Rejoice? Rejoice!
“Rejoice!” the preacher sang today this Advent Sunday three
“A cruel joke,” I muttered to my cellmate and TV
For twenty Christmas Eves I’ve been cooped here against my will
A couple more I’ll spend here while my kids enjoy the thrill
Of Christmas angels heralding the liberator’s birth.
“Rejoice!” I heard the minister preach from a freezing church
I shivered and I stamped my boots, the boiler in a lurch
What peace when heat cannot be bought for penny poor as we
The berries red on garland, as the roses on my cheeks
As Christmas angels strike their harps in time for all they’re worth
“Rejoice!” the Christmas ads declare and I’m flat on my back
They just fused migrant vertebrae — and joy is all I lack
The blue flourescent light above me in my line of sight
It hums a dreary monotone — it only rests by night
As Christmas angels flit about a pale, indifferent Earth
“Rejoice!” the chaplain brayed aloud as cancer ate my bones
If I could laugh I would have, all I offered was loud moans
The morphine doesn’t cut the stabbing pains in every limb
That coalesce into a frightful, sacrilegious hymn
As Christmas angels mock me with their weird ungodly mirth.
Hope may seem a sucker’s gone, a conman’s trick gone bad
Or coded into DNA for apes who might go mad
With too much time to think about what it is all about
Between their birth cries and the day the lights at last go out.
But in the field of doubt is planted seeds of faint belief
And memories fond are twined with threads that bear profoundest grief:
So, plucking strings set out of tune reverberate through each
Suggesting cleaner melodies — or so the scriptures teach
At Advent, as the days grow short, and frigid is the air
When darkness comes near victory, a small light glistens there
Of sun that comes amid the gloom to take its rightful place
In sky, in hearts, in spirits, on a child’s expectant face
A pris’ner counts the days till freedom, not the days he’d lost
A chilly church is home still, though the panes are thick with frost
A healing back will bear grandchildren to the store and from
A tearful tale, when listened to, is temporary balm.
The Christmas angels hurry not to bring an instant, total cure
But hope that gives us strength to wait, to sort out, to endure
As once a manger dark and fetid, layered with manure
Brought forth a light our value to divinity assure.