All day the noise of battle rolls,
The skirmishes and wars,
What peace or treaty can there be
Between two worlds like ours?
Could I be lost in Venus,
Could you be found in Mars,
Then I might search your tender wounds
And you my battle scars,
Then you might pull me from my sphere
Or fall to me from yours,
Were I, perchance, in Venus
And you, perhaps, in Mars.
What wary orbits we must keep
Around our dying sun,
Falling towards the verge of sleep
When all our wars are done,
Falling towards the verge of sleep
Where, lying side by side,
The angels of our planets weep
To see two worlds collide.
Malcolm Guite is a poet and priest, working as Chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge. He also teaches for the Divinity Faculty and for the Cambridge Theological Federation, and lectures widely in England and North America on Theology and Literature. He is the author of What do Christians Believe? (Granta 2006), Faith Hope and Poetry (Ashgate 2010, paperback 2012), Sounding the Seasons; Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year (Canterbury 2012), The Singing Bowl; Collected Poems (Canterbury 2013), The Word in the Wilderness (Canterbury 2014), Waiting on the Word (Canterbury 2015), and Parable and Paradox (Canterbury Press 2016). He contributed the Chapter on Lewis as a poet to the Cambridge Companion to CS Lewis (CUP 2010)
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Citation Information
Malcom Guite. “The Daily Planet.” An Unexpected Journal 1, no. 4. (Advent 2018): 53.
Direct Link: https://anunexpectedjournal.com/the-daily-planet/
Credits:
From Malcolm Guite The Singing Bowl, Canterbury Press 2013 p.36
