This week, a poem for Christmas, if not exactly a Christmassy poem. It turns on the idea of other worlds throughout space and time needing to be redeemed from sin by the coming of their own Christ figure. I must admit that this is not a part of Christian doctrine I have ever understood: it seems to me that people need to take responsibility for their own sins and I don’t see how someone else suffering a painful death ostensibly on their behalf helps anyone. Be that as it may, I think MacDiarmid makes an eerily effective poem of the idea, conjuring up vast cosmic distances and alien worlds that are nonetheless united by a common experience of suffering and sacrifice.

MacDiarmid has often been criticised for inventing his own version of Scots dialect that no one ever spoke. But of course no one ever spoke like much of Shakespeare either. ‘What did you say, dear?’ ‘I said, the multitudinous seas incarnadine’. ‘Oh, right. Why not take a break, it’s nearly teatime anyway’.

kens – knows
whatna – what kind of
heids – heads
licht – light
’yont – beyond
oor – our
een – eyes
unco – strange, foreign
bairnies – children
lift – sky
doon – dow
cauld – cold
mune – moon
lang syne – long since
maun – must

The Innumerable Christ

Other stars may have their Bethlehem and the Calvary too. (Professor JY Simpson).

‘Wha kens on whatna Bethlehems
Earth twinkles like a star the nicht,
An’ whatna shepherds lift their heids
In its unearthly licht?

‘Yont a’ the stars oor een can see
An’ farther than their lichts can fly,
I’ mony an unco warl’ the nicht
The fatefu’ bairnies cry.

I’ mony an unco warl’ the nicht
The lift gaes black as pitch at noon,
An’ sideways on their chests the heids
O’ endless Christs roll doon.

An’ when the earth’s as cauld’s the mune
An’ a’ its folk are lang syne deid,
On coontless stars the Babe maun cry
An’ the Crucified maun bleed.’

Hugh MacDiarmid