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Mark Shea: A Sonnet for Christmas

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As well as being a regular contributor on matters of theologyculture and news analysis, Mark Shea is a poet who has written two sonnets for The Catholic Weekly this year, for the great feasts of Easter and Christmas.

Here is his new poem for Christmas 2018.

A Sonnet for Christmas

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In the world’s morning, language was molten:
a liquid music sung in liturgies
when the children of earth rayed out golden
tones of praise in symphonic energies
mirroring the great Triple Chord Who made
all things. Our youngest words were poems,
not prose. We started with Achilles’ blade,
the aching of Gilgamesh, and Job’s groans.
Only when language had cooled to dull lead
and the ecstasy become the sheep-shaved
round of bureaucrats, statistics, and dead
fact, counting for taxes a race of slaves,
Only then, making old water’s wine fresh,
did the Word make us all Music in flesh.

See another poem by Mark Shea: A Sonnet for Easter

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