The Baptist's Cry
The melancholy of unrealised hope
Crystallises in a wild man,
Saying what the heart has not quite said
Since time began.
The sore relentlessness of sacrifice
At last gives way to water and the Word;
Love is as yet unenshrined
But hope is heard.
The golden halo of the enriched
Encompasseth not the outcast:
Jesus we see as softening the harsh
Message of what will come last:
Cousins in warning and redemption,
Martyrs standing out against the barren strong:
A dirge more than a hymn
For a desperate throng.
Remember his solitude and prayer;
The times the angels were not there;
The grating prophet of discomfort,
Of the unthinkable prayer.
As he waxes I must wane
But now on Jordan's bank
Reality is far more pressing than the theory,
Or the exercise of rank:
All realisations are collective,
Built upon a single spark;
So little yet of formulation,
Humble we must address the stubborn dark.