READING A POEM A DAY 8   8.12.2016

Carol Singers

John Hewitt

A seasonal offering today: a poem from John Hewitt who, in Northern Ireland star-poet terms, predates Heaney, Longley, Muldoon and notable others.

He wrestles with memories triggered by seeing some carol singers.

Christmas children sing my childhood back

Hewitt remembers walking to church with his father, a believer.

He held that faith, I think, until he died.

But Hewitt didn't hold that faith. He held to another, more secular, belief. He was a socialist, active in Labour politics in Belfast and Coventry, where he had day jobs in museums and galleries.

Here, he is a doubt-filled atheist, agnostic to

the myth, the magic of the Holy Child.

And yet on hearing the carol singers, each face intent, Hewitt finds that

such sadness gather round my heart

and wonders why it affects him, this upsurge of nostalgia

when every sense reports it unfulfilled

as the story his father held is out of date.

This sonnet presents a momentary distillation of the personal, familial, cultural and religious influences that feed Hewitt's doubting and wonderment, thoroughly seasonal sentiments for a socialist wrestling with

…...................... hollied memories, innocent,

that lie discarded on my lonely track.

The Collected Poems: John Hewitt, edited by Frank Ormsby, Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 1991

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