12.25.23
Merry Christmas.
More than half a lifetime ago I wrote this poem. It surprised me, as words may, like a tap on a shoulder from a long-ago pal. It was summertime, nowhere near Christmas, but the Magi were on my mind, perhaps thanks to Yeats’ and T.S. Eliot’s magisterial takes on the subject. My manner as much as my matter surprised me: rhymed six-line tetrameter stanzas, a form I’d never used before and haven’t since, which I’d have deemed too quaint to suit our discordant moment. We no more believe in predictable line-endings than we do in happy endings. The same holds for harmony in music or realism in art: only skepticism, irony, mockery feel valid responses to our circumstances, to hell with hallelujah.
The lilt of my little outing made me smile. Then and now, it recalled the comforts of my boyhood Christmas, smoke from crackling fires, the tangy scent of evergreens indoors. Onto a fractious, sniping household, a holiday peace descended like a snow-blanket, our Christmas truce. For a few hours conviviality reigned: smiles are easy to believe in when you’re a child. The nutty determination of the Magi felt a fitting analogy for my reeling career. Follow that star – to wherever it leads – even if you’ve no idea where – and you will arrive! Thoreau had promised the same, when I met his words in that rainy college carrel: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
So let us all, this daunting holiday season, be soldiers for grace, stubborn in hope, “travel far to find and see/ God’s gift in its simplicity.”
What Made Them Wise
Two millennia, more or less,
it's been since three in fancy dress --
kings, they claimed, but who could tell? --
forsook their beds and citadels
to follow -- what? A dream? A star?
Crazy how crazy some men are.
They packed their bags and kissed their wives,
who studied them with grim surmise:
'What sort of babe could Jesus be
to lure my love away from me?
He said that angels bid them come.
Believe that, I'll tell you another one!'
The road was hard, the weather rude,
the star kept hiding under clouds,
as if to taunt them for their trust.
The food was bad. Twice they got lost
and had to ask the way of folks
who treated them like dressy jokes.
At last they came and found -- not much.
A pauper baby in a hutch,
a doting mom, a doubting dad,
an inkeep bent on being paid,
pothered by all this backyard fuss.
A midnight baby -- just his luck!
The smell was putrid: urinous straw,
six chickens waiting for the stew.
They lifted up their kingly cloaks
to clear the muck. A dopey ox
drooled on them. Was this the place?
From cloudless sky the star shone yes.
They left their gifts and hurried home,
annoyed, confused. Why had they come?
Angelic voices or mid-life blues?
To get away, to break the rules?
The baby was, well, just a babe,
hardly worth the trek they'd made.
And yet, the more they thought, the more
right it seemed to come, adore,
heed the angels, track the star,
startle the wives, and find afar
in shabby straw a shining grace:
a mother's love, a baby's face.
So should we all to Bethlehem,
Christian and Jew and creedless men,
return each year, despite the hoots
of friends and clowns in business suits,
travel far to find and see
God's gift in its simplicity.