These two poems are part of a sequence – Vingt Regards – written in response to Olivier Messiaen’s set of 20 short piano pieces about the Incarnation: Vingt Regards sur L’enfant Jésus. Each piece has a subtitle, and each represents a particular regard upon the newborn Christ. For “regard”, read gaze or contemplation, but also a different angle on the scene. Some of the poems’ titles nod to, or paraphrase, the music’s subtitles. Messiaen began to write the piece in Paris under German occupation in 1944, and finished it in September after liberation. The fact that Marcel Carné was making possibly the greatest French film – Les Enfants du Paradis – in occupied Paris at the same time as Messiaen was writing made the connection even more compelling.

The entire sequence of 20 poems will appear in my eighth collection – Ransom – to be published by Cape in March 2021.