Three Meditations for the Day After Christmas

I

My Saturnalia runs. No one will bring
A skeleton in (it might offend my eye).
But better yet, the ox and ass descry,
With lowing and with braying, where the King,
An infant wrapped in rags, lies shivering.


II

My passions crowd the night. No ancient tract
By Rolle or Aelfric strikes an inward blow.
But dusty conjurers, tired of the show,
Drag into Bethlehem. Fatigue has racked
Their bodies, but their treasures are unpacked.


III

My resources are broad, funds all secure.
And yet, when He was born, not two years old,
In breathlessness, in stealth, quick, numb with fear,
The holy family, by angels told,
Fled down to Egypt through night deserts cold.

Artist’s Statement

T his was one of the first poems I ever published. Aside from the encouragement that came from getting a poem in print, this particular work was pivotal in my development as a poet. In “Three Meditations for the Day After Christmas” I began to explore the singular power of words. Up to this point I had concentrated upon ideas or concepts as the force behind a poem, but in this piece of writing I began to see how each separate word is an isolated node of meaning, power, nuance, subtlety. No longer were words mere vehicles to convey an idea. They were raw centers of suggestion, each with a life of its own, each with an evocative energy that bordered on magic.

“You don’t make a poem with ideas, you make it with words,” Mallarmé once said, and in this poem I began to realize as much. Words have a painful beauty and are isolated in their distinct meanings. Yet, paradoxically, they interact with other words. This is the sorcery of language, the thing that made the ancients equate poetry with priesthood. Poetry is an incantation depending on the runic shamanism of words. In a poem about an event in Christian mythology I began to probe the primal incantatory power of language—but that should not be so surprising, as Saint John begins his gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” I still try to call up this power in every poem I write.