(i) First the good news, then the bad …
A pretty piece of blasphemy,
Rossetti’s girl, cowering on a cot,
the Angel Gabriel, offering
as though it were a bribe,
a lily like any to be plucked for free
from the sun-drunk quarries
or the hillsides sunk in shadow,
in Nowheresville, in Galilee.
(ii) And anon begat the mob
Pharaoh’s pub, Dive’s dive,
Jonah’s joint. Establishments
one would go to for tapas and
imported beer, from faraway
places as restlessly outlandish as Nubia
or Persia, or even far-farther-farthest away
Scythia, where the brew
is black as the Black Sea,
in squat bottles red as blood.
Disaffected begat Furious who begat
Anonymous who begat the howling Mob.
But now are quieter days, mostly,
and no one lets on if they remember
how it was, the disasters
which almost came to pass.
Police batons employed primarily as
pointers to or away from the lost souls
who’ve brought attention on themselves.
-Where must I go, she nerves herself to ask,
to state my name, my alien status,
to register myself according to the Empire’s will,
so that Jerusalem stay measured for the grave,
and Rome sleep undisturbed?
(iii) Star of Bethlehem
Were a grown man to giggle
suddenly and like a startled girl,
or bray like an ass
behind a settling slogan,
then whatsoever she had set aside
(come rainy day, come stormy night)
might, in defense of dignity,
be worth a second glance.
Mary’s doubts. And ‘Mary’s doubts’
has a sound too naked
to be called back with a
qualifying smile, no simple
‘now let’s begin’ could hope to echo
with anything but the thinnest clash,
the merest light of eyes
in acquiescent yes,
and even that, subject to doubt.
‘This’ means ‘that’ and ‘do you
follow?’ The star is, yes, a
star, that others follow,
though now it follows ‘you’
and pauses in the wintry sky
as though noosed with divine
wire, swaying in its hush,
directly above the spot you chose
to stop at, too tired
and cold to argue anything
but a little warmth, a little
food, a little peace, at last.
(iv) Kings
The gifts, in their
lidless boxes, waft a bouquet
of thought over context.
The beauty of the bone-tired
girl drops the kings to their knees,
the latest in a string
of impulsive acts which their retainers
silently deplore,
eyes ever on alert in these narrow,
alien, pitchdark streets.
Yes, yes, the child is a jewel
and adorable in ways almost
human. Yes, one must allow
the awkward husband his
sheepish halting speech, his faith
like an open wound,
the momentary warmth as
the waiflike mother stirs
from what may be as much an end
as a beginning, offering her
unexpected guests a little something
warm to drink. The star
hangs still in the sky,
and to stare too long
is to be unnerved.
Pay tribute, worship,
but don’t stay overlong.
Hurry, hurry back home
by any other way than that
by which you came.
(v) Massacre of the innocents
Smoke so thick that one expects to see one’s twin,
shaken from shadow to flesh, the fire’s urgent question
as to who stalks the unhurried darkness providing in itself
the answer. The reel breaks and even those who’d begun
to shy their eyes feel oddly cheated. The prophet in the cheap
seats may think he knows why he was chosen. The eyes that
seem to contain so much but wouldn’t dream of answering.
An oasis from the horror, thumbs to plug the soundtrack
to a throb. To find oneself willingly watching what one
would never choose to imagine.
The prophet doesn’t mind that the unposed question is
rhetorical, he’ll scrape together a reason that musters up
in theory, if no place else.
The muffled pounding of wood on cowhide,
the terrible sound of roots coming loose in a fist of tug and clot.
And the rain descended and the floods came and the wind
blew deep into Bethlehem and all along the coast,
and in every hamlet the daughters of Rachel ran calling
through the silence and the smoke.
Miriam, Elizabeth, Ruth, and Sarah,
crying for their butchered boys.
(vi) Herod
The world as small as a lidded box,
golden clasps that whine and scream.
The blueblack square of the night sky,
stars scattered without restraint,
lifting as though the Bears could
fold on a hinge and a morning
of trees waiting dense at the bottom
of the rushing hill, standing miles
of green as black as dried blood.
Or is it berries and their jewel-
like accuracy, necklaced in a
miles-long continual luxe, a trompe
l’oeil belt to hold the forests
in place, to bind them back
from their desire to surge uphill.
Speed hurls him down
into their shadows, the reality
of where the cold ground will greet
him if he falls or is thrown
made dreamlike by the smooth
unending blanch of snow
that blankets every horizontal
surface to a depth impossible to guess.
Herod lifts his hands
as if to protect his face.
(vii) The flight into Egypt
God’s glad tip-off and a narrow escape.
Family donkey plodding up the lane,
headed out of town, away from dawn
and its lifted sword.
They hurry behind the patient croup,
ragtag tail wispy as infant’s hair.
The widow’s well sighs as they
hush the flaccid skins plump
with cold water.
A single line of heavenly trees,
their green still touched with winter’s
white, blown to silver
when the wind brushes by.
In the desert beyond, the edict
will lose them, the words of pursuit
will cry and growl, going mad
and turning upon each other
till the wind intervenes,
to drive them to their separate deaths.
The family shelters between the
immense paws of what they take,
in the moon’s deceitful light,
to be a hill.
Above them, on guard and looking east,
the angel shifts his golden feet
upon the sphinx’s head.