Two Christmas Poems

Native Scene

• The beasts of Jerusalem will murder him, but in the meantime the beasts of Bethlehem warm him with their breath. — Giovanni Papini

• Nights are still cold on the starry hillside;
• Dew still freezes in our sockets at dawn;
• Our flocks still stir at a tree’s windy shade,
• Moonlit and star-crossed, now and now again.

• In camp, we still sound David’s ditties on long
• Winter nights and the trade still goes, father
• To son. A ewe’s birthing-bleat stills our song
• And calls us back to scenes of another:

• A brute moldy odor stunk up the hay,
• Cows munched and passed the new into roughage,
• And lice jump from stall to stall. You might say
• All these were keepsakes, too, for heart’s old age.

• But it’s only right. Beasts should have been there
• First. Didn’t they see the world first, unspoiled
• And native as the ruddy-faced mother,
• The chafed flesh of her winter-glowing child?

• The quick and measured jets of breath halted
• At our entrance. Each looked on with an im-
• Patient flap of an ear, heads piqued and tilted.
• Yes, each seemed to say, it’s been a long time.

Christmas

…cujus coelesti mysterio pascimur et potamur.

• No blood would pass, and maidenhead unabridged
• Retained a purity beyond all words —
• All words but One of course. Yet double-edged
• To spit her heart and turn her sorrow, swords
• Would point her toward another moment cradled
• By wood before she lifted up and coddled
• His body once again. While Bethlehem
• Will drink the blood not his, Jerusalem
• Remains in shadows not his — for King Herod
• Will wait. He sleeps in peace. But innocence
• Today awakes this hour of recompense
• For evergreen and blood’s more fragile merit;
• Each announces in a tremendous way
• The hue and cry that colors Christmas day.