The following was written lifetimes ago. I trot it out each Christmas like a moth-eaten Santa, his satchel brimming with memories. The kids were small. It must have been May because I remember apple blossoms. I had no idea I was thinking of the magi. The poem just came with its unfamiliar rhymed stanza, not a word amiss (except one I keep fussing with – no, I won’t say which). I reread it and said “Huh – I wrote that?” Maybe it was Yeats’ and T.S. Eliot’s magisterial examples that got me thinking this way, but my magi poem had no such ambition, it was just fun. (“Kingly cloaks” slant-rhyming with “dopey ox”? You can’t be serious!)
Yet it was serious somehow – like that moth-eaten Santa – murmuring more than I knew. Those concluding two sestets, especially, somehow summarized an urgent mission I only hazily foresaw. No, I would not be one of those “clowns in business suits” – not always (though very much one at the time). I would
heed the angels, track the star,
startle the wives, and find afar
in shabby straw a shining grace –
see if I wouldn’t! What that meant – then or now – I’ve no idea, but it meant a lot.
Bless you for lavishing me with the greatest gift imaginable: your time.
Merry Christmas.
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.