Nativity Poem

Imagine striking a match that night in the cave:
Imagine crockery, try to make use of its glaze
To feel cold cracks in the floor, the blankness of hunger.
Imagine the desert – but the desert is everywhere.

Imagine striking a match in that midnight cave,
The fire, the farm beasts in outline, the farm tools and stuff;
And imagine, as you towel your face in the enveloping folds,
Mary, Joseph, and the Infant in swaddling clothes.

Imagine the kings, the caravans’ stilted procession
As they make for the cave, or, rather, three beams closing in
And in on the star, the creaking of loads, the clink of a cowbell;
(No thronging of Heaven as yet, no peal of the bell

That will ring in the end for the infant once he has earned it).
Imagine the Lord, for the first time, from darkness, and stranded
Immensely in distance, recognizing Himself in the Son
Of Man: His homelessness plain to him now in a homeless one.

--Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996), Russian-American poet and essayist; translated from Russian by Seamus Heaney.

Sing Out O Earth!

Psalm 96


Sing out, O Earth,
Bowl thrown on God’s wheel--
turning from your slumber like a drowsy child,
humming with joy as you spin beneath our feet
spinning like a top within a jetty of the Milky Way.

Sing out, O Earth:
Home of the martins swooping in arrow-flight,
perch of the kestrel and owl and waxwing
shelter of the rabbit, shyly scuttling through grasstufts.
You hold the whale within your cupped hands;
gratefully receiving each fallen leaf,
humus alive with industry and rebirth
(if we pondered it, would we ever tread so heedlessly?).

Sing out, O Earth—
Gathering yourself beneath the blanket of snow
with the promise of green ready to spring forth--
like a panther after its prey.
Sending winds to set the dogwood blossoms dancing,
bedecked with gaily waving blanket flowers and lupine
enticing the improbably aloft bumblebee

You carry us like a mother, gravid, arms slung
around the delicate body of her child.
Your shadow waxes full across the face of the Moon,
skimming like a raft through the velvet sea of night.

Sing out, O Earth!
and call us to join the harmony
major third, perfect fourth, minor fifth.
Let the springs murmur,
let the rivers unravel and spool out their tale,
let the oceans scrub your shores
leaving behind their tokens of sea-glass and shell
as they trace a path along your side.

Sing out, O Earth,
and join the chorus of constellations.
The trees of the wood shout “Alleluia” in joy,
while the rest of creation waits
in breathless hope and wonder--

The Star moves restlessly to illumine the scene
and the Magi jerk awake from their dreams
to set out for unknown lands;
the shepherds stir uneasily from their tower,
the young mother gasps as the pains begin.
Sing out with her, and receive the glad news--
The Prince of Peace approaches.

-- Leslie Scoopmire, December 2021.

A version of this poem was first published on Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on December 23, 2021.

The Rising of the Sun

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

--William Shakespeare (1564-1616), English actor, playwright, and poet, from from Hamlet, Act I, Scene i