Like a Child
Poem by Rowan
Williams
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.
© Rowan Williams