Yesterday an overhanging sky, billowing gray clouds
A rosy cast to the light, they are illuminated Crows flying back from the park squawking the damp Christmas decorations on sodden lawns, which so moving, despite everything our fragile efforts to find the light and express the good My startled apprehension of three deer which I thought at first were fake, like the Home Depot wire outlines of deer illuminated by light. Prettier than the real thing, the harsh winter reality and grit of the country, but that is our age and our curse. Everything must be more than what it is. These ghost deer were grey and brown, a muzzle and tails of white. Their leanness. They watch me. It's all quiet. It's all acknowledgment. We stare. Accept one another. Here, where in the background the ever shifting lights of South Braddock Avenue sparkle green red white as any Christmas tree.
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“A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.” And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory, Lying down in the melting snow. There were times we regretted The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet. Then the camel men cursing and grumbling And running away, and wanting their liquor and women, And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters, And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly And the villages dirty and charging high prices: A hard time we had of it. At the end we preferred to travel all night, Sleeping in snatches, With the voices singing in our ears, saying That this was all folly. Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley, Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation; With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness, And three trees on the low sky, And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow. Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel, Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver, And feet kicking the empty wine-skins. But there was no information, and so we continued And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory. All this was a long time ago, I remember, And I would do it again, but set down This set down This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death. When I see the cradle rocking
What is it that I see? I see a rood on the hilltop Of Calvary. When I hear the cattle lowing What is it that they say? They say that shadows feasted At Tenebrae. When I know that the grave is empty, Absence eviscerates me, And I dwell in a cavernous, constant Horror vacui. CHRIST climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where there were no rootless Christmas trees hung with candycanes and breakable stars Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where there were no gilded Christmas trees and no tinsel Christmas trees and no tinfoil Christmas trees and no pink plastic Christmas trees and no gold Christmas trees and no black Christmas trees and no powderblue Christmas trees hung with electric candles and encircled by tin electric trains and clever cornball relatives Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where no intrepid Bible salesmen covered the territory in two-tone cadillacs and where no Sears Roebuck creches complete with plastic babe in manger arrived by parcel post the babe by special delivery and where no televised Wise Men praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where no fat handshaking stranger in a red flannel suit and a fake white beard went around passing himself off as some sort of North Pole saint crossing the desert to Bethlehem Pennsylvania in a Volkswagen sled drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer with German names and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts from Saks Fifth Avenue for everybody's imagined Christ child Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where no Bing Crosby carollers groaned of a tight Christmas and where no Radio City angels iceskated wingless thru a winter wonderland into a jinglebell heaven daily at 8:30 with Midnight Mass matinees Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and softly stole away into some anonymous Mary's womb again where in the darkest night of everybody's anonymous soul He awaits again an unimaginable and impossibly Immaculate Reconception the very craziest of Second Comings My Aunt Gabe at Christmas--this must have been in the late 1960's. She bought the "mink paw" coat after she sold her house in Providence, in which I grew up. I still have her matching pillbox hat. It's only in the past six months that I have realized how tired and sad Gabe often looked in her later years. Later than this--she had a heart attack a few years after this picture. "A Heart Block!" she bragged. Well, I forgive myself somewhat for being too young and self-centered to notice. Somewhat. Of course I'd give anything on earth to see her again. So much today seems absurd to me. How I've love to yuck it up with my dear witty dead Gabe. This time of year I think of her indomitable efforts to make a home for me in her house on Bergen St. I remember the fake log fire and the mantel and the tree with the big lights in the parlor. I remember lying on the floor and looking upward. How fragile her efforts--this woman who worked in a cafeteria most of her life-- yet how strong they seem in memory. Those invincible structures have served me well all my life. They gave me a sense of foundation in a world which seems increasingly unmoored. Yesterday looked all over the place for a wreath. Couldn't find one, and thought longingly of wandering the Maine woods to cut branches for wreaths. I made them myself. Still, yesterday I saw birds everywhere. Unlike Central Maine, which still keeps farmers' hours, people in Pgh get up much later. it's nice and quiet on weekend mornings. I looked up from the Home Depot lot to see all kinds of geese honking. Other birds whirling and twirling in the early morning. I keep these things in my heart. Advent Calendar BY GJERTRUD SCHNACKENBERG Bethlehem in Germany, Glitter on the sloping roofs, Breadcrumbs on the windowsills, Candles in the Christmas trees, Hearths with pairs of empty shoes: Panels of Nativity Open paper scenes where doors Open into other scenes, Some recounted, some foretold. Blizzard-sprinkled flakes of gold Gleam from small interiors, Picture-boxes in the stars Open up like cupboard doors In a cabinet Jesus built. Southern German villagers, Peasants in the mica frost, See the comet streaming down, Heavenly faces, each alone, Faces lifted, startled, lost, As if lightning lit the town. Sitting in an upstairs window Patiently the village scholar Raises his nearsighted face, Interrupted by the star. Left and right his hands lie stricken Useless on his heavy book. When I lift the paper door In the ceiling of his study One canary-angel glimmers, Flitting in the candelabra, Peers and quizzes him: Rabbi, What are the spheres surmounted by? But his lips are motionless. Child, what are you asking for? Look, he gazes past the roofs, Gazes where the bitter North, Stretched across the empty place, Opens door by door by door. This is childhood's shrunken door. When I touch the glittering crumbs, When I cry to be admitted, No one answers, no one comes. And the tailor's needle flashes In midair with thread pulled tight, Stitching a baptismal gown. But the gown, the seventh door, Turns up an interior Hidden from the tailor's eyes: Baby presents like the boxes Angels hold on streets and stairways, Wooden soldier, wooden sword, Chocolate coins in crinkled gold, Hints of something bought and sold, Hints of murder in the stars. Baby's gown is sown with glitter Spread across the tailor's lap. Up above his painted ceiling Baby mouse's skeleton Crumbles in the mouse's trap. Leaning from the cliff of heaven, Indicating whom he weeps for, Joseph lifts his lamp above The infant like a candle-crown. Let my fingers touch the silence Where the infant's father cries. Give me entrance to the village From my childhood where the doorways Open pictures in the skies. But when all the doors are open, No one sees that I've returned. When I cry to be admitted, No one answers, no one comes. Clinging to my fingers only Pain, like glitter bits adhering, When I touch the shining crumbs. Advent Calendar |
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May 2024
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