A song for someone

One of our missionaries was recently surprised when he learnt that I majored in English poetry in my Arts degree.  Among my claims to literary fame are that I had some poetry published in my gap year before university; and that, as an undergraduate, I had afternoon tea with Seamus Heaney the Nobel Laureate for Literature whose work I was proposing to investigate in my honours year.  I was so nervous that all I could say to him was, ‘More tea, Mr Heaney?’

Here is a poem, actually a song, that I would like to tease apart for you this month.  It begins with these lines:-

You got a face not spoiled by beauty

I have some scars from where I've been

You've got eyes that can see right through me

It’s a love song.  One in which the admirer is looking at his lover’s face, which is ‘not spoiled by beauty’.  Perhaps it is scarred.  It is nothing the world would look at.  But then, neither is the singer’s.  He carries the scars of life too, and his lover has eyes that can see right through them, perhaps even to the heart of the hurts he carries. 

But the irony is that the song’s refrain is thus:

And this is a song, song for someone

This is a song, song for someone

The identity of the lover, is unknown.  The idealised lover who is being sung to, is unknown.  The song is tinged with a longing for a better world, a more perfect relationship, light instead of darkness for each of us.  Another verse borders on preaching to the listener:-

If there is a light you can't always see

And there is a world we can't always be

If there is a dark within and without

And there is a light, don't let it go out

That last line is a plea to keep hoping, to keep searching, to keep looking for that light even if we can’t quite see it yet.  What reason can the poet give us for keeping on hoping and searching?  Here is the final stanza:

And I'm a long long way from your Hill of Calvary

And I'm a long way from where I was and where I need to be

It turns out that the poet actually knows who his lover is after all.  He refers to his Hill of Calvary – his lover is Jesus the Crucified One.  It is Jesus whose face is not spoiled by beauty, who carries the scars of Calvary, who has eyes that see right through us.  This song, is a song for Christ the Crucified.  This plea, this sermon, is for the listener to hope in Jesus, to persist in pursuing that light that only Jesus has. 

Up to the middle of this month, 500 million users of Apple’s iTunes music software will be able to download, completely free, this song and others from Songs of Innocence, the latest album from the Irish superstar rock band U2.  It’s all part of Apple’s latest marketing ploy.  But imagine if even a tiny percentage of those 500 million were to respond to the Jesus of whom U2 sings?!