A sinister Christmas poem.

[tree_and_leaf]

By Charles Causley, an interesting and under-rated poet - possibly because he wrote so deceptively simply. In Britain, he's probably known best for his poem about a neglected child ("Timothy Winters comes to school/ With eyes as wide as a football pool.") A lot of his poems have a religious theme - ("I am the great sun, but you do not see me") - though like RS Thomas, they seem to oscillate between hope, anger and despair. He also has a tremendously strong sense of place, particularly with regard to his native Cornwall. Auden reported that Causley was given to saying that "while there are some good poems which are only for adults, because they pre-suppose adult experience in their readers, there are no good poems which are only for children." This seems to me to be dead right (it's true of books and music, too).

Anyway, the poem, which has been recorded in a spine-chilling version by the Yorkshire folk collective Coope, Boyes and Simpson is under the cut:



Innocents Song


Who's that knocking on the window,
Who's that standing at the door,
What are all those presents
Lying on the kitchen floor?

Who is the smiling stranger
With hair as white as gin,
What is he doing with the children
And who could have let him in?

Why has he rubies on his fingers,
A cold, cold crown on his head,
Why, when he caws his carol,
Does the salty snow run red?

Why does he ferry my fireside
As a spider on a thread,
His fingers made of fuses
And his tongue of gingerbread?

Why does the world before him
Melt in a million suns,
Why do his yellow, yearning eyes
Burn like saffron buns?

Watch where he comes walking
Out of the Christmas flame,
Dancing, double-talking:

Herod is his name.

Comments

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

This is true. Although most of my favorite Christmas songs have a hint of the melancholy, being about things like massacred toddlers and impending crucifixions and reminders that you could totally die tomorrow... ;)