Hound of Heaven Hymns - 2025 ~ A Shift in Perspective

A Christmas Cantilena

(based on the chiastic structure of Pietru Caxaro's 'Cantilena' c. 1470 in Maltese)

Across the years a song has sung
Formed in our hearts from yearnings deep
For one to come – as hope has sprung –
That love will shepherd us like sheep.
Our searching, fighting, lying tongue
Cries out amidst the tears we weep.

Into our flesh comes the light
Present and clear in our sight
Babe in the straw from the height
Making our human night bright.

Dawn brings the day out of night
Wonder and truth bring love’s right
Challenging power and our might –
No more each other to fight.

As angels, magi, fade away
In passing years the story grows
But still we fail to stop the fray –
We change God’s song to human prose
But now today this love we pray
Our worldly fear and hate depose.

shipping forecast

(celebrating 100 years)

whatever the weather
however high the waves
the strength of winds
the fog or rain here
is no depression or
cyclonic panic but
the rippling rhythms
of a constantly changing
climate breaking gently
on shore or against
a hull the vital data
is the enchanting
zephyr ebbing tide
or soothing flood to
keep us safe in
nature’s lap of passion
pounding pulse
and partial peace
these waves are
airborne in their
incantation to steer
us through the passage
of the powers of this
globe and the headlands
and reaches of our
common heart
harbouring us all
for our final
voyage finisterre
no more

A sonnet defying Babel

(written on a train between London and Rochester)

This teeming world is full of many tongues
Whose meaning is unknown to me and you.
We live apart like steps or ladder rungs
Each needed for the climb to see the view
Of meaning spanning difference deep divide –
A bridge to make us strong in faith and hope
Where fear is conquered, no one’s life denied,
All held in space – no need for steel or rope.
Give voice and sing the joys of many ways
Whose value runs through all and weaves a web
So fine, a network of our lives and days
That time and tide is blest in flood and ebb.
Our neighbour speaks as blessing true and free
To make us one in greater mystery.

A sonnet of deception

(written on a train between Rochester and London)

Deceived, I think that much is in my reach –
Our human powers of mind and will are strong.
We build – and hold that truths we learn and teach
Are certain, ours, possessed and can’t be wrong.
We know the errors of our human past
But now have learnt there’s more for us to be
If we invest in self this world will last
Enough to give us pleasure full and free.
That’s what we think we want but is it wise? –
A free for all with nothing out of bounds
So progress feeds our pride and blinds our eyes
To worlds unknown where love’s sweet music sounds.
The world I know is never mine – and dies
Yet love is more – and for this each soul sighs.

70 ~ a sonnet of years

(written on a train returning from London)

Three score and ten has such a number’s power
As one to reach or pass in human years –
And when it comes it matters not the hour:
It’s just a moment filled with cares and fears.
Fulfilment lies beyond a sum of time,
Each second blest and precious on the way,
Where love’s sweet music’s notes with self can chime
And change the dross and labours of each day.
There’s more to say for life is judged anew
And fame and chance with wealth is put in place
As backcloth to the stage with heavenly cue –
For all of us to walk with promised grace.
The life we have is more than flesh and blood –
We’re born for glory borne on endless flood.

A sonnet of sight

(written on a train returning from the National Gallery Siena exhibition)

Where does the artist’s world begin or end?
Are limits sweet or obstacles to break?
Compulsion is creative spirit’s friend,
Possessed by power whose strength all frailties shake.
The empty space must beckon us to mark
And make a world which none of us can know
Where darkness shines as bright as any spark,
Familiar forms now radiate and glow.
But none of this can happen on its own –
We all must empty self with open soul
To risk our pride in avenues unknown.
Creator lover gifts to us a role –
To be the sign of all that is to be
That through fresh eyes we all may come to see.

Overleaf ~ a sonnet of surprise

(written on a train to London)

Each one of us is curled within a leaf:
We see with eyes much greened by nature’s self
And yearn for so much more than mortal’s brief.
We search and sing to write on future’s shelf,
Amassing wealth and knowledge on the way.
Some gain a stature overbrimming death,
With reputation famed e’en to this day.
What is the truth and nature of this breath?
We first must breathe a risk beyond the air
And lose ourselves whate’er the cost may be –
Yet find a spirit’s meaning, fresh and fair,
Our leaf bound self and world could never see.
Let’s rise and dance, dive off the leaf we own,
Into the joys of everything unknown.

painted in love

(written on the train to visit the National Gallery Siena exhibition)

conceived in line and
paint all dimensions
breached by tender
colour dynamic form
celestial light scenes
and shapes hold eternity
frozen in a moment and
breaking out of our framed
control touching us
with transformed gaze
beyond death and time
above all we’re questioned
halted cut down to a
different size where
love’s infinity warms
the heart and it no
longer beats in vain

flos pacem

8th May ~ VE Day 2025

falling from the sky
inundated by the waves
eviscerated exploded
into the earth tortured
bombed screaming
senseless destruction
peace costs all this
and much more fragile
as a flower to be
tended nurtured
cherished and held by
everyone’s powerful
grasp it can never
be laid aside or
forgotten it is an
endless sowing and
harvest fuelled by sweat
and labour never
certain but so
precious not one of
us can take it for
granted our inner
demons and material
strength militate
its destruction in
every age and any
moment peace is
seared by immeasurable
pain and painted
in vast oceans of
blood there is no
end or lasting
happiness till the
end is drowned by
love
may we never forget
this song

A villanelle of promise

A poem especially for those outside the Church
and those who feel banished or abused

There is a voice that speaks to every care –
It’s heard in storm and calm when hearts do burn:
We’re loved beyond what matter’s form can bear.

Sweet music sings to all in freedom’s air
Despite the pains and doubts of daily churn:
There is a voice that speaks to every care.

Each day and moment offers us to dare,
To risk and lose ourselves, to change and learn,
We’re loved beyond what matter’s form can bear.

How certain seems the world of glamour’s stare,
It’s hard to look away and from it turn;
There is a voice that speaks to every care.

Love’s spirit meets us in our breath as prayer –
In presence held, a gift we do not earn;
We’re loved beyond what matter’s form can bear.

Life’s meaning seems so rich and rare
Yet lies in all our hearts and lives that yearn:
There is a voice that speaks to every care,
We’re loved beyond what matter’s form can bear.

chronophage

a sextet for Holy Week
(the form is based on John Dowland’s
setting of the Anon Time stands still)

Can one week bring death’s untimely end?
We all must die yet love eats time in one who comes as friend:
To take each hand, enlighten mind and fearful heart –
For his journey through these days takes each and every part.
Time eats us up as dust but now is eaten up in turn:
Love’s final days of mortal life with timeless glory burn.

Yet this truth is hid in every age,
Our hopes and powers write selfish stories on our history’s page.
The foal and palms lead on to scorn and howling crowd.
Can I deny my fear of pain and death’s thin shroud?
We cannot bear the shrieking hurt of nails and parching thirst –
He did – for us – time’s death is changed, and every tomb is burst!

A cavatina of release

Another rail trip – to the Proms – another poem

There is a pain that never leaves this world –
An endless blaze.
It runs through every life and levels all
Yet dogs our days –
And burns so hot and smoulders long and deep
In every phase.
There seems no point nor respite from its sting –
As on it plays.
Its game is up when time and space do end
As love’s true bliss takes each of us as friend.

A cavatina of music's power

On the train home from Mahler’s 3rd

Are music and the mind the same, ‘in tune’?
The soul says no!
The notes are heard in time yet evermore
Their echoes flow
Enriching every age on timeless shore
Where love doth grow.
The beauty of the heart and mind and soul
Sing sweet and low:
This music makes us one in mystery’s power –
All thoughts released from limit’s self and hour.

compostela

St James’s Day 2025

the shell whose rays
point us along the
way and dazzle our
soul’s eyes with a
purpose found in struggle
and company joy and
journey to a field whose
tomb thunders with a
story of devotion sacrifice
and love telling all in a
lifespan for eternity the
music of the way is the
trust and simplicity of each
step and the help the
blistered smile the
shining heart lit by
the starry field sant
iago ora pro nobis

with this ring

a band of gold
turned heartbeats
into kisses the
endless circle
opened the
horizon of
eternity in
losing and
belonging in
the adventure
of otherness and
an intimacy
whose breath
brought healing
and hope we
are not shackled
but freed and
given as giver
and gift so two
hearts dance
in the rhythm of
the delight of
ecstasy and the
silent depths of
stasis when the
clock stands still
and this world
dissolves in the
journey of being
lost and found
simultaneously
a union that is a
prayer that takes
us over the brink
of survival onto
the threshold of
a tomorrow that
is never but will
always be ours

a christmas devotion

a newborn baby
an everyday miracle
but now the Word
made flesh a heart
that will stop a mind
that dissolves within
the nailed and lanced
corpse love incarnate
flesh and death formed
uniquely to take my
hand and yours here
is no lawgiver but a
threshold over time
and every matter
infused with spirit
encountering no
yesterday or
tomorrow but the
abyss we drop
into the vortex of
a new creation
where nothing holds
us tenderly as Mary
enfolds and suckles
her son divinity is
no idea but the
arms of strength
and tenderness that
cannot be seen or
proved just cradled
crucified crowned

splintered

a note sounds and it
never stops the sound of
absence and separation
always here there every
where no escape even
surfacing from sleep like
a cork released from the
depths or the neck of
fizz it explodes the peace
contentment being as
it intimates the ever
present absence here is
more than a lingering
insistent pain but also
the immediate realisation
of the vacuous the vacuum
that sucks the lungs the
heady dizziness of oxygen’s
debt physical terrifying
and falling away to
seep into and invade every
security and solace those
whom god has joined
together is asundered
at my core the gift of
the other flawed beauty
temporal infinity splits
severs like the axe on
the block never in this
consciousness to return
to the union that ful
filled where is my head
and my body never again
in a breath filled day can
they be one or won I
am splintered and perhaps
in part in heaven,,,

A sonnet of one direction

Can this be true – that life is but one way –
A start to finish line quite clean and bare
In stark succession set – like night to day?
For that’s the way it seems to mind and care:
We build our lives and set our clocks to form
The irreversible and destined path –
Our bodies frail and finite to death’s storm
Which breaks upon us like avenging wrath.
There is another view where sums add up
To make a different total of our lives
Including death’s strange call to drink and sup
Beyond, behind, within the myst’ries hives.
These hum and swarm with spirit’s life that sees
All lives and loves and loss as ever bees.

nata lux

coming on clouds
is a dense mystery
permeating the
earth for the root
runs deep in human
time and cosmic
promise the mind
and heart ring together
in the music of an
impossible in
destructible hope a
lone voice on the wind
carries eternity in
piercing the armoured
breast of self – love
comes has come is
coming all at the same
time in blood and
flesh placenta and
mother’s arms salvation
is that messy and
real yet its poetic
presence makes me
quiver with the
excitement of never
failing requited joy

A Christmas sonnet of decision

If God indwells with us in every way.
The seraph’s song, the star we all can see,
Here’s yet a mystery set in human clay,
A life – and death – that calls us more to be.
His birth we feast and dance to every year –
Much less his death and new life prize and blaze.
Perhaps the cost and pain of love so clear
Involving risk and faith in this world’s days
Makes every question bring us down to earth
To seek a sure and certain world to grasp
Unchallenged by the starlit stable birth –
Whose life goes on beyond his final gasp:
Each soul must choose the way of life or death
And live eternal truth in every breath.

A cavatina of mercy

In every age our human hearts do burn
With vengeful ire.
The flames of hate arise from shame and fear –
Destructive fire!
We lose control and sense of others’ needs
In situ dire;
The scars of war maim every life on earth,
A funeral pyre.
Sweet mercy come to us from heav’n above
And fill our broken lives with healing love.

A kyrielle for peace

Our hearts are battlegrounds within
With minds set firm on self and sin;
Love opens up its treasure store:
Teach us the ways to end all war.

The untold loss, ne’er to be known,
No names in letters set in stone,
Cries out in hope to make us more:
Teach us the ways to end all war.

There is no plan, just simple care,
To honour others and to share
Our lives and world – in love outpour:
Teach us the ways to end all war.

The secret miracle of life:
Forgiveness heals and ends our strife.
It remakes lives, shuts hatred’s door:
Teach us the ways to end all war.

There comes a time when all must choose
The path to walk so none should lose,
That justice, mercy, truth, can soar:
Teach us the ways to end all war.

Sweet peace is that for which we’re made –
Through trust and kindness unafraid.
This earth can touch another shore:
Teach us the ways to end all war.

the capricious tide

our lives are governed physically
by the sun and moon our
moods and days are set by day
and night the tides relentless
pull and push in a distant way
and ultimately take us over
the horizon I watched your
stricken body visited infested
by malignancy take you further
out to sea at every ebb and
then you were gone from my
sight my touch but the gravity
of our passion and the tender
lap of our intimate fusion is un
diminished by the fateful moon
and our mortal nature a different
sea buoys me up the ocean of love
infinite mysterious flowing from
our hearts and embrace the
waters of encounter and be
longing where the be and the
longing combine the torrent of
tempests and the limpid iridescent
droplet all in a cataract a breaker
a crest and a still infinity
mirroring the extraordinary
gift of meaning absorption release
and a detonation of being gathering
us all in the final surge of the
energies drowning us with a watery
immolation of perfection

A sonnet for Lent

Our way is always strewn with rocks and stones –
We sometimes see the path with carefree ease
Ignoring others, deaf to suffering’s groans.
The world cannot be read ourselves to please,
Each day has cares we must embrace aright
And recognise our powers to use for good.
For human living is both gift and plight:
So sharing love involves the phrase ‘I should’;
By taking up the cross of saviour’s way
We’re ne’er alone and part of heaven’s bliss.
The barren land is where we’re led to pray
And find the bridge of joy o’er death’s abyss.
The wilderness is real and brings to sight
Our world and lives remade by truth and light.

new year's eve

the dying of the
year is but a
calendar cal
culation of
counting our human
days the scale
shutters our view
as we who are mere
specks in a universe
whose laws and space
we only partially see
yet alone know our
two eyes and brain
calibrate the meaning
of our time but our
souls are apprehended
by a mystery we can
neither scan nor
notate the fleeting
and the passing
open up not into
a new year but a
possibility bestowed
and beckoning from
within and beyond
breaking us like
a wave or a dawn
into a form we
never can see or
know it is the
dissolution of all
limits and mere
existence falls
away as we
are taken con
sumed in a
pointless con
summation

empty

the world is too full
for Christmas Beth
lehem certainly was
and so was sideshowed
to an animal outhouse
humanity majors on no
room creating elites
and outcasts scapegoats
and unwanted little
knowing these are the
conditions for indwelling
divinity it is through the
cracks that love seeps in
often unnoticed but
sometimes crucified
manger wood is not just
splintered and gnarled
it can be nailed and love
can be pierced and bled
and slain that’s why we
forget and fill ourselves
with pleasures and
priorities so we need
never be empty

dogma without debate

truth is like a
hand grenade
weaponised
righteousness by
unrighteous
people and we
pull the pin
with dogma
removing debate
and monopolising
the truth we can
never possess or
control how many
are killed past
and today in a
war to be right
and condemn
difference and
diversity how
different indeed
from the healing
touch the life laid
down the lowest
seat the golgotha
throne the hammered
and lanced corpse
raised by
undogmatic dawn
of grace which
never triumphs
only gives

A sonnet that sings

What story does the music weave this night
When senses stilled by dark and velvet black
Caressed by sound evoking inner sight
And set to run in mystic visions’ track?
A cloak of wonder, worthless to a world
That sets a price on human life and breath,
Descends and settles like a cloth unfurled
To take us to a realm beyond our death.
This journey strange is made and seen in dreams
When rest is active in imagined ways
Our fears are faced from deep remembered streams
Drowned by the cares of pressured urgent days.
This music sings us from our selfish cage
Into the freedom flown from flesh and age.