Advent 1

~ a villanelle ~

Dec 04, 2024

*Hello all. Lovely to have so many new folks over here, from the Rabbit Room Poetry Substack, which featured 7 of my prophet poems over the last two weeks. Welcome! If you are new to my newsletter, the liturgical calendar features pretty heavily. So, Happy New Year! Advent has begun! I will be sharing Advent poems over the next 4 weeks before returning to Elijah & Elisha in January.

*These Advent poems were commissioned by my church, as part of a CICW arts ministry grant we received for 2024.

*While I have written for specific gatherings or groups before, I’ve never had this many parameters for poems. Here they are, in bullet point form, so you can enter this scanty plot of ground with me (also, needs be is one of my favorite older English phrases that I’m employing here for fun). I approached these four poems with these many needs be’s:

needs be excellent enough to warrant a proper “commission”
needs be aware of, if not in conversation with, Advent lectionary readings
needs be for a worship service
needs be for an Anglican worship service, in Boston, in 2024
needs to speak to the historic Christian understanding of Advent (waiting with Israel for the Messiah, waiting with Mary for the birth of Jesus, anticipating Jesus’ second return —all in a posture of penitence and hope)
needs to speak to our particular church focus during Advent (bringing our longings to the Lord)
needs be short enough for a brief liturgical moment within the service
needs be accessible enough for hearers to derive something meaningful from just one hearing
needs be accessible for children’s ears (as they will all be gathered up front around the Advent wreath, and me, while I read it)

I think that’s all of them. Sheesh.

Malcolm Guite

, how have you written all that you’ve written, to be publicly read in church services? You are a wonder. It is quite a different thing for me to make poems like this. Therefore (?) I decided to make it even harder. Long have I had it in my heart to write a villanelle I was proud of. I have tried and failed. Now, I’ve written 4 villanelles, y’all, and it’s been a laborious joy. Here’s the first one, Advent 1:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

More of Your Light— more light is what we need—
a sudden flash, or rising sun, however
you will come— Come! and be the dawn, we plead

with You. Shadow covers our earth aspeed
while we, like frightened cave-dwellers, cower
blue-lit. But light—Your Light is what we need.

No cave can be our home, why do we feed      	
the bellowing, beleaguered, hidden monster?
—his voice is night. LORD, be the dawn, we plead

again! Break into each old lair and read
our secret drawings, etched in hope, in fear—
Let there be light! Your Light is what we need.

Our only rescue? By Your hand. Come lead
us out, lost in tunnels getting darker,
bring us to break of day, to dawn! We plead

for heaven’s rending— O let daylight bleed
into the cracks, split this stone asunder
until our nights be day—more light, we need!
Blind us with light! Come! be our Dawn, we plead.

Monafolkspeak

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