December 15, 2013

Christmas choral on Pandora.

Finishing polish (for now) on the novel in the AM. Extra rehearsal in the afternoon, which was infuriating but, honestly, necessary. My throat phlegm was not entirely gone; may it be today when I must not only sing a concert and a service, but bellow out the greetings of Saint Nicholas. Party finally at Jack and Leland’s. I was in a receptive mood, so that was just as jolly as it was meant to be. I meant not to announce the purchase of a house, but the word leaked out. Rich knows the place, as I do, as “the murder house,” and
was in it when it was going through one of its renovations.

What if all these choices I'm making without time to consider or conviction to support turn out well?


A Visit from Saint Nicholas

Saint Nicholas I am, Saint Nicholas is me.
The name means”To the People, Victory.”
Agios Nickolaus is how it sounds in Greek,
But Santa Claus in the language that you speak.
The folks back home, who’d seen me little,
Who’d seen me sick,
Probably just called me Nick.

I was born in Anatolia, the Turkey that you know,
Seven hundred sixty seven years ago.
It was the Roman Empire then
Ruled by stern and warlike men.
We all waited to hear what was said and done
By the bighsots in Byzantium.
My father had a fleet of ships at sea,
and I could get the sailors to take me
Past the islands and to the far lands,
come back with spice and jewels in our hands.
So, in times to come, when people knew my name,
the patron saint of sailors and fisherman I became.
When there was danger or a storm at sea
they’d raise their voices and call on me,
and I’d save them, floating on the clouds to see ‘em,
If you believe the paintings in the museum.
All those boats and all those fish
meant just one thing: my folks were rich.
My loving papa died, and on that day
I began to try to give it all away.
There was so much it took a while
To make reduction in the glittering pile.

The story is told (though not by me)
--In language quite flowery--
of three girls in the town who could not wedded be
unless they had a dowry.
A dowry in those unenlightened lands
is what a father paid a lad to take a daughter off his hands.
Anyway, without the dowry, without a penny in their purse,
the unwed girls would turn to begging, or to worse.
So on three nights on my white horse
Quiet as a mouse, of course, of course
I rode by their house and over the wall
tossed bags of treasure, with coins big and small,
gold and silver, and certificates of deposit,
which I had in stacked up in my Anatolian closet.
Some say the bags fell down the chimney
and landed with a crash, by jiminy.
Some say just as I was riding by
The sisters were hanging stockings up to dry
and the thrown gold filled them up as mothers would
one day fill your stocking with things rich and good.
Maybe all of this happened. Maybe some of it did
I didn’t know, because I ran and hid.
A giver must give without blare and fuss,
And above all, be anonymous.
But people guessed, and year by year.
As bills were paid and meals set down on tables,
they smiled and whispered, sketching in the fables,
“Nicholas Gift-Giver has been here.”

You’d think that human kindness was enough,
but those days of yore were really rough:
pestilence, fevers, upheavals, persecution,
blasphemies, heresies, Diocletian!
I was a bishop, as you recall,
and had to find a remedy for it all.
One year there was famine on the land,
and a local butcher, lacking cows and chickens,
to the butchery of children turned his hand,
little boy cutlets, tiny tot hamburgers and chitlins.
I tasted something funny in the morning fry
and, vestments flapping, to the butcher shop did fly,
and to that horrible practice put an end.
I even made the dead boys live again,
brought them singing anthems, skull, foot, and spine
out of the butcher’s pickling brine.
So, are you the sausage on the plate before you?
Give me the word. I will restore you.

I did some bishopy things as well.
At Nicea before the Emperor Constantine,
before all the priests the world had ever seen,
I gathered to myself the righteous moxie
to champion the cause of orthodoxy.
I set the heresiarchs in their place.
And reputedly punched Arius in the face.
I guess I came through in the clutch.
But, do you care about that? I don’t so much.
I like the part about the gifts the best.
That made me Father Christmas to the West.

I see worried faces! My time is almost done.
This much of the Christmas tale I’ve spun;
That much more remains to tell. I scratch the surface.
But some stories go untold on purpose,
so you at some unfolding hour can find
fresh matter to delight your mind.
Twenty centuries I’ve done good in secret, unaware:
Two I’ve flown with reindeer through the winter air.
It’s OK. Things change. I understand.
Everything’s at imagination’s command.
But remember this! Saint Nicholas I am,
whose blessing calms the waters,
whose prayer brought life back to the dead,
who wore a bishop’s crown upon his head,
whose gold gets husbands for the poor man’s daughters.
Who smiles at every secret act of charity
And every wish fulfilled beneath twinkling tree.
My spirit governs for a thousand Decembers.
I brings good things to the person who remembers
the poor, the hungry, the afraid,
the little souls for whom this world was made.