Malcolm Guite
Not one that’s gently hinged or deftly hung,
Not like the ones you planed at Joseph’s place,
Not like the well-oiled openings that swung
So easily for Pilate’s practiced pace,
Not like the ones that closed in Mary’s face
From house to house in brimming Bethlehem,
Not like the one that no man may assail,
The dreadful curtain, the forbidding veil
That waits your breaking in Jerusalem.
Not one you made but one you have become:
Load-bearing, balancing, a weighted beam
To bridge the gap, to bring us within reach
Of your high pasture. Calling us by name,
You lay your body down across the breach,
Yourself the door that opens into home.
Malcolm Guite is the Chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge. He teaches for the Divinity Faculty and the Cambridge Theological Federation, and lectures widely in England and North America on theology and literature. He is the author of What do Christians Believe?; Faith Hope and Poetry; Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year; The Singing Bowl: Collected Poems; and The Word in the Wilderness. He works as poet and librettist for composer Kevin Flanagan and his Riprap Jazz Quartet, and has also collaborated with American composer J.A.C. Redford. He worked with Canadian singer-songwriter Steve Bell on his 2012 CD Keening For The Dawn and his 2014 Album Pilgrimage.
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This material is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation: Guite, Malcolm. (2015) “I Am the Door of the Sheepfold,” The Yale ISM Review: Vol. 1: No. 2, Article 8. Available at: https://ismreview.yale.edu
View article as a PDF: I Am the Door of the Sheepfold
