The Abbey of Misrule

Share this post

Happy Christmas

paulkingsnorth.substack.com

Discover more from The Abbey of Misrule

Do not be conformed to this world
Over 45,000 subscribers
Continue reading
Sign in

Happy Christmas

A poem and a song

Paul Kingsnorth
Dec 25, 2022
162
Share this post

Happy Christmas

paulkingsnorth.substack.com
41
Share

Happy Christmas to all of my readers. Here are two little gifts from me.

Below is a famous poem by Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh: a memory of his childhood, which he wrote after spending an adult Christmas alone in his Dublin flat.

Above is a Christmas song: an English hymn sung by the Romanian nuns at my local Orthodox monastery here in the West of Ireland, to a tune allegedly composed by monastery-smasher Henry VIII.

Have a blessed day.


A Christmas Childhood

One side of the potato-pits was white with frost -
How wonderful that was, how wonderful!
And when we put our ears to the paling-post
The music that came out was magical.

The light between the ricks of hay and straw
Was a hole in Heaven's gable. An apple tree
With its December-glinting fruit we saw -
O you, Eve, were the world that tempted me.

To eat the knowledge that grew in clay
And death the germ within it! Now and then
I can remember something of the gay
Garden that was childhood's. Again.

The tracks of cattle to a drinking-place,
A green stone lying sideways in a ditch,
Or any common sight, the transfigured face
Of a beauty that the world did not touch.

My father played the melodion
Outside at our gate;
There were stars in the morning east
And they danced to his music.

Across the wild bogs his melodion called
To Lennons and Callans.
As I pulled on my trousers in a hurry
I knew some strange thing had happened.

Outside in the cow-house my mother
Made the music of milking;
The light of her stable-lamp was a star
And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle.

A water-hen screeched in the bog,
Mass-going feet
Crunched the wafer-ice on the pot-holes,
Somebody wistfully twisted the bellows wheel.

My child poet picked out the letters
On the grey stone,
In silver the wonder of a Christmas townland,
The winking glitter of a frosty dawn.

Cassiopeia was over
Cassidy's hanging hill,
I looked and three whin bushes rode across
The horizon — the Three Wise Kings.

And old man passing said:
‘Can't he make it talk -
The melodion.' I hid in the doorway
And tightened the belt of my box-pleated coat.

I nicked six nicks on the door-post
With my penknife's big blade -
there was a little one for cutting tobacco.
And I was six Christmases of age.

My father played the melodion,
My mother milked the cows,
And I had a prayer like a white rose pinned
On the Virgin Mary's blouse.


Give a gift subscription

162
Share this post

Happy Christmas

paulkingsnorth.substack.com
41
Share
Previous
Next
41 Comments
Share this discussion

Happy Christmas

paulkingsnorth.substack.com
David Simpson
Writes Gather no moss
Dec 25, 2022

Happy Christmas to you too. I was woken this morning at 6 am by our local orthodox priest ringing his bell furiously to announce Christmas morning Eucharist and then listening to him chanting the service over loudspeakers. So I enjoyed the service from the warmth of my bed

Expand full comment
Reply
Share
Fiona K
Dec 25, 2022

Thanks, Happy Christmas

Expand full comment
Reply
Share
39 more comments...
Top
New
Community

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2023 Paul Kingsnorth
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great writing