The Blind Boy and his Beast

The Boy and the Wolf

I. Hervé is Born.
Born in November
in the short days:
born leaning against
the slanting rain:
born from a frozen prayer
to a bleak God.
Knitted in solitude
in a womb
pricked by a vow and
surprised into swelling.

II. Hervé’s First Sight.
Pushing aside dark earth,
a milk-film
over his eyes:
this small stone of a boy
ate dirt, while the
glory danced white
on blank, black retinas.

III. Hervé Learns About the World.
Grasses by their hissing
and sharp cuts:
fur by its musk
and static crackle:
snowdrops by their tinkling
on his fingertips;
the world attacked him,
was a lightning strike
inside his chest.

IV. Hervé Has Visions.
And in his twilight
a light more sumptuous
seeped in;
a bending tree and he
was fighting dragons,
the broken sun on
rough-topped rivers
and he was rich in diamonds,
smiling mad.
He fell to pray
before the hilltop shepherd
who flexed an angel’s wings:
a cloak that rippled
threadbare in the wind.

V. Hervé Sees The Wolf.
He saw,
the day The Wolf came,
he saw the threat
and the salvation.
He saw the shape of undergrowth:
thicket-dark, triangular,
he saw a head
the shape of a snarl
in heated breath.

VI. Hervé’s Dog is Killed By The Wolf.
What did he see
in the smell of hot-iron
from the slaughtered dog?
What bright colours,
what beauty was in his hands
slipping through
spilled intestines?
What overwhelming, pungent
touch of heaven came?

VII. The Wolf Attacks Hervé.
And The Wolf turned
with the world
around the boy
and teeth the temperature
of ice pushed through skin:
here where the heavy pelt,
muscle-packed, pressed
the boy and his skin tore
breaking the line of holiness
that runs around a saint.

VIII. Hervé Redeems The Wolf.
A blinding alleluia of light
as from the boy
love tumbled,
burst like river-diamonds,
mingling with The
Wolf’s breath,
flooding the grasses, fur,
the snowdrops,
heating the prayer
that made him.

IX. Hervé and The Wolf Together.
That moment hung,
a stopped raindrop,
a never falling leaf
within his soul: quivering.
It abided there.
The Wolf abided
at the centre of him.

X. Hervé Prays
Unable to contain it
all inside, the boy
began to howl;
a voice of red and gold,
a passion, sung like petals
spewing, uncontrollable
from God’s own lips,
and everything that heard him
leaned and swayed
and healed a little
as he lay his head
forever
on the shoulder of The Wolf.

Callum James 2004

Reproduced with the kind permission of the poet.

Callum's Blog

Tend

I. Jesus is condemned to death

Man and man
are standing in the
white stone and high
columns of palaces.

Silence and frustration
hanging as the dust in
warm air circulates.

Questions about truth
are soft curls of
sunlight and silence,

and somewhere in the years
beyond this room and this judgement,

a million voices speak

with him

of injustice

in a blinding white silence.

From Stations of the Cross
By Callum James

Red Halter

II. Jesus is given his cross

Skin
and splinter
and blood.

Cracked grain and tight knot
to be worked and eased
like a muscle strung in pain

and butting against rough wood.
Rough hewn it will weigh down
a line of vertebrae

and twist through years
into precious metals, mother of pearl, soft
engraving and small pendant.

Dead wood will flower
and flow like the water
drawn on its grain.

Skin
and splinter
and blood.


From Stations of the Cross
By Callum James

The Second Fall

VII. Jesus falls for the second time

Is it the world tips
or the pitch of liquid
in a dizzied ear?

The sickening spin
and the sudden
unavailability
of grip
conspire.

There must be tears
down here where the view
is sandal-straps
and calloused toes
and dog's paws and
tall, tall people
who rise above and seem complete.

God has crumpled
to a bag of stick limbs
and is empty as dust.

There must be tears down here.

This is a fall
that will shake the world.

From Stations of the Cross
By Callum James

Stumbles and Falls

IX. Jesus falls for the third time

Down and down
to where toenails
are hard yellow
and breath is an intake of dirt
and where the gutters
run damp and stinking at noon.

Where the sun has gone:
an eclipse of legs and hem
lines.

Even the fascinated wince,
even their intake of breath
stutters as body and bloodied
wood crack heavy to the grit.

Light twists and heaven is,
for only a moment, dark.

And the moment stretches
and it will always be there
in the memory of angels.

from Stations of the Cross
by Callum James