Advent, day twenty.

Did any of you watch Alternativity on BBC2 the other day? (If not, by the wonders of the i player, it is here.) It was a Banksy/Danny Boyle school nativity play with a difference- the kids were from Palestine and it was filmed in the shadow of one of the walls built to enforce a new kind of Apartheid by the Israeli neighbourhood bullies. It was the very opposite of slick and polished made-for-TV trash. It was full of real people, delighting in music and fake snow. Despite all the evidence to the contrary in that part of the world, it reeked of hope.

So, today’s poem dares to hope.

Starlight

 

To you whose hope

Seems stolen

Know this tender thing;

The bruised old sky above you

(Which seems to yawn indifference)

Is, in fact, leaking light.

 

Particles tumble down

Like this promise;

I am here

Where you are

 

For I know what you know

I see what you see

The walls you build are no protection

From starlight

 

My stars leave no shadow

And in this gentle light

Hope grows

Even snow

Becomes possible.