Unsung

What is the Song of Songs and how can its voice possibly be heard against the din of pornography and the equally deafening silence of an apparently lifeless church? Duncan Wright, a Baptist minister who has seen at first hand the pastoral implications of both these issues, has rejected the idea of a formal commentary as a way of exploring this text. Wanting to avoid doing violence to the text by turning it into a sermon but equally reluctant to leave its treasures locked up, he has taken the advice of the composer Stravinsky: "The one true comment on a piece of music is another piece of music." The Songs are a poem, but Duncan cannot write poems and these days, most people cannot bear to read them. Instead, he has written a response to the Song of Songs in the form of this story.