it is a dead nativity
that the burned, blind berries stand serried on the trees,
and the scuttered, flittering fields in the rafters of the grail,
and the angelus that floats in a spineless, furling sea,
with the nailed crests of children raining on the dales,
and the priesthoods raving madly,
and the swell smell of snow within a wood, and the taraway stars
warming down upon a wombless world, and the booming babies
harpstung with the maidens whose wildness floams and scars
in the bullring laid bereft by the oxened lady.

once, when the lord rode lowly
on a cloud of bitter butter pure as molten lead,
as the food of god was lovely, a flare from herald angels fell,
where, roving gaily, the scrolls of fire burned up their beds
and tore across the crucifixion’s cells;
and there, in the sun-slicked fields,
burning then as now, the tyrelit, crazy isles
of jacob and his sandalled ladder roared and rose and fell
from east to west, across a fairied, occidental smile
that combed the crypted yards for angelled drums
and banged back dearly,
with the cattle purring and the rousering cats alight
and the scuffled birds and the spheres of music clearly
varnishing into the beards of night. Oh,
the maids of molten minions lunged in red delight!

and the lord set forth and strayed
in his mused career: in the city marshes, levees, and
the banging nights on the hill, he strayed
and shaped a roman rhythm from his ovum-pealing hands
as time, ignobling, bouldered up the graves.
but only the wind sang.

the hunger of the birds was thrilled into the swording spine,
and the waters, crossing, crushed upon the holy lungs
and brought the curs of eden into nether, knocking crimes
that none could spring. No,
to deliver, to be slaved,
in losing life, the lord above must always seem
as careless as a warbler! how the mazy, granite grave
crashes round the mind and breaks its native scheme
blows maniacally back against the world in nave
and yields no prayer

and the minstrels, who, once flowing in their regalled song,
pared the ravens down with the runes of open love,
and the weals on the winds of the glowering and strong
who, once certain, aspired to hand in glove,
and the passion of the floaming
ecstatic scream that hires the word above;
none, nobody here nor elseways, could save nor shore nor
restore the love of jesus to the buds,
nor the war of loving to the grievance of the good.
but the red wings are raised
and the carved limbs of spiders throe and flock –
webs of age on moving stones are spun and always spurned
and the cancer in the oat of sin is defrocked;
and the heavens, burning, furnish into fens
the simple words of immortal stains –

Jim Bellamy was born in a storm in 1972. He studied hard and sat entrance exams for Oxford University. Jim has won three full awards for his poems. Jim has a fine frenzy for poetry and has written in excess of 22,000 poems. Jim adores the art of poetry. He lives for prosody.

You can find more of Jim’s work here on Ink Pantry.