Where is love?

Mike Chapman 'Christ Child'

 

HOLY INNOCENTS DAY

The first words we were taught in Latin
Were amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant:
Verb, transitive; meaning love.
Outside the church on Trafalgar Square
Stands a great block of Portland Stone
With a carved new-born baby soft and smooth
Lying not in Christmas card manger
But on a rough bed of rock.

Round the plinth is inscribed:
‘In the beginning was the word…
And the word became flesh
And dwelt among us’.
Look once more at the naked baby
His cord has not even been cut
He lies without defences and alone
Can this truly be the Word made flesh?

Naked new borns lie in Mariupol’s wreckage
Mothers weep for their Infants in al-Shifa
With ash grey dust their only shroud
‘What kind of a country is afraid of hospitals
and maternity wards and destroys them?’
Is it leaders lusting to unleash
Their fear full fury while they can?
Wounded they see not neighbour but stranger,

Not brother but alien, animal, pest
To be butchered, mortared, missiled from our land.
We are the chosen inhabitants of this place
Pity we can’t afford, we dare not open our eyes
To the mothers drowning in agony
To children scraping away the rubble
Wailing for lost baby brother Isa
Loved in Gaza’s hell. Are you here, Emmanuel?

28th December 2023