Theoria 11


Eyes: which saw the angel
in the winter flock

of their sheep, numinous
above the valley – and us.

Summon them, king.
Summon the shepherds

to go wide eyed, wandering
into your trumpet’s

hosanna.
We?

Stand still
huddled together on the top of the hill –

the night a hullabaloo in our twisted guts
a dizzy confusion of bleating.

At last, around dawn,
a lamb, still born.

The peril of damn rumour’s in the icy wind.
A panic rises through the mute beasts.

Who will help us now on our hopeless journey?
Shame averts our gaze from pain, at least.

Oh where has our master gone?
Where is the crook and the staff

of the shepherd
to guide us over the hills

with the guilt of being spared
gnawing our innards?

For we are poor.
We are lost.

We need our herdsman
with his glad eyes behind us.

We – who are huddled together.
We – who are stupid forever.

We – in whom confusion reigns.
We – for whom pain

is a wild bleating in oblivion.

 


Note

The ontological status of the speaker is indeterminate. The most that can be said is that the poem refers to the appearance of the angels above Bethlehem at the time of the birth of Christ. The biblical account (Luke Ch2, v8-20) vividly portrays the terror of the shepherds at the appearance of the angels – clearly the seraphim put the fear of God into the ignorant herdsmen. Characteristically, however, the text omits to mention the reaction of the sheep to the visiting angels. Were they also thunderstruck? Did they scatter in fear? The evangel does not say. Perhaps they were oblivious. There is also doubt, it has to be said, as to the attitude of the angels towards the animals. In his Duino Elegies Rilke, citing higher authorities, suggests that angels cannot differentiate between the living and the dead; but these authorities are more ambivalent on the question of the animals. Is it possible to argue that in a certain kind of angelic perception the difference between human beings and sheep is annulled? Perhaps, in the eyes of angels, we are all grouped together as one. 

The biblical account is silent, too, as to the subsequent fate of the animals. What became of them when the shepherds suddenly departed, wild eyed and in haste, in order to greet the new born babe? It is surely stretching credibility to argue that the shepherds drove their flocks of sheep before them into Bethlehem. After all, this would have created pandemonium in the little town and aroused the ire of the civic authorities. Let us not forget that the shepherds would have wished to slip into Bethlehem quietly, not least because of the turbulent political situation. Presumably the sheep were just abandoned. This is the most obvious explanation. After all, it is not as if the shepherds didn’t have a lot on their minds. What do a few dozen sheep matter compared to news of the Messiah? In comparison to the tidings of His advent on the earth the humdrum cares of common life would presumably quickly turn to dust. It seems, then, that the sheep were simply abandoned to their fate, abandoned to the night of Israel.

An infant bawled in a stable; the shepherds set off through the dark to pay homage – but to what? To whom? The sheep bleated in the hills, lost.

A parable.