Demons: a sonnet Tony Payne

This week from the Briefing archive, it's a poem: one of Tony Morphett's superb little ‘Sonnets from Mark's Gospel’ that featured in Briefings 20-26, way back in 1989:

Demons

You stepped from the carpenter's shop and the demons knew you,
As you brushed chips from your work clothes in the gesture
You once used after finishing creation.
Through you, matter itself was made, the very texture
Of space and time. Thirty years before,
You had entered your own work, lain in the womb
Of that anonymous virgin, taken the war
To the enemy. Victory will fill your empty tomb.

But that's three years away, and it is now,
As you move from the bench to your real work, they see
You as you were and as you are. They cry:
“Here on earth the one we would not bow
To in heaven pursues us. Let us be,
Here among our toys, you Son of the Most High!”

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