"Penrhys" by Rowan Williams

Here is Williams' poem about Penrhys, a council estate in the Rhondda which has been transformed by the constant, faithful love of a community of Christians right at their heart. I visited the estate with a group of Baptist ministers recently and was both humbled and inspired...
I love the way that Williams draws a comparison between the teenage Mary in the statue in the shrine, and the teenage mothers at the bus stop. Commenting on the poem, Benjamin Myers writes: "that is what incarnation looks like. Christ is defamiliarised when we perceive him like this, with a  grittiness untouched by religious disinfectant.":

Penrhys

The ground falls sharply; into the broken glass,
into the wasted mines, and turds are floating
in the well. Refuse.

May; but the wet, slapping wind is native here,
not fond of holidays. A dour council cleaner,
it lifts discarded

Cartons and condoms and a few stray sheets
of newspaper that the wind sticks
across his face -

The worn sub-Gothic infant, hanging awkwardly
around, glued to a thin mother,
Angelus Novus:

Backing into the granite future, wings spread,
head shaking at the recorded day,
no, he says, refuse,

Not here. Still, the wind drops sharply.
Thin teenage mothers by the bus stop
shake wet hair,

Light cigarettes. One day my bus will come, says one;
they laugh. More use'n a bloody prince,
says someone else.

The news slips to the ground, the stone dries off,
smoke and steam drift uphill
and tentatively

Finger the leisure centre's tense walls and stairs.
The babies cry under the sun,
they and the thin girls

Comparing notes, silently, on shared
unwritten stories of the bloody stubbornness
of getting someone born.