A Jesus Kind of Joy

By | 28 October 2013
I profess an interest in it all,

The world-wide symphony of things,

The good, the hopeless and the small,

The crass cacophony that sings.


I hope for you, the not so tall

And the always about to win,

I wish them honey for their gall,

A sweeter sacrifice in sin.


I give to you, my maudlin man,

Love, that you might use it well

On malcontent and also ran,

A Jesus kind of joy in Hell.


I hand it out with great élan,

A little largesse for each day,

The doing well of what I can,

The loving faith in what it may.




This poem first appeared in Meanjin, 1968.
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Jack Hibberd has written 40 plays since 1967. These have all been produced attempting to amalgamate theatrically the genres of Beckett, Brecht and the Theatre of Cruelty, in a form of ‘super-modernism’. His most highly regarded play is the virtuoso one-character A Stretch of the Imagination, which has enjoyed productions in China, the USA, UK and Germany, as well as Australia. Hibberd has published three novels: Memoirs of an Old Bastard, Perdita, The Life of Riley, as well as three volumes of poetry Le Vin des Amants (after Baudelaire), The Genius of Human Imperfection, and Madrigals for a Misanthrope. In addition he has translated all of Rimbaud and Verlaine’s erotic gay verse. More recently Jack has written Commandments, dramatizations of 5 of the 10 Commandments: dramatic or comic inversions/perversions of these. Also, he is working on a series of ‘Porno-Poems’.

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