Tuesday 17 September 2013

Ein Karem (Revised)


I suppose this Blog is really only my own notepad, although people in small numbers are obviously welcome to look over my shoulder.  It is rare that any particular post is widely read, and, when one page is, this is usually because someone elsewhere on a better read part of the internet has linked to or recommended the page; I have never discovered why a post in 2009 with couple of pictures of statues of the Virgin Mary in Brugge continues to be by far the most visited page.  

Anyway, I notice that the page with the poem I posted a few days ago has been visited by 150 different people, and have not traced how they have come to look.  So, here is a picture of the view of part of Bethlehem from our balcony in the early light this morning, and here is the latest revision of the poem with which I am happier but with which I will not doubt continue to tinker.

Ein Karem

Our characters as
Jacob’s blest children
stain, mark, colour and
illuminate threats,
from devouring by
lone wolves, to drowning
in deluges of
unstable water,

above a village,
gobbled up and cleansed,
replete, and washed smooth
by pilgrim prayer streams,

where once a school girl,
two periods missed,
fled to her cousins,
her greeting startling
their yet unborn son
with the first hint of
a beast at his throat
and of the endless
tides of innocents
to be swept away

4 comments:

ElsieJoy said...

I have a link to this blog on my own blog Peter, it is also logged on Google+

Peter Mullins said...

Thanks, Joy, but my puzzle wasn't about the general links between sites; I'm still curious as to why one particular post from our time in Jerusalem has had by this morning more than twenty times more hits than any of the others posts.

ElsieJoy said...

I wonder that too Peter as I get the same thing, also wonder why most of my readers come from Russia! Who knows.

Peter Mullins said...

I guess you are right, Joy. The 'spike' in readers is more likely to be a random link made by a Russian bot of some sort than a wave of appreciation for my poetry. Ah, well!