A Hymn for the Ages

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May we spring up like grass in a field. 

May the rain cleanse and make the soil fertile

where once blood was wantonly spilled.

May we face beasts by the river

and remain upright like the hibiscus;

the martyred good shepherd, Fr. Imbert,

throngs of Chinese coolies who confessed your name

in Kranji plantations as their houses burned. 

 

May you heal our cankers and sores.

May we unlock the gate of hope

for schoolchildren and orphans of all colors.

May we shelter migrants in peace or war

and shine a light like candles at mass

as we did for priests fleeing communist China

or as that sweet nun singing a hymn in Changi

while placing rosary beads in the hanged inmate’s hands. 

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Visiting Scholars at Christmas

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Jerusalem and officials were agog

over a question, repeated like a chant, 

“Where is the newborn king?”

What brazenness for stargazers, 

ragged and foreign, to soil a palace,

foul the air with talk of uprising.

 

Priest-poets of old

sang of a child king in a hammock

among smokestacks in a suburb 

that winter would empty of turtledoves. 

The official, a wolf staking its grounds,

bade the visitors to comb streets,

 

send word of that child’s nest. 

The planets twirled like dervishes,

Leonids sputtered above a feeding trough.

The scholars were in awe at the stars and life.

The child, a branch of David, won the battle

tucked beside their gold and spices.

 

Those foreign men assumed a lead role

in averting tragedy in the Christmas drama

not with arms but empirical science, 

zeal for the good tested in the crucible

of the God child nursed by a mother among hay,

pure intimacy proven irresistible.

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Restoring a Mural in Changi Chapel

 

"Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do."

 

—Luke 23:34

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Under layers of paint,

like tar pits of memory,

the wearied arms and legs 

of five half-naked POWs—

crouching in outline. 

They are the dead we mourn—

who are raising Christ, 

alive and golden on the cross

in the mid-afternoon sun,

as if mercy sprouts a leaf 

breaking out of an ice floe,

as if hope could summon

sculpted captives

from deep marble slumber,

out of a plastered tomb wall

as a British bombardier

fights invisible monsters, 

wartime nightmares 

of raising blistered hands,

bony after three years of want,

of making brush bristles from hair

and mixing paint with crushed chalk.  

The prisoner mixes linseed oil

with salty sweat for body and gloss;  

his figures’ eyes are closed to defeat,

their spirit breaking at last the bonds of war.

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One Body

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A white American bewailed lockdown privation;

I recalled the cross planted on conquered lands;

A Singaporean saw verse as grace abounding in books;

A native American sewed Job’s sorrows into quilt bands;

An Episcopalian lady disavowed atelophobia in prayer;

A Canadian, awed by a missionary aunt, praised the Maker of all things new;

All joined with audio on Zoom controls, video appeared in layers;

Despite shaky wifi, we reached out like the blind with faith in view.

 

Some reunited with friends whose works stood on their shelf;

all bound to a community worshipping the Lamb in the ether,

a foretaste of heaven where there is no writers’ block,

where we work and read, sufficiently distanced, together;

eyes on the here and now, where grace meets us unmasked 

as we stay true to our calling to write about abiding love

though years have passed since our lips touched His burning coal,

a gift more precious than all the constellations shining above. 

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Author's Note:

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"Visiting Scholars at Christmas" previously appeared in A World in Transit (Ethos

Books, 2011).

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"Restoring a Mural in Changi Chapel" previously appeared in After the Fall (dirges

among ruins) (Ethos Books, 2014). Overcoming initial reluctance because of wartime trauma, Stanley Warren returned to Singapore’s Changi Prison thrice after World War II. He repainted his murals, rediscovered on the prison’s old infirmary walls. The gospel verse, Luke 23:34, is written on a Crucifixion mural by Warren.