I first heard these wonderful words of the Incarnation during a candle lit Advent service at St Thomas’s in Cowes a few weeks ago, and today Ed Matyjaszek has given permission to share his poem on our website.
Some words of the Incarnation encourage us to imagine pictures, some invite us to re-create sounds and smells, but Edmund Matyjaszek’s poem “A Christmas Lullaby” is full of emotions – pain, joy, suffering and love – and the simple, silent, soft beginning of the Incarnation as “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” [Jn 1:14]:
A Christmas Lullaby By Edmund Matyjaszek
You swing him cradled in your arms,
Quiet and slow, your single boy.
Keep him now from pain and harms,
Keep him for this time of joy.
He will grow to know it fully
Suffering all that pain;
The anguish on the hill, the folly,
The voices that come back again
Whispering, whispering “It’s useless –
Why persist? Why go on?”
Keep him now in gentleness.
That time, we know, that time will come.
Hush – keep soft, keep quiet, he wakes now,
Stirs; eyes blink at the day.
Rock him, rock him, rock him slowly.
Look – he sleeps again. We pray
To him to rescue us from sinning
But for this moment must recall
The simple, silent, soft beginning –
Your love, your arms, the humble stall.
© EdMund Matyjaszek
Ed Matyjaszek is the Principle of:
Priory School of Our Lady of Walsingham
Beatrice Avenue
Whippingham
Isle of Wight
PO32 6LP
