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Jayson's Collection

U2   12/31/1983

"Driving to Midnight Mass", Unknown, Unknown
Source FM - Driving to Midnight Mass
Media SHN   1 disc
Tech Notes Subject: "Driving to Midnight Mass"

Here it is... Bono reciting "Driving to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve"
on the radio - Dec. 31, 1983.
- - ---

Merry Christmas. This is Bono the singer with U2.
This is a poem I'd like to recite for you by another Irishman,
John F. Dean. It's about driving to midnight mass in Dublin on
Christmas Eve. {*intro: New Year's Day*}

Five thousand million years ago, this earth lay heaving in
a mass of rocks and fire, waste and burdened with its emptiness.
Tonight, when arthropods and worms and sponges have given way to
dinosaurs, and dinosaurs to working, wandering apes; Homo erectus
have given way to sapiens, and he to Homosapiens sapiens (alias paddimack).

Look down on Dublin from the hills around and lights could
be a million Christmas trees, still firs standing, while in the sky
a glow {*exit: New Year's Day, Intro: Endless Deep*} as if of dawn.
This day a light shall shine upon us. The Lord is born within our city.

Look along to the river toward O'Connel Bridge. The lights,
the neon signs, all stream on water like breathed-on strips of tinsel.
All is still. Eleven-thirty, pubs begin to empty. Men stop to argue,
sway and say the name of Jesus. For those who have known darkness, who
have now seen a wondrous light; those who have dwelt in unlit streets,
to them the light has come. Tonight, a few cars go by. The blocks of
flats with windowed-plastic trees and fairy lights stand, watching for
a miracle. Here are no dells where fairies might appear.

Out from the dark an ambulance comes speeding, sickly blue
lights search in siren-still. The mystery of the night ticks slowly on.
It will pass and leave memories of friends and small, half-welcomed
things. In Him was life. In Him, life was the light of man. For neither
prehistoric swans nor trilobites, the mesozoic birds, Neanderthal, nor
modern man had ever dreamt or seen what was our God.

The shops are gay with lights and bright things. All-safe funeral
homes, they dare not advertise their presence. As midnight peels {*exit: Endless
Deep, sound of car skid and crash*} and organs start to play, two cars meet
headlong in a haze-o'-drink. The crash {*Intro: New Year's Day*} flicks into
silence. Pain crawls like a slime through blood and into limbs. God is
revealed, a baby, naked, crying in a crib.

In the church porches and out along the grounds, teenagers laugh and
swear, smokin', watchin' girls. So, once more, Christmas trails away. Its meaning
moves back into the mist and the march of time..." {*exit: New Year's Day, sound
of an accelerating car*}
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Owned by Jayson · Last Updated May 23, 2023