wordsout by Godfrey
Rust
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Baby
crying
The
scene is familiar. A baby is sleeping.
His mother’s worn out. It’s been a hard day.
A few hours before she was groaning and
weeping,
just a child, giving birth in the usual way.
The
place doesn’t matter, except it’s not cosy
the way that the prettiest Christmas cards say,
with kings humbly kneeling, the stable all
rosy,
the little Lord Jesus asleep on the
hay.
Forget
the carol constructed so neatly—
the cattle are lowing, the baby
awakes.
Forget the Sundayschool singing so sweetly
that little Lord
Jesus no crying he makes.
The
baby is crying. The baby is human
and the baby is God and he cries with the
shock.
He cries for the keys to his coming kingdom.
He cries for the devil who first picked the
lock.
He
cries for the mother whose heart will be broken.
He cries for the children that Herod will find.
He cries for the father whose fears are
unspoken
but for ever will trouble his uncertain mind.
He
cries for food in a land ploughed by famine.
He cries for freedom behind a barred door.
He cries for a judge who will come and examine
the reasons for sin and the causes of war.
He
cries for the rich, who on hearing him crying
lean over and say There now, give us
a smile!
He cries for the camps full of refugees dying—
his tears are the Congo,
the Danube, the Nile.
He
cries for all pharisees, each of them giving
the reasons why sadly they have to refuse.
He cries out for Lazarus, both dead and living.
He cries for two thousand years of excuse.
He
cries for the strength that he needs to prepare him
to learn obedience in thirty long years.
Good Friday will come. Death will not spare
him:
the world will at last be baptised with his
tears.
His crying at night is his effort to waken
the sleeping and dead whom he came to live
through.
He cries to the God who must leave him
forsaken.
He cries out to me. He cries out to you.
Written
for the carol service at St John’s,
West Ealing
in 1996. For a carol service for Iraq in 2013 the last line of verse 7
was changed to "his tears are the Tigris, Euphrates and Nile".
The
poem was edited in 2017, removing two
verses (between verses 8 and 9).
Typical
performance time: 2 minutes 15 seconds.
© Godfrey Rust, godfrey@wordsout.co.uk. See here for details of permissions for use.