Like a Child
When Tim Brown asked
me to write a short piece for the 2002 Advent Carol Service in Clare he suggested
a number of possible texts. My eye
immediately lighted on “Advent Calendar”
by Rowan Williams, and by fortunate chance this happened to be on the very day
that it was announced that he was to become Archbishop of Canterbury; it was
doubly appropriate as Dr. Williams had been a former Dean of the College. It is a poem of rich, but stark imagery
reflecting his passionate humanity and real concern for the natural world, and they
are wonderfully vivid words for musical setting. I have tried to respond with music that
balances astringency with richness, angularity with beauty of line, and anguish
with a sense of the calm message of hope promised by the coming of Christ.
He will come like last leaf’s
fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to bone, and
earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.
He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking
earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.
He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.
He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him
free.
He will come like child.
© Christopher Brown
2002