Advent calendar 1st December

There were times I could have shaken him warmly by the throat when he was actually in post as Archbishop of Canterbury, but now he is retired (and his disappointing successor has to face the wrath and sorrow of the congregation) I can appreciate Rowan William’s academic and literary merits. I rather like this poem entitled Advent Calendar. 

Advent Calendar
Rowan Williams

He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

I have taken the poem from an Australian church resource website here.