In a matchless moonless night at the year’s turning a
star as rare as truth begins its silver journey over the
wide shoulder of the earth glancing by the white
sepulchre of the hills past dark castles and ornaments of
war and men as blind as
time who stare like moles from the
labyrinths of their deeds passing the
land of chosen sand and sea guiding the
kings and shepherds bearing gold and
aromatic spices through the holy city to
lay with a majesty of praise and wonder in the shawl’s
fold where once and at every year’s turning into a
hopelessly sleeping world the Child wakes.
And He is born to grow wise and strong in love under
His father’s apprenticing eyes with healing fingers in
the everyday of prayer He walks and suffers the
frightened ways of men into an ambush of lies in the
garden betrayed by the sound of silver stretched on the
rack of His wooden grave He prays not for quarter at
His father’s hand but for the springs of men’s eyes to
open and behold after three days the mountains echo
His word and the rivers flow with his magic blood.
And if there is hope at this year’s turning from the sky
crumbling the bleached sticks of war and the black
want splashing
on our prayers it may yet spring from still unbarren
earth in the last valley of deedshed redeem our
surrogate desires transmute the dry rattle of a parrot in
the mind’s cage.
1960-1994