Finally comes the poet – On not Getting Over the Miracle of the Word Made Flesh.

Christmas has come and gone. The birth of the Prince of peace has been celebrated.

Epiphany and the Magi, representatives of human searching for that which is beyond our knowing and beyond our reach, those wise, thoughtful, perplexed travellers, they too have come – and gone.

And in Syria Assad still murders the innocents.

In Northern Ireland fear and hatred still takes to the streets and hurls destruction.

In Newtown Massachussets the children go back to school, another school, to learn, and pray God to see the world through eyes that will recover a sense of beauty, wonder and goodness.

And in a world like this, "finally comes the poet", those gifted prophets for whom the Word not only describes, but redescribes the world.

Levertov is such a poet.

Denise Levertov (1923–1997)

On the Mystery of the Incarnation

It's when we face for a moment

the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know

the taint in our own selves, that awe

cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart:

not to a flower, not to a dolphin,

to no innocent form

but to this creature vainly sure

it and no other is god-like, God

(out of compassion for our ugly

failure to evolve) entrusts,

as guest, as brother,

the Word.