Guest Post by Stephan Bauman
Before the hallelujah chorus
The Prince of Peace
The Wonderful Counselor;
Before the government falls upon His shoulders;
Before the Child was born unto Us
A peasant girl fell to her knees
And sang with abandoned praise:
“My soul glorifies
My spirit rejoices
For You look down upon
My lowly state”.
She wore a blue dress
The day she was sold
Because she thought
She was going to grandma’s house
Three villages away.
Instead
Her sister said
They couldn’t pay
For her anymore.
For seven years
She peered between
Bamboo slats,
And knelt to tremble
And to pray.
The boy said no
So the man cocked his gun
And said,
“If you don’t…”
So he did
An unspeakable thing
That day he became a soldier.
Two thousand years hence,
You look down again
Upon the lowly state
of child, of daughter, of son
And steal back
The blue-dress girl
Who says, today, she loves herself again
Who says she knows
You did not forsake;
You gaze upon the soldier boy
And slip your grasp around his heart
To remove his torment:
Today, he says he prays.
O how to reconcile
This happy day with sorrow stretched
Across our earthen clay?
The sugar-plum joy with blood-soaked pain
So close and yet so far?
Unto Us a Child is born
Not because the world is calm
Not because all is bright
No, the thrill of hope
Lies beyond our furthest reach
The fable still comforts the feeble
You still Bethlehem yourself
You still slip on fragile human skin;
And join our suffering;
You shatter the yoke of slavery
You break the oppressor’s rod;
You destroy the soldiers’ boots
And burn the bloodstained garments of our wars.
You, O Fury
O Relentless Soul
O Holy Fire
Tonight, You thunder;
Tonight, You speak.
Tonight the universe draws
Its frail and frantic breath
Into one collective gasp
And for just one barren moment
One Sabbath second
The world is
Silent.
