Hound of Heaven Hymns - Latest works

The puzzle ~ a villanelle of the questioning life

Life questions who am I and why’re we’re here –
There is a path as through the years we grow,
The soul takes thoughts into a myst’ry clear.

With early dangers soon we learn to fear
The world and people might become our foe;
Life questions who am I and why we’re here.

The wise and loving give us hope and cheer,
They share the riches of this life to know
The soul takes thoughts into a myst’ry clear.

We tread with care by edge’s drop so sheer,
Disaster’s near and joy can turn to woe.
Life’s questions who am I and why we’re here.

There is a light by which we all can steer.
A course through time’s relentless deathly flow:
The soul takes thoughts into a myst’ry clear.

Eternity is now and ever near.
It beckons from above and from below:
Life questions who am I and why’re we’re here –
The soul takes thoughts into a myst’ry clear.

Carol 2026

Metre: 10 10 10 10 10 10

Stockport

Love in your beauty break our stony hearts,
May we receive the joy this birth imparts;
Not just in comforts where we laugh and play
But in the darkness of our present day;
No one forsaken, lost or e’er forgot
By God incarnate in his manger cot.

Now at this crib we kneel – and so adore;
Gift of a saviour making rich the poor,
Thus all our treasure now we’re asked to share –
God’s face made known in service, love and care.
Here is the meaning of our Christmas feast:
Jesus the Saviour found in lost and least.

Night turns to day and water into wine,
Earth is transformed by son of David’s line:
King called as shepherd leading all God’s sheep,
Power stoops to conquer – meeting those who weep –
As from this stable love takes up his cross
To share our lives, our death – all joys and loss.

See how this difference makes a joyful sound
In heaven now joined with earth in common ground!
Jesus is born in Bethlem, house of bread,
Then food himself in broken body, bled.
This is the mystery born on Christmas day –
All time and purpose met in Christ the way.

Songs of the angels fill our every breath.
Flooding God’s light on both sides of our death.
Fear knows no darkness for the human race,
Daring to take his gift of truth and grace;
Christ born of Mary meets our every need:
Into his everlasting life we’re freed!

Christmas customs

our customs are
strong can they
contain the
child born as
contraband to
the powers and
traditions of
conformity
control
complacency
convenience
his birth is
found today
in the manner
of his death
outside the
safety of the
fortified walls
of our hearts
claiming a
wealth of joy
that bankrupts
our possessions
yet promises
us more and
for ever a
heartbeat a
way in the
face of the
unlovely
and unloved

Proportionality ~ a sonnet to weigh our sins?

The call to holiness does not appeal
To many as the road to form our lives:
Ambition, riches, status are so real,
A lure to make the most as prospect strives
To gain the comfort, ease, that wealth affords.
Yet love and mercy with this disagree.
We seek the paths which selfish gain applauds
But others lose and falter – never free.
This fact of sin is not a system clear
Which we can manage, barter, make a deal,
Add up our sins to pay a price less dear,
And carry on, no demons called to heel.
The way of God weighs not our foolish ways
In scales we’ve made to justify our days.

(written in Pizza Express before Verdi’s Macbeth from the Met, NY)

Leaves ~ a cyclical sonnet written in autumn

The canopy of leaves is branched above,
They bud so slow so fresh in vernal green
To shoot like fingers in a glove
And form the panoply of glory seen.
Through wind and rain and sun of summer days
They make a tree alive for coming years;
Then comes an end with glowing autumn blaze:
Their work is done, their beauty falls like tears.
This yearly cycle teaches us new truths:
Our days, like leaves, are short but beauty filled
Because we’re loved by power which nothing proves
Save life is all when death has all life killed.
The leaves of life might skitter at our feet
But they’re a sign that dashes bleak defeat.

(written in Côte Brasserie, Covent Garden, before a performance of Parsifal and dedicated to Sayed, the kindest of waiters)

The eye of the needle ~ a sonnet

The heavy laden camel is too wide –
The narrow alley’s fit for just a beast.
Logistics cannot cope with physics pride
In making most of all we want the least.
To thread a needle takes a steady hand,
An eye needs eyes that lock the gaze to sew:
There is no deal or bargain here to land –
Truth must change us if we want to grow.
This makes a problem when we find we’re rich,
We’re judged already by the things we own;
Possessions cause us all to drop the stitch
That makes us poor for ever and alone.
The eye’s true sight is found within each soul:
In poorest freedom find we richest goal.

artifice and intelligence

the smell of roasting coffee
childhood dejavus
fleeting phrase of music
glimpse of hill or sea

our spirit is touched
enlivened ablaze
intense and explosive
wistful and transported
a tapestry of living
intimating the hidden
numinous precious
the threshold of an
otherness lost and
found at the same time

artifice and intelligence
are not bedfellows and
have no time for feelings
let’s not trample on one
another and ourselves
by unleashing the blind
partiality of inhumanity
the unstoppable
cleverness of false gods

in a world of cheats
why are integrity and
care so disposable
beware the box whose
lid cannot be closed

Sonnet of sacrifice ~ 1

The word we use slips quickly off the tongue
For sacrifice is safe with costed price.
This risk is well but nought – no heart is wrung –
True blood is spilt in choice and roll of dice.
Our worlds collapse when faced with death’s true toll;
Our lives are never truly ours alone,
Much more unknown must change our human goal
Oft hid in loss and pain, each silent groan.
Thus disappointment is a blessing true
To switch our gaze and thoughts towards a light
That only shines when self to others flew –
And makes a vision bright in darkest night.
Now sacrifice brings life whate’er the cost
And brings abundant gain when all is lost.

Written on the train to see the Anish Kapoor exhibition in London

A sonnet of stasis

The world’s so different when we stop awhile,
Our days in motion set a pace of haste.
It’s only when we halt or sit, we smile,
And many people feel in life we’re chased.
This pace is set by deadlines we must meet
And then all else must scramble on aboard;
Life hurtles on – each day will ne’er repeat,
So spent this life by price we can’t afford.
The pulse of life needs measure so we rest;
Such space gives fuller meaning for our souls –
A view and thoughts to challenge and to test
The health and purpose of our daily roles.
Beware the dust of a stampeding herd
Which blinds us all in mindless vision blurred.

(written on a train between London and Rochester late at night)

The Skein ~ a sonnet of war and peace

There is a skein that runs through life and time,
A hidden web set in this world of ours,
Though mostly hid, it’s writ in human crime.
Each self will lie – combine in evil’s powers –
It’s often hard to call, e’en harder own –
The way we work makes cover for a show.
Denying, frightened, all the hate that’s sown
Is formed anew in reimagined foe.
We’re set against each other yet we’re one
As creatures born to live a life of love.
There’s always hope – the daily rising sun
Tells of a power that comes from high above.
Lift up your eyes from selfish means and ways:
Let peace abound, redeeming earthly days.

(written on a train between Rochester and London)

Sonnet of sacrifice ~ 2

Walls of blood and lumps of entrails raw,
The invert mountain hanging close and low
Where God instructs a death in horror’s awe
Before the knife is stayed from father’s blow.
The call of sacrifice runs long and deep
To expiate the darkness facing all;
This blackness beckons – all time and matter reap –
Its presence real in holding us in thrall.
By contrast, light reflected changes every view and sight:
The sky below, the ground above our feet,
Our ordered world remade in visions bright
To challenge all as myst’ries cost we meet.
Short life is here displaced in wonder’s clue
This world is open to a view more true.

Written after a visit to the Anish Kapoor exhibition
at the Hayward Gallery

The struggle ~ a sonnet of shared pain

We breathe – we live but nothing’s simply true –
We’re open, subject, to a path uphill
So daily struggles mark our steps and slew
The course and goal we hope we can fulfil.
All life’s a struggle – nothing ends till death
Snuffs out the powers and strengths we vainly boast
When taking all for granted in each breath
And fail to see who truly matters most.
This struggle is a blessing in disguise
To free us from ourselves when lost in self.
We falter, fail to find the greater prize
Of joy and peace, love’s gift in common wealth.
The struggle’s never mine alone but shared
By He who suffers with us, Love’s face bared.

(written in Pizza Express before Verdi’s Macbeth from the Met, NY)

signature 2

whatever he wrote it is a
mystery set in the dust the
Word incarnate pitching
his tent in time to challenge
us with forgiveness the
miracle of restoration new
life this signature is a
promise like but more than
a signed cheque or contract
our signature dies when we
die but it is written in a
dust of glory taken from
our eyes and powers into the
realm of the unique image
created and now redeemed
as clocks tick and deadlines
loom nothing is lost and
nothing is our hope the
negation of the falsities of
a compass that encompasses
self as the cardinal points of
a universe a creation that
passes like our transience
in the mortality of the ishness
from which self must die and
escape my signature says
nothing save that I’m loved by
the one who recognises the
hallmark of divinity written
engraved on my heart and the
one which beats and stops at
the same time

A sonnet of shuttered light

With open eyes we learn to see our world,
Its wonders and its woes are plain to see
 or so we think that like a flag unfurled
Life’s meaning found in signs and symbols free.
But sight is set by compass points not shared:
My way and purpose lit by glory’s sun
Which burns with ego’s rays, so no truth bared –
Just darkly seeing – danger’s loaded gun,
Blind certainties abound with doubt and fear,
A cocktail bound to blow with reckless power
And fill our lives with pains that bring a tear,
Despoiling love and peace’s fragile flower.
The shuttered light of human darkness bleak
Reminds us in our strength we’re truly weak.

(written in Côte Brasserie, Bluewater before seeing Fatherland at the cinema)