians 1:27

Holy Spirit, take control,
Subjugate my rebel will;
Help me live the Jesus way,
All the Gospel truths instil.
Never flinching from the fight;
Ever living in the light.

Holy Spirit, take control,
Make this congregation one.
Evil forces creep around;
Give us victory in the Son
Who has risen from the grave,
All His chosen souls to save.

Poem based on Philippians 1:27

Let your living be worthy of the Gospel of Christ
Standing firm in the Spirit with one mind
Whoever observes you or however enticed
Let your aims and ambitions be aligned.

Never flinching or shrinking from those who oppose
With your unity and courage thus displayed
Victory is yours in the one who arose
And who all your indebtedness has paid.

christmas poem II

But here is Wendy Cope on Christmas.

At Christmas little children sing and merry bells jingle,
The cold winter air makes all our hands and faces tingle,
And happy families go to church and cheerily they mingle,
And the whole business is unbelievably dreadful, if you’re single.

christmas poem

I published this last year, but I've been too unwell to write another one.

I came to you at Christmas when the frost had fixed the grass,
When they decorate department stores with balls of coloured glass,
When the Square is lit with silver shapes and sparkles green and red
And the trees are decked with fairy lights that flicker overhead,
When the shopper-laden buses hustle down Westover Road
And you wonder if that tea set will suffice for Mrs Spode;
When the speakers blare out ‘Jingles Bells’ off-key and very loud
And the bargain hunters muscle through the shoulder-crushing crowd;
When a lady limps and lurches under purchases too large
From a bright and shiny toyshop never known to undercharge,
When you fight for bulbs and batteries and each last-minute task,
For an electronic Christmas that is all that they could ask;
And I caught your eye and thought, for a moment, you might stop;
But the fever was upon you and your only thought was,”Shop!”

I came to you at Christmas down at number thirty-four
Where the reindeer and fat Santa quite irradiate the door,
Where the presents are piled high underneath the plastic tree
And the herald angels hark from a plasma screen TV,
Where there’s whisky overflowing and a Quality Street tin
And heaps of chocolate biscuits and buckets full of gin,
Where the parsnips and potatoes are roasting in the pan
And the turkey has been cooking since before the day began,
Where the cake from Marks and Spencers will be passed off as your own,
Just like the Christmas pudding – last year’s gift from Auntie Joan;
And it’s time to do the vegetables, the peas and beans and sprouts
And the microwavable mince pies at four or thereabouts.
And I caught your eye and thought, for a moment, you might look;
But the fever was upon you and your only thought was, “Cook!”

I came to you at Christmas; but not as a masquerade,
All safely wrapped in swaddling clothes and in a manger laid.
I was not at the rehearsals; I was sorting goats from sheep
For my gaze is universal and you know I never sleep.
In Zimbabwe I was hungry; in Romania I was cold,
In Malawi I was orphaned and in Darfur I was sold;
In other lands imprisoned; in other countries stoned;
The plain facts skated over or by other means condoned.
I was there in Boscombe Crescent sleeping on that slatted seat
I was scrabbling in the rubbish bin for something fresh to eat
I was with the young offenders down at Portland on the coast
Kept away from home and family at a time that matters most.
I was sick in the Macmillan and I almost caught your eye
But the fever was upon me and, of course, I came to die.

I came to you at Christmas but not just for Christmas Day.
All through the year I’ll hunt you and I will not go away.
Though you think you do not need me, that your staying power’s too strong,
The calamities that crush you will be bound to prove you wrong.
If you think you’re irredeemable; you’ve long since burnt your boats;
The die was cast when years ago you sowed your wild oats,
Oh! Hesitate to think so for I’ve rescued worse than you,
My blood can make the foulest clean; I offer life anew.
I came to you at Calvary; to you and all mankind
To give you peace from God above; none need be left behind.
Don’t let the world distract you, don’t hanker after things,
However they attract you, they always come with strings.
My Christmas present for you is superb beyond compare;
On that Resurrection Morning won’t you meet me in the air?

Autumn

Seasons

First wisps of coldness catch the wind to wake
me from the summer lethargy. The stars,
more crystal than before, no truck will take
with lazy observations of Renoirs.

The air has found a sweetness it had lost
in acrid August. But though death has browned
the leaves, life breathes again in early frost
and work is joy, my stake set in the ground.

Winter camellias, snowdrops, crocuses
color my worklife with impetus and style.
A new vitality refocuses
the sharpness and precision for a while.

But always the sun sets up its honey-traps,
the damsel coolly dressed in white chiffon
strikes down resolve, condemns me to collapse,
back to the even-tempered amnion

Haiku

Haiku

Venice is sinking
Since I leave Sunday, I’ll be
Too soon to see it.

Teenagers

The Teenager

All that emotion! DNA demanding to be shed
to populate the planet on its own
and in its image. Those young men all led
to reckless dances in a torrid zone
of cyclones, thundercracks and grand affairs;
enduring disappointment, triumph, hope
and ordinariness. The crises, cares
and spots all settle back. Somehow they cope
with analytic algebra and trig,
rift valleys, enzymes, Molière or Keats,
and wait, anticipating that their big
romance won’t peter out in dull defeats.

The materialist

What must it be like to think of yourself as simply an evolutionary body - formed by blind chance, with no purpose but to pass on your DNA to the next generation. You would be like the rocks or the sea with no point but to be worn down to dust and detritus.

The materialist

The earth feels no pain
from the wounds of the rain
that in strange constancy
falls emotionlessly;
and the rain does not please
to caress the cold trees.
The stream to the sea
flows ambitionlessly
and there is no disgrace
in the moon’s clouded face,
nor jealousy’s spite
in the stars’ lesser light;
and the wind all day long
does no right and no wrong,
has no sins to rescind.
He is one with the wind.

Cats

Cats: the world, the flesh and the Devil.

We called her Kitten – just a farm cat loaned
for us to nurse with chloramphenicol
and food; for cats are never really owned
the way that dogs are or a Barbie doll.
She used to bring us gifts: a mouse’s head
or tail, but then she left. No debt was owed.
Her present world attracted her instead,
or else another pet killed on the road.

Beware the tigress, prowling and feeding deep
in the forest, needing her yellow stripes to steal
from her black back the drops of sun that seep
through darkness. Death is her dominion; feel
the blood congeal upon those amber teeth.
The taste of every future meal she knows.
She longs for flesh. Light fails to pierce beneath
the trees, so nothing shows and chaos grows.

The lazy lion roars a lofty yawn;
he lifts his paw and shakes his tawny mane
and contemplates his pride with studied scorn.
In certain ease the lord of air and plain
enjoys his comfort and his prey’s distress,
views his domain, displays his solemn power.
Vain, indolent and proud, he nonetheless
considers whom he might today devour.

My thoughts included 2 Timothy 4:10, Demas, in love with this present world who deserted Paul. Colossians 1:13 and the dominion of darkness, and of course 1 Peter 5:8 the devil like a roaring lion.

Fatherhood

Motherhood is something that fathers never understand. No matter how old your children become, you never cease to be a mother. You rejoice in their successes and grieve for their hardships. Let anyone hurt her fledgelings and mother swan will hiss and spit at them, even when the fledgelings have fledgelings of their own.

Fatherhood is something different. I have been thinking of my own father. He was a serious man, tall and large. He was intimidating, even though he never struck me or even shouted at me. I remember once when I carelessly dirtied the shirt that I would have to wear to school the next day. I was terribly upset and afraid; so much so that I took myself off to bed before he came home from work. When he came home, rather than scold me, he came upstairs and persuaded me that I should come down for supper. He was kindness personified. Somehow, though his relationship was primarily with my mother not with the children. He related to us, through her. Later he was to develop a close relationship to my younger brother and to his grandchildren, but to me he always kept his distance. He was rather austere.

He was a man of the Right with strong political views, though one of his closest friends was a Jamaican. He was frustrated by his lack of an education. He had TB as a teenager and was sent to a residential school for two years at a Sanatorium. I don't think it was much of a teaching emporium. He was apprenticed to a tailor and was a skilled tailor's cutter. He was unfit for military service and spent the war making soldiers uniforms for a man who later became the father of the Speaker of the House of Commons. My parents spent the early part of the war living in a wooden 'Gypsy' caravan at an army camp in the midlands.

Later on he worked for the Royal Army Medical Corps in the Officer's Mess in a pretty menial way. He took on tailoring alterations for the chain stores to supplement his income. He worked every evening long into the night.

He was very keen for me to get a proper education and taught me to read before I was three. He sent me to a private primary school on the proceeds of his tailoring. By the time I left aged 8 I had completed the curriculum for eleven year olds.

He used to play cricket with me. After his spell in the Sanatorium he had a part time job on the Worcestershire Club and Ground, helping to prepare the County pitches. He even turned out occasionally for Worcestershire 2nd XI. He used to tell me of how he once nearly took a hat-trick, putting down a caught and bowled. He said that he was distantly related to certain Test Cricketers. I never knew how much to believe his stories. I think he was a fabulist. He was never very good at sport. He had large hands and could put a fearsome amount of spin on a ball, but whenever I saw him play, either cricket or football, he wasn't very good. I guess he was well into his thirties or even forties then and he may well have been much better when he was younger.

He used to take me fishing with him. He liked being alone by the bank of river or canal. He certainly knew how to fish. There are photographs of him with large pike and tench. My younger brothers have taken up the sport, but I admit I found it boring.

My father was a great organizer. He was obviously a lot more intelligent than the average working man that he associated with. He would become Secretary of this or Treasurer of that, Chairman of the other. He would make things happen. A community Hall got built; away matches were organized; a trip to the seaside arranged; but he was not a sticker. He would inevitably fall out with somebody and take his ball home.

I think, as I grew older and moved in educated circles, I was a bit ashamed of him. He didn't have that cultured edge that I was impressed by. I regret how much I stayed away.

I must be one of the few people in the world who has never smoked a single cigarette. My father died of the weed at 59 years old. He smelled of old tobacco. My mother gave me his old suits to wear, but the smell never left them. He had to paint his living room twice a year to disguise the brown coloration of the walls and ceiling. He used to smoke roll-ups for cheapness, lighting one with the butt-end of another. He would even extract the tobacco from the butts to make a new cigarette.

He never got cancer; at autopsy there wasn't a cancerous cell in his body. He developed a very high hemoglobin so that his blood was like treacle. Of course, I diagnosed the problem - smoker's polycythemia or Gaisbock's syndrome. I persuaded him to stop for a couple of months, but he couldn't hack it. He gradually increased his smoking again, titrating it against his angina. While he could still walk from house to car and from car to office without chest pain, he reckoned he was safe.

I wasn't surprised about the clot in his leg just after Christmas 1978. I arranged for his admission to hospital for anticoagulation. I was thinking more about having become a father for the third time myself and perhaps I should have monitored the physician who was looking after him more closely. New-years day 1979 I had a phone call that he was dead. The stupid physician had refused to anticoagulate him on the grounds that he had microscopic red blood cells in his urine. He should have known that nearly all heavy smokers have that. Of course, he died from a massive blood clot that migrated from his leg to his lungs; a pulmonary embolus.

I am still angry about it. He used to haunt my dreams for months afterwards. He would appear in his fishing clothes, getting scruffier and more unkempt as time passed. He kept asking me why?

I wonder what sort of father I have been. I am very proud of all my children but am I close to them? Or as close as I should be?

When my first daughter was born we had been married for about 15 months. At first, I thought of her as an intrusion into our lives. Because we were both working and a junior doctor's life allowed little time off - no more did a junior librarian's - it seemed that we had little time to be alone together.

I wrote this poem at the time to express what I felt.


Fatherhood

In the luminous blue of a child’s eyes

that shine at the sight of her mother

my breath is caught in sharp surprise

as one is at one with the other.



My breath returns as the sharpness dies,

and with sheer delight I discover,

in the luminous blue of my daughter’s eyes

that I am at one with my lover.

The York Minster Fire

Early in the morning of 9th July 1984 it was discovered that York Minster was on fire. 150 fire fighters from across North Yorkshire took two hours to bring the blaze under control. Apparently, the cathedral was struck by lightning shortly after midnight. Bob Littlewood, Superintendent of works at the time, believes the fire was started when lightning earthed through an electrical panel in the roof void.

Because the exterior of the roof was effectively sealed with lead and the fire was well established at the only entrance to the roof void, it was impossible to tackle the fire effectively. The large quantities of tinder-dry oak in the roof burned hot. A great deal of stonework was seriously damaged, as was the famous Rose Window. It is known the Rose Window itself reached temperatures of around 450 degrees centigrade. The Rose Window, a stained glass masterpiece high in the South Transept of the Minster (though not the best example of such in the UK), was nearly lost after the lightning struck. IT was a very old window. The stonework was completed in the mid 13th century but the stained glass was not added until near the end of the 15th century to commemorate the end of the War of the Roses (1486) and honor the Tudor dynasty.

After fire destroyed the South Transept roof, inspection revealed that the stained glass in the Rose Window was severely cracked. The 73 panels, containing 7,000 pieces of stained glass had crazed into about 40,000 pieces. Miraculously, it was all still in place.

Craftsmen secured the stained glass with adhesive film before removing it, one section at a time. Special adhesives - which would mimic the refractive properties of the glass - had to be researched and were specially developed by the 3M corporation before the window could be restored. Each restored section is sandwiched between layers of clear glass and the whole is further protected by more sheets of glass. The stained glass restoration process, along with the restoration of the roof, took about four years and cost $4 million.

At the time there were speculations on how the disaster might have happened out of a clear sky. It was remembered that York Minster had just been used for the inauguration of David Jenkins as Bishop of Durham. Jenkins was a controversial figure who apparently did not believe in an actual resurrection. He called it "a conjuring trick with bones." Some Christians thought that the lightening bolt was an act of Divine retribution.

My knowledge of the Church of England is sketchy. Although baptised into it as a baby, I never attended C of E services, though I was once on an appointments committee for a C of E Chaplain at my hospital. I worried everybody by asking each candidate whether he believed in Hell. The other members of the interview panel were the hospital chief executive and a Rural Dean and an Archdeacon. They did something that I have only seen women do before. They got up and went to the 'bathroom' together. I followed them out and found that they were having a private meeting about whom they should appoint.

It was this encounter that gave me the character of the Dean in whose voice I have written this poem.


The Dean’s lament after the York Minster fire.

Did you really rain fire down merely for a doubt?
Really flame that antique, Gothic window out?
That is some pique! Because a bishop spoke
out of turn? It was a sort of joke
that ‘conjuring trick with bones’, a bit of wit,
only designed to get a headline hit.

Did you even think about the cost?
All those visitor takings that we lost.
Four mill for the repair and at 3Ms
research on plastics, the price condemns
poor curates to more penury, I fear;
no pay rise now for many another year.

What sort of God do you suppose we want?
An old-style, concentration camp commandant
deriving pleasure from unmaking art,
with us quaking, knees shaking, falling apart?
Some sort of vandal, mannerless and rough,
who then responds to scandal by talking tough?

No, God is love and meekness, kindness: who
shows complete, benevolent blindness to
our foibles. He forgives, forebears; does not
take notice when we sin. A big blind spot
to forty-wink at deviation, short-
falling, or reprobation. That’s the sort

of God. The kind who’d never make a fuss.
Now, more important matters to discuss:
the type of God we’d really like to see
would be more like the archdeacon or me;
I hope, sir, that my pleading words won’t chafe,
we must ensure that Sodom would be safe.

Ambition

I was the first person in my family to go to university. At the time, I did not know what to expect and to be honest I didn't make the most of it. I was disappointed by my head teacher's last comment on my school report - "He should have aimed higher."

I took it to mean that I should have aimed for Oxford where he had been.

As it was I went to Bristol, which had a name for taking Oxford rejects. Bristol is a fine university in one of the nicest parts of England and has had its share of Nobel prizes, but it also takes more than its fair share of Public Schools students - in England that means students whose (usually rich) families have paid for a private education.

When I got there I was overawed by these well-mannered young men with impeccable accents who knew how to behave in company. It made me shy and impaired my progress. I tended to become a joker, providing comic relief for the upper classes. Although, I could tell a good joke and write scurrilous verse, what endeared me to fellow students didn't wash with the academics. I don't think I ever quite shook off this reputation. One of my research fellows (now a distinguished professor) used to regularly scold me for my funny articles that I wrote for magazines like World Medicine.

I wrote a poem about ambition at the time, but in keeping with my task of revising my old poetry book I have brought it up to date and here it is:

Ambition

Pushing through the holly-prickle teeth
of the quick, ambitious, climbing wind,
I trickle like a lock-gate shut beneath
the higher levels and the thicker-skinned.

I build my stickleback-nest short of where the best
grass grows, caught at not knowing who is known
and who knows. I am an item unaddressed,
tired of the mind and manners I have grown.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Those prison walls grow moss for mortar now;
the status of the prisoner: ‘long-unchained’.
To silver-spoons no need to still kow-tow,
that haughty hollowness was merely feigned.

A happy man must fit inside his skin,
content with his achievement and his loss.
If God and godliness are stored within
so much the better; all the rest is dross.


I Timothy 6:6

Lynette revision

My diurnal rhythm has been destroyed by the dexamethasone and for the second night running I am typing at 3 am when I should be sleeping.

I contacted an old school friend yesterday on Friends Reunited. Dom Darling was a brilliant scholar who read Physics or Maths at Imperial College, London. I had heard that he had dropped out because he was making too much money playing Poker, but that may be just gossip since he eventually had a successful career at IBM. Apparently, his retirement has been filled with Golf and Bridge; not how I expected him to end up when he defied the headmaster by buying an ice cream from Mr Whippy’s van over the wall of the school. For that he received several detentions, so I tend to believe the Poker story.

Another thing I associate with him, though, again, my memory may be playing me false, is the statement that poetry is appreciated by young girls and old men, but it is written by great men in their spare time. With this in mind I have been looking at my Juvenilia. I wrote about 80 poems between the ages of 16 and 23, some of which showed promise, but most of which were self-indulgent. I wondered whether they might contain a hint of talent that might be refined by experience.

This poem arose from an actual incident on the gynaecological ward round. A young girl had an ovarian cyst removed. Unfortunately, it turned out to be highly malignant. Those were the days of very little chemotherapy, though I expect that she had entirely inappropriate radiotherapy at the time. This happened as I was tail-end Charlie on a ward round. I called her Lynette, though that wasn’t her name – I was probably into Country and Western at the time.

Lynette

She smiled at me,
Her fair and swinging
Straight hair hanging,
And wrinkled up her nose
Like a white soft rabbit
Culled from Alice.
She talked, an earnest seventeen,
Of God and Beethoven,
And pointed to her scar
And how it wouldn’t show
On next year’s beaches.
While I, who knew the worst,
Forgot my pretty speeches
Lest the bubble burst
And gaily smiled at her instead;
My laughter smothering the dread.

Actually the last two lines are a later revision, but even they were an improvement on the original.

Recently, I have begun to feel that pentameter is a better meter for me. I once enjoyed the concision of three- and four-feet lines, but I have become impatient with the contortion that this demands.

So here goes on the revision I have made for now. Please comment on the poem, its theme or its process.

Lynette

She smiles at me, her fair and swinging straight
hair hanging. Rabbit-wrinkling up her nose,
she indicates that I, the trailing leg, should wait
while each attending white coat speaks and goes.

She talks, an earnest seventeen, of Grieg
and God and points to her bikini scar,
enlisting me, who knows the unsaid worst,
but briefly in her fabulous intrigue
to speak of next year’s beaches and there are
hiatuses in case the bubble burst.

Now forty years and more have gone, dispersed
Lynette, herself, to ashes or to dust.
My own white coat of armor has been shed,
I stand bareheaded as I was at first
and ask did I betray or underpin her trust
and that of others dead or long-time dead?

I ask for honesty from my white coats;
of fables, dreams and hopes I have enough;
don’t buoy me up with delicate misquotes,
I’ve learned to take the softness with the rough.

How to survive in the public sector

This poem has been criticized as to much like Gilbert and Sullivan. What do you think?

How to survive in an organisation.

I know that the pill is bitter
And doubly so as you’re young
But it’s one that ought to be eaten
For the taste is just on the tongue:
And after the thing is digested,
Dispersed from your head to your foot,
You can writhe in a sea of self pity
About that, up with which, you must put.
You can tell all your friends you’re a martyr,
But comply with the rules all along
And you’ll find that the head that is severed
Won’t be yours when something goes wrong;
But, best, at the heart of the matter,
You can feel justly proud deep inside
Of the time when you acted so nobly,
Pinched your nose and swallowed your pride.

Veneta Masson

I like poetry that references my own profession. Here is one quoted in today's Lancet.

Reference Range

Veneta Masson

Your tests show
the numbers 73, 90, 119 and 2.5,
the letter A,
the color yellow,
a straight line interrupted by a repeating pattern
of steeples and languid waves,
a gray asymmetrical oval
filled with fine white tracery,
35 seconds,
100 millimeters,
II.

I'm not sure what to make of these.
With the possible exception of II,
which like all Roman numerals
is subject to misinterpretation,
I see no cause for alarm.
I admit to a preference for low numbers,
the apothecary system over the metric
(my age, perhaps, and distrust of pure logic)
and the letter W,
though most of my colleagues favor
M.

I think you can be happy with yellow
and, based on my experience,
the fact that the straight line is punctuated.
Seconds, millimeters--I marvel at their finitude,
but this oval, so intricate, so light,
might well contain a universe.
Is it normal, you ask.
Normal's a shell game you seldom win.
Take my advice. Enjoy good health
not as your due but the blessing it is
like Spring, laughter,
death.


Veneta Masson RN is a nurse and poet living in Washington, DC. She has written three books of essays and poems, drawing on her experiences over twenty years as a family nurse practitioner and director of an inner-city clinic.

John Betjeman's Christmas

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain.
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hooker's Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that villagers can say
'The Church looks nice' on Christmas Day.

Provincial public houses blaze
And Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says 'Merry Christmas to you all'

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children's hearts are glad,
And Christmas morning bells say 'Come!'
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true? and is it true?
The most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?

And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant.

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was Man in Palestine
And lives to-day in Bread and Wine.

Betjeman was a strange man. In himself he was short and ugly, and he was a romantic dweller in the same imaginary world as Agatha Christie and Enid Blyton. But his poetry, while written in a traditional form had an immediacy that caught the imagination of ordinary people. We think of it now, as of a period, but it was written in that period and caught the atmosphere magnificently. He recognized the need to set it in real places, London shops, The Dorchester hotel, Slough that isn't fit for humans now, Aldershot sun, and anchor it in the experiences of ordinary people - who hasn't received a hideous tie, so kindly meant?

He was a High Anglican - typical of his social class and generation - with a simple faith, but in this poem in a gentle way he separates the nostalgia from the reality. Jesus Christ was God and he really did intervene in Time at a particular Place. We may not have the date right - December 25th in the year zero does not exist - but there was a Day and a Date.

New hymn.

In 1989 Rich Mullins wrote a short chorus "Our God is an awesome God" which we often sing in church. The tune sounds Israeli and we tend to sing the chorus five times going faster for each repeat and perhaps raising the key a semitone each time until it builds to crescendo. I often have the irreverent temptation to shout "Hey!" and smash a plate as it finishes. (Or is that Greeks?) I also feel quite guilty about singing it as it seems to me to smack of 'vain repetition'. Here are the words:

Our God is an awesome God,
He reigns from heaven above,
With wisdom power and love,
Our God is an awesome God!

This seems to me to be a final verse and there is scope for adding four more to precede it. It's not easy though. Essentially it means writing four rhyming couplets for the second and third lines of each verse. The content needs to tell the story from creation to salvation and the lines need to be very short; only six syllables.

With the benefit of steroids for my current course of chemotherapy, I woke early and thought about it. Here is my attempt at a first verse:

Our God is an awesome God,
Behold the world He's made,
And praise His power displayed,
Our God is an awesome God!


I'm not entirely happy with 'Behold' as it's a word much loved by the old hymn writers but not used today in normal speech. Is there a two syllable synonym with the beat on the second syllable? My Thesaurus offers 'observe' 'inspect' 'espy' or 'regard', none of which carries the commanding force of 'behold'. I can't see a way out.

The second constraint I foresee with such a tight verse structure is how to avoid the impression that it is God, the Father, who suffers on the cross but explaining the Trinity is too hard a task for such a short verse hence the next verse:

Our God is an awesome God,
Just glimpse His glorious grace,
To free this fallen race,
Our God is an awesome God!

Thesaurus coming in handy again for 'glimpse'. Am I overdoing the alliteration? Is 'free' OK or should it be 'save'? Is 'race' clear enough to stand for 'human race'?

Verses 3 and 4 must refer to the cross and the resurrection. To reduce the cross to just 12 syllables seems like blasphemy but I guess it can be done. Some of those 12 have to be linking words or the lines become too dense.

We have to assume knowledge of the meaning and effect of the crucifixion and just refer to it in the shorthand of a couple of words. How about:


Our God is an awesome God,
Nailed on a cross to die,
We watch and wonder why,
Our God is an awesome God!

or perhaps lines 2 and 3 should be reversed?

If we are assuming knowledge of the meaning of the cross isn’t line three nonsense? No because it places us in the immediacy of the cross; we stand with the disciples marvelling at what is happening. Does this avoid the error of God the father suffering or does it emphasise that Jesus is God?

Our God is an awesome God,
He rises from the grave,
With all He came to save,
Our God is an awesome God!

Not literally of course but it refers to I Corinthians 15:: 22 and following, also Romans 5:15 and Ephesians 4:8.

Finally we can place Rich Mullins’ verse at the end of the crescendo. So the whole hymn goes like this:

Our God is an awesome God,
Behold the world He's made,
And praise His power displayed,
Our God is an awesome God!

Our God is an awesome God,
Just glimpse His glorious grace,
To free this fallen race,
Our God is an awesome God!

Our God is an awesome God,
We watch and wonder why
He's nailed to a cross to die,
Our God is an awesome God!

Our God is an awesome God,
He rises from the grave,
With all He came to save,
Our God is an awesome God!

Our God is an awesome God,
He reigns from heaven above,
With wisdom power and love,
Our God is an awesome God!

Perhaps verse 3 should read

We watch and wonder why
He's nailed to a cross to die?

What do you think?

Yes, I've changed it.