Stillborn: Melchior in the nursing home

Stillborn:
Melchior in the nursing home

   When I was young,
   Christmas wasn't very much--
   a balsam culled from the edge of a field,
   colored balls in a tattered box,
   durable strings of colored lights,
   glorious music in local churches,
   long, slow winter hours.

   Now that I am four fifths old,
   Christmas is so very much,
   so bought and sold in Christian bulk,
      carols slammed down secular streets--
      bad or worse in slipshod churches.
   What sea or landfill's deep enough
   to hold the glitter-smash
   of all these broken ornaments?

   ... Who are you again?

        I was a wise man,
        literate in stars.

   --and now--?

        Ancient and uneasy in America,
        wrapped in swaddling robes,
        wheel-chaired, parked
        beneath denatured swags
        of falsely berried nevergreen,
        I miss austerity.
        I miss desert travel.

   I miss the naive Christmases
   when, four fifths young
   in my frugal father's house,
   I wrote my hopes on a battered desk
   in a shadowy hall upstairs--
   the ceiling high and cold with draft
   on dragging winter evenings
   when there was no entertainment
   but my mind unentertained,
      yet knowledge of approaching holiday.
   Once I dreamed that I worked all night, forgetting--
   then woke in the downstairs room
   as warm as womb: the tree of light.

   But most of all,
   I miss how every modest Christmas morning,
   disappointment in the presents
   faded quietly and wisely, gone by breakfast
   even for us children.

   ... but who are you again?

        Melchior,
      come back
      in another searching time.

   Searching for what?

      The light from the star
      that just now is arriving.

   The astrologer? One of the three?
   Why here?

      Too much room at the Christian Inn.
      And who would look for a Magus here
      among this wreckage of untreasured age
      and unmined memory?
      Herod is alive and well
      and killing babes for no reason at all.
      This is the manger of 2005
      and the hay is eating the oxen.

   I do not understand you.

      What is it in this saturated, satiated
      anti-Midas age of yours
      that everything you touch,
      once gold, turns lead!
      Even the holy babe we found
      is new-born, yes! again this year,
         but four fifths dead.

   Wait! Don't wheel away--!
   Listen--
   Listen.
   I'll tell you what I still can see
   on late-in-Advent evenings
   in my clearest memory: the true Nativity--
   my faithful father's glowing tree
   reflected in the tall black window panes of living room,
   the colored lights imposed
   on bare and frozen trees outside,
   and that was it--the lead-to-golden bough,
   like Gabriel's who imposed on Mary's how.

         Like Christmas then on Christmas now.

   Believe I do reject the artificial tree
   and heart of modern Christmas "season"--

      Are there any more like you?

   Two or three in beds and halls
   and cattle stalls
   on every floor.

      Will you take back one Christmas night,
      one Christmas morning, only, for your use?
      Will you refuse cartoonish "power" pointed
      songs of praise (follow the bouncing ball)
      projected in what used to be a sacred space,
      and wait for writing by the hand on temple wall?
      Can we agree?

   Joyfully!

      Will you come with me?
      Though I seem to nod in this cushioned chair
      in the cushioned space of used-to-mean,
      let word go forth in Herod's time again:
      we are at odds with the even powers
      and will report to no one what we've seen.

   We'll secret the strains of ancient songs
   of love bereft and hope long gone,
   safe in heart, secure in mind,
   singing the news between mourn and morn:
   --for two or three of us old kings
        he is still born.

COPYRIGHT 2005 The Christian Century Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning