“Christmas Bonus: Magnificat” by Stewart Henderson (poem)

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My soul magnifies the poor
the sore
the raw
and my spirit rejoices in God
my downcast
my outcast
my twig-bone wrong caste
for He regards the low estate
the no-go estate
the empty plate
and squats there with those generations. 

For at Whose Name the cosmos shakes
and canyons quake
sought sanctuary within a womb
a young girl’s chaste, unopened room
a sparse, unblemished catacomb
and holy is He amongst the lame.

His mercy is on those who fear Him
hear Him
those near Him
in desert flapping bivouac or dehydrated barrio.

The night sky rolled out by His arm,
the preening proud ignore His balm
and slink towards the warlock charm
of their small ambitions;
and those on thrones end up alone
replaced by fly-pecked innocents.

He only eats with the hungry,
and if they don’t, He too refrains;
and as for the rich –
a table cannot be found for them.

My soul magnifies the poor
the sore
the raw
and my spirit rejoices in God
my outcast.

From the collection Homeland by Stewart Henderson. Copyright © 1993. Published by Hodder & Stoughton. Used with the author’s permission.

Stewart Henderson is a poet, song lyricist, and broadcaster. His children’s poems, taken from his three best-selling children’s collections (Poetry Emotion, All Things Weird and Wonderful, and Who Left Grandad at the Chip Shop?), are included in the UK’s national education curriculum. As a song lyricist, the music magazines Q and Mojo place his lyrics alongside those of Randy Newman and Radiohead. And as an award-winning presenter and producer of many documentaries for BBC network radio, he continues in the grand tradition, established by the likes of Dylan Thomas, Louis MacNeice, Cecil Day-Lewis, and others, of leading poets being commissioned to make primetime programs for Britain’s national broadcaster. Liverpool-born but long since residing on the southwest fringes of London, Henderson has been a regular participant, since its inception in 1974, in the Greenbelt Festival, an annual summer event in England dedicated to the arts, faith, and justice, for which Henderson served as a board director for twelve years.