The Nativity? No. Something has gone wrong. There is a hole in the stable acid rain drips through onto an absence. Beauty is hoisted upside down. The truth is Pilate not lingering for an answer. The angels are prostrate 'beaten into the clay' as Yeats thundered. Only Satan beams down, poisoning with fertilisers the place where the child lay, harrowing the ground for the drumming of the machine- gun tears of the rich that are seed of the next war.
By R. S. Thomas from Counterpoint (1990) 2. Incarnation
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