The Antidote To Benedict

A gay Catholic who, unlike the current pontiff, saw Creation in its fullest, complex beauty:

GLORY be to God for dappled things  
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
    For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;  
Landscape plotted and pieced
fold, fallow, and plough;
And
l trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;  
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
    With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

Have a happy Christmas whatever the Pope says.