We live in an age fed not bread but its crumb,
Flung out so we heed the bugler and the drum
With scant peace to hear that angelic hum
Chanting of our God beneath deafening thrum.
Mad rulers say there’ll be all hell to pay,
Rain down their terror by night and by day
While poets paint Theban sands stretching away
And bombs rive the ground where the children play.
Women and men unpiece grey piles of rubble;
Young lads march up to the front with fresh stubble.
And here I sit, moaning in my little bubble,
Dining and whining of each newborn trouble.
My home is a war zone with no hill to climb;
An unholy mess, and I can’t find the time
To pick up the shoes, wipe the dust and the grime
From shutters and floorboards. It would be sublime
To wind back the clock, and turn down the news,
Run the rug under a vacuum and lose
The wrappers and rubbish that have no more use –
Then light a tea candle and gently suffuse
The air with frankincense. ‘Mid drudgery and dross
I thumb through the Bible and turn to the cross –
And suddenly nothing’s an albatross
To weigh down my life – but all’s gift despite loss.
At once my womb loosens and sinks to the Earth,
My lungs fill and breasts rise to touch heaven’s girth,
And diamonds nor carats could ever be worth
The freedom I feel on the edge of rebirth.
My hackles relax and I rise a bit higher.
I stand in the flames of a kindling desire
For bottomless faith, and that smouldering fire
Glows on every object made by the Messiah.
For all of the trauma and unruly violence
That churns up our days, there is this: a repentance.
The mess that I see I took for a death sentence,
Yet here too is God … I must pause to bear witness.
– M.M. Leveille
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