Love lives in the bath
In the slum and the scurry,
The bruised knees, the soap and the towel
(Cleanliness frothing the godliness round;
The cheek almost gentles the jowl).
He is not precisely seen
Astride a bumping rubber duck
But undoubtedly His presence
Is afloat this broad night.
There is no apparent walker
On the sloping lamplit decks
(Plastic red and white, far liner,
Black hull under-barnacled
In flannels
And adrift among young knees)
But undoubtedly the waters
Are Alive this deep night
A child holds a baby who is not
His child, his baby,
Hugs his foster-sister’s shell-round back
Against his hollow belly,
His careful hands
Like starfish on the drifted sands of life
And the laughing, folded baby will enrich
His tided heart
Don’t let her head go under, son,
Under the scum of the weary world
And the grime of a lightless greed;
Her head must stay up, up,
Up.
A child clasps the knees of a child who is not
Her child, her brother,
Yet is her child, her brother, by her love.
“I can’t scrape the mud off his knees, mummy,”
But we can scrape his knees off the mud despair
That the world in its fear has made;
His knees must come up, up,
Up.
And tonight in the bath four children play
with the Child
And shout like the sun as He falls from the rubber duck.
(June,
1972)
