To wish everybody a peaceful Christmas and to apologise for my absence from blogging in recent weeks, I hope you will enjoy this poem from Hilary Davies’ new collection Exile and Kingdom (Enitharmon Press, 2016). Though I don’t share her faith, I do share her hope, though too often the world seems determined to test both faith and hope.

In the Fire-Frost Morning

In the fire-frost morning the geese drive south

Trailing hosannas over the estuaries

And the beasts on the clockhouse stir.

From Tottenham Hale to Hackney Downs

The trumpets of day sound

And the gulls swarm up like heralds

Over the sleepers. ‘Awake! Awake!’

Throw open your skylights, thrust your heads to see:

Horseshoe thicket is afire with dawn

And the waters of Spring Hill teem.

Doors, dance. Fill the houses with praises.

God’s promise blazes in the reedbeds,

Bursting over the winter willows and sallows

All the way down to waiting Walthamstow.