A Christmas Poem

A Christmas Poem


Maybe they shouldn’t have asked for a Christmas poem from me,
unless what they wanted was some ditty, knowing and ironic,
on the theme of “disappointment,” or some discourse on the
unbridgeable gulf between reality and desire. My mama’s creche
is in some box in the closet, under some other box with all the
streamers and bulbs and precious baby animals which hung
upon I’ve lost count now of how many trees.
I swear to God, somewhere in tissue is the first candy cane
my chubby baby fingers hung on a low-hanging branch,
saved and preserved, I suppose, against the awful
mutability of the world, shattered, inedible, hardened and embittered
wherever it was soft and sweet before, held together
by packaging, exactly like the rest of us.

I don’t put a tree up
anymore. I say it’s because of the cats, because I travel so much.
It’s really because I sit in the twinkling light of it and sob,
and I don’t know why.

If you want THAT kind of poem, I’m your man. Believe me,
I know what people mean when they say that Christmas is
the worst time of year, what with the stores playing fifteen carols
we hate for every one we kind of can endure, what with
plastic poinsettias in aisles at Halloween and the churches
hoping for a windfall from parishioners who come with
liquid checkbook and guilty heart on Christmas Eve,
baby Jesus freezing on the porch amid the unresponsive animals,
the likes of us going about with hands jammed in our pockets
and eyes glued down against the panhandlers and well wishers
whom we would with equal fervor strike from our sight above the dirty snow.

If that’s what you want to hear, all right.
Or that the guns of war have not ceased tonight, and will not,
Prince of Peace or no. The Little Match Girl will die in the cold
and Tiny Tim will be blocked by his HMO from getting the operation.

When I set up a creche of my own someday,
the Child will have as his attendants rhino and buffalo
whuffing in the stalls, the rafters heavy with tiger and panther,
their lantern eyes bright in the firelight.
The time is done
when shepherds could come out of the fields
and leave their sheep alone even for an hour.
Whatever is encamped in the nearby hills
you don’t want to know about.
Sirens wail. Sad boys stand guard with rifles loaded.

I will remember Herod’s children tonight,
the Innocents that the world was not content
to slaughter only once.
I will remember Matthew Shepard crucified
under the plate-sized western stars.
I will remember the armed children with their sorrows,
boys and girls led astray to a country from which
there is no road back.

I will remember wild souls, bewildered, raging in the broken streets,
to whom no moderating angel came.
I will remember those sleeping their Christmas sleep,
inches from where shadows cross at midnight,
white teeth, white blades glittering.
I will, finally, aim my song at those battalions in the middle of the air,
the choiring angels who seem so silly at a time like this,
their good news quaint with many thoughtless repetitions,
their hosannas so far off
we no longer remember how terrible they were,
their listeners, as the text says, sore afraid: those beings
blazing in the midnight air, wings unfurled
like hawks above the plain,
covering as the falcon covers, sharp, mysterious.
I will stand tonight on the front lawn. I will whisper, O,
Come again. Come Down. Hover and cry out. Come to me.
I promise to be sore afraid.
I promise to drop whatever I am doing and find the star you mean,
and follow it. I will leave the lights on. I will leave the doors unlocked.

And then I will keep such silence. Listening.

Come into my garden
The Christ Child said to me,
Here is the lily for what’s past,
the rose for what’s to be.

Here is the emerald mound
where love lies till the day
all sleeping souls must rise and do
what the waking trumpets say.

Here is the sapphire pool
from which the laughing river ran
all through Paradise, and by
the melancholy carnivals of man.

For every poison on the earth
here grows the remedy,
For every cross and arrow shaft,
a purple-flowered tree.

Here I will croon your sleep awhile,
then teach you how to make
a firebrand for the warfare’s,
a gold bird for the music’s, sake.

Sleep my child while I’m a child
and all wonder yet may be.
Dream of the morning, dream of the light.
My darling, dream of me.