Poets in unlikely places
By Bruce Keisling December 15, 2006
Keith informed us last Sunday that he wasn’t a poet, and his tone of voice implied that he didn’t have much time for it. You might like it if you tried it though Keith, which is the perspective I am trying to keep about football. Today I want to rock your world just a little and present you with a poem and a poet from an unexpected source. You may not know it, but D. A. Carson, Research Professor of NT at Trinity Evangelical Divinty School has a volume of published poetry. Yes, it is true Keith. Pastors, theologians and Biblical scholars appreciate poetry. Carson had a volume of poems published by Baker in 1994 entitled Holy Sonnets of the Twentieth Century. John Donne, who I have quoted before, wrote some amazing “Holy Sonnets” and Carson has used the same form. Carson dedicates the book of poems to Martyn Lloyd Jones, a famous British pastor, known to many, who also loved poetry. So you see Keith, it is all around you. I have never checked, but my guess is that Robert E. Lee liked poetry a lot too. Most old Southern gentlemen did.
Since you will have Christmas, I shall give it to you. I thought that it would be appropriate to offer one of Carson’s poems on the incarnation. His sonnets are grouped in series related to theolgocial themes even. — Imagine Keith, theological poetry. Here is a poem inspired by John 1:
Incarnation: Nine
The opening music of the heavenly spheres
Has not yet sounded, nor has come to light
The texture, intricacy, color-flight
Of cosmos, introducing history’s years.
And yet, already God transcendent sears
The Void with holy splendor, glory bright,
No shadows known, no meaning yet to night,
Sans shade, sans death, sans sin, sans hate, sans tears.
God’s Self-Expression, his own Son, his Word
Joins with his Father, clothed with light of bliss,
In solemn covenant, resolve assured,
To save the lost who do not yet exist.
Transcendent Deity now deigns to mesh
With finite clay: the Word takes on our flesh.