Poem of the week: The Good Shepherd by Stanley Moss

How glad should the lost lamb be to have been found? This sensitive, wry take on the Bible story wonders what’s so great about getting saved

The Good Shepherd

Because he would not abandon the flock for a lost sheep
after the others had bedded down for the night,
he turned back, searched the thickets and gullies.
Sleepless, while the flock dozed in the morning mist
he searched the pastures up ahead. Winter nearing,
our wool heavy with brambles, ropes of muddy ice,
he did not abandon the lost sheep, even when the snows came.

Still, I knew there was only a thin line
between the good shepherd and the butcher.
How many lambs had put their heads between the shepherd’s knees,
closed their eyes, offering their neck to the knife?
Familiar – the quick thuds of the club doing its work.
More than once at night I saw the halo coming.
I ran like a deer and hid among rocks,
or I crawled under a bush, my heart in thorns.

During the day I lived my life in clover
watching out for the halo.
I swore on the day the good shepherd catches hold,
trying to wrestle me to the ground and bind my feet,
I will buck like a ram and bite like a wolf,
although I taste the famous blood
I will break loose! I will race under the gates of heaven,
back to the mortal fields, my flock, my stubbled grass and mud.

The scenes in the windows of 2016’s Advent calendar seem particularly dark and bloody. As usual, we rush for the friendly binary oppositions, and line up the butchers versus the dwindling breed of good shepherds. But what if good shepherd and butcher are one and the same person?

For this week’s poem, an old parable transformed into wiser truth and timelier warning, we’re revisiting the work of Stanley Moss whose Almost Complete Poems will be published in January. Moss, born in 1925, continues to write poems that combine wit, imagination, humane politics and a spiritual vision innocent of creed and dogma. In The Good Shepherd, originally published in his 2003 collection, A History of Color, it’s not the unrepentant sinner we should fear, but the unrepentant saint.

Jesus recounted the parable of the good shepherd in Luke 15: 3-7. It was his response to a scolding from the pious for his association with “publicans and sinners”. The shepherd in the parable is no Bo-Peep (“leave them alone, and they’ll come home”, the nursery rhyme advises). He abandons, at least temporarily, the 99 well-behaved sheep of his flock so as to search out the single one that has strayed. The lost sheep represents the sinner, of course, and the good shepherd, God. The parable is intended to correct the self-righteous, and cheer the outsiders with a vision of God’s magnanimity. But a sheep’s-eye view might regard the good shepherd as a little obsessed.

It’s in the penultimate line of the first of the three stanzas that the use of the possessive plural pronoun “our” signals the narrator’s identity. It’s not just any sheep, either; it’s the lost sheep, although we might not realise this until the next stanza.

A calm, hexameter rhythm and measured tone at first prevail. The sheep even seems coolly approving. Line seven echoes and amplifies line one, a reflection on the shepherd’s spotless record. The poem gives us realism as well as the fantasy of an eloquent sheep, vividly evoking the grainy discomfort of the weatherbeaten animals, “our wool heavy with brambles, ropes of muddy ice”. Poor, patient sheep, huddling together for comfort while the shepherd heads out into the blizzard, we think.

In the second stanza, the tone changes: it’s no longer that of a calm public utterance. The voice is more agitated and colloquial. “Still, I knew there was only a thin line / between the good shepherd and the butcher.” It’s a fair point, but a surprising one and it marks the moment at which the poem splits decisively from the Bible story. When we reach the statement, “More than once at night I saw the halo coming”, we know for sure: this sheep is on the run. And we taste a little of its fear.

From the stray sheep’s point of view, the shepherd has an ulterior motive, caring for the flock only to reduce it to profitability. The lambs submit bravely: the death is administered almost lovingly, but it’s still death. The poem gives us both the knife and the club – and it notes that the “quick thuds of the club doing its work” are “familiar”. This implies other victims, closer in time and place – civilians caught in some warzone, perhaps, the “thuds” those that rain down from the sky, or people otherwise brutalised and rendered into things. So this clever sheep has got out of the way, and intends to stay out, relishing the freedom but also constantly “watching out for the halo”.

The effect of this synecdoche is both sinister and comic. Our sheep has a certain sense of humour. But the dread of the pursuing “halo” is real and sharp, registered in shorter lines and quicker sentence-bursts. When the creature crawls under a bush, and tells us his/her heart is “in thorns”, there is no doubt of the analogy being drawn. It’s not the good shepherd who is Christlike, but the rebel sheep.

The last stanza declares the intention to fight fiercely, “taste the famous blood” (ie Christ’s), break loose and return to freedom. The rhythm is urgent, kicking and biting until the escape into expansive joy at the end. The sheep’s salvation would be its death. “I will race under the gates of heaven, / back to the mortal fields, my flock, my stubbled grass and mud.” Earth, not heaven, is all it desires.

The problem the poem discerns is one at the heart of the great religions. Their conventional message, even when the preacher is as radical and refreshing as Christ, always promotes the same ultimate goal, insisting that the true life is not of this world. The Christian God miraculously becomes incarnate at Christmas, and shares our mortality, but the intention still is to lead us to that other, immortal life. Heaven’s unimaginable perfection and stasis are the true creation.

The sheep in The Good Shepherd takes the pragmatic view. Heaven is here on earth. It can be harsh, stubbly and muddy, brambly and icy as well as clover-sweet, but it’s what we have. Haloes are dangerous when they tell us otherwise. At best, the good shepherd will kill you humanely and send you to market. Watch your wool. Have a happy Christmas!

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