Blackbird in Fulham
A John the Baptist bird which comes before
The light, chooses an aerial
Toothed like a garden rake, puts a prong at each shoulder,
Opens its beak and becomes a thurifer
Blessing dark above dank holes between the houses,
Sleek patios or rag-and-weed-choked messes.
Too aboriginal to notice these,
Its concentration is on resonance
Which excavates in sleepers memories
Long overgrown or expensively paved-over,
Of innocence unmawkish, love robust.
Its sole belief, that light will come at last.
The point is proved and, casual, it flies elsewhere
To sing more distantly, as though its tune
Is left behind imprinted on the air,
Still legible, though this the second carbon.
And puzzled wakers lie and listen hard
To something moving in their minds’ backyard.
P J Kavanagh
I love this poem, above all for the line: "its sole belief, that light will come at last". That is Advent. Hope. Light coming into darkness. And to experience the beauty and brilliance of the light, one must first sit awhile in the dark. Feel the hopelessness of a world of evil, sin, destruction, war. It's into that darkness that Christ came once already. At Advent we remember that coming. But, we also look forward to His second coming which will be quite different. So, even though the light has come, we also live in the tension of the now and not yet. Things are still very wrong. At His second Advent, all things will be made new.
