Rowan Williams on Advent

Bruegel: Census at Bethlehem 
(like so many of Bruegel's paintings, the trick is to find the extraordinary event among the ordinary daily bustle: Mary and Joseph are here, if you care to look for them.)

Advent Calendar
by Rowan Williams

He will come like last leaf’s fall.

One night when the November wind

has flayed trees to bone, and earth

wakes choking on the mould,

the soft shroud’s folding.

He will come like the frost.

One morning when the shrinking earth

opens on mist, to find itself

arrested in the net

of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.

One evening when the bursting red

December sun draws up the sheet

and penny-masks its eye to yield

the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,

will come like crying in the night,

like blood, like breaking,

as the earth writhes to toss him free.

He will come like child.

And also, this: (if you don't mind irreverence, done reverently) - Christmas clerihews.