Poems and Ploughshares

This piece was initially prompted by my current parallel reading of Gladys Ganiel's "Considering Grace", dealing with how the Presbyterian Church handled the Troubles, Robert Harris's "The Second Sleep", which turns on the relationship between the past, future, presnt and faith, a book produced by my son Ciaran's archaeology department, and Avivah Zornberg's psychoanalytic, midrashic comentary "The Murmuring Deep" from which I posted the following quote by Osip Mandelstam on Sunday.

"poetry is the plough tearing open and turning over time so that the deep layers of it, its rich black undersoil, ends up on the surface.... Mankind ... craves, like a ploughman, for the virgin soil of time."

I took the liberty of stealing a particularly evocative line, but then I freely acknowledge that artistically and intellectually, I am little more than one of those birds that swoop in after the plough or the seed drill to snatch something tasty after someone else has done the hard work.

But this is my offering for New Year's Eve, that arbitrary day of celebrating the movement from one year into another (not one decade into another... you have to wait another year for that! I may not be original but I am a pedant...)

Swords turned into ploughshares

Words turning over fallow fields

Cutting into the grassy ground

Uncovering broken treasures

Of times almost forgotten

Slowing the progress of the plough

Revealing rich black undersoil

Nourished by blood and decay

Ready to receive the sown seed

Wheat or weeds

Selah

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