Advent Calendar, a setting of a poem by Rowan Williams, was commissioned by The Compass Rose Society to honor Archbishop Williams on the occasion of his retirement. Its premiere performance was sung by the Canterbury Cathedral Choir under the direction of Dr. David Flood at Evensong, October 5, 2012. Archbishop Dr. Rowan Williams and Mrs. Williams were in attendance.
Lyrics
He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould, the soft shroud’s folding.
He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.
He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.
He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.
Text: “Advent Calendar” from The Poems of Rowan Williams © 2002, first published by The Perpetua Press, Oxford. UK. The edition published 2004 in the USA is by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 255 Jefferson Avenue SE. Grand Rapids, MI 49503/P.O. Box 163, Cambridge CB3 9PU UK. Used by permission.
