Regression

Turn back the sky.

2000 years it revolves, in time-machine spirals,

Unwinding precession until the stars

Are shaped like the past, and shine

Chill and cold over the dim hopes of history.

 

2000 years to Jerusalem,

To Bethlehem and Nazareth

Where across the Arab wastes and over Persia

The pillar of cloud and the greatest star

Burned in heaven:

Fire and smoke equal in the high, wide heavens.

 

The wise men and the practical men

Watched for portents in their separate lives.

Signs foretold the coming of the glory of the Lord.

And Mary and Joseph

Went about the business of their age,

Walked under the same sky

Looked for comfort and shelter

And the hosts of the air sang allelulia.

 

Mary lay down in humble sleep

Great with child on a bed of straw,

God's seed and the hope of tomorrow

Growing in her.

Joseph, the quiet father,

Bore paternity with an earthly kind of love.

He was waiting for Jesus to come,

To be named as one who helps

One who will lift the world at last,

A little nearer Heaven.

And it was cold

And the glass stars shivered.

Angels, cherubim and seraphim

Sang in the air.

Hissing and crackling they were the aurora

The magnetic atmosphere polarised with fire,

Alive as the serpent coiled around the waist of the earth.

 

And came the wise men and the shepherds:

What gifts could they bring to compare

With such a gift of birth?

Any child, this child,

Someone who would recreate us in tomorrow's place

With practical hands and a wise heart.

Then in thirty years or so,

Go about his fathers business,

Take the troubles of the world

Upon a shoulder:

All the sin and injustice, all the disharmony and pain,

And hang them round his body on Calvary.

Travelling in Time Cycle

Hourglass

Regression