then had wanted to play with the lamb himself.
Christmas, the birthday of Jesus Christ . . . Jesus
Christ, the Shepherd, the Lamb, and the Victim.
Something was pressing against his flesh, it was
something that he had almost forgotten; the rood was
pressing against his flesh. He drew it out and stared
at it gravely; then he let it hang loosely around his
neck: clf I pass any more dead soldiers/ he thought,
cthey will see it like this and it may console them,
but I think all the dead are left miles behind ....
Lord, I did not kill them, it was my body/
And now those bells were beginning again: 'Jesus
Christ, the Shepherd, the Lamb, and the Victim/
Remote and yet near, beyond yet within, they a part
of himself, he a part of their ringing. Ancient bells
that rang out for the youth of the world, for those
who would presently find their Lord concealed in
the fragile disc of the Host. Bells of peace that had
sounded above the groans and the fearful deton-
ations of war. Bells that swung from a belfry in far
away Provence yet were here on this moonlit Pales-
tine plain . . . distance did not exist, it was all here
and now, there was neither time, separation nor
distance. Palestine and Provence — names, names,
only names. There was neither Palestine nor Provence,
neither friend nor foe, neither infidel nor Christian,
but only those ringing, singing bells: 'Jesus Christ,
the Shepherd, the Lamb, and the Victim/
Yet surely his body was once more detached and
no longer the instrument of his being? His body was
doing such curious things; it was moving with a
stealthy precaution; it was creeping on all fours where
the moon lit its path, then rising warily inch by inch
when it found itself protected by shadows. It was
crawling behind thick patches of scrub, behind rocks,
and when it did this it listened for the sound of the
patrol, for the sound of a shot that would cut like a
483