R.S. Thomas wrote the justly famous Advent poem 'The Coming' (which has appeared here before) –
'And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look, he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows: a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.'
Thomas also wrote another fine poem simply titled 'Coming', which seems to be more about the Second Coming, but considers the coming of Christ to Earth as something recurrent, part of a mysterious creative process of unfolding, 'invisible as a mutation'...
'To be crucified
again? To be made friends
with for his jeans and beard?
Gods are not put to death
any more. Their lot now
is with the ignored.
I think he still comes
stealthily as of old,
invisible as a mutation,
an echo of what the light
said, when nobody
attended; an impression
of eyes, quicker than
to be caught looking, but taken
on trust like flowers in the
dark country toward which we go.'
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