12.25.23

12.25.23

Merry Christmas.

            More than half a lifetime ago I wrote this poem. It surprised me, as words may, like a tap on a shoulder from a long-ago pal. It was summertime, nowhere near Christmas, but the Magi were on my mind, perhaps thanks to Yeats’ and T.S. Eliot’s magisterial takes on the subject. My manner as much as my matter surprised me: rhymed six-line tetrameter stanzas, a form I’d never used before and haven’t since, which I’d have deemed too quaint to suit our discordant moment. We no more believe in predictable line-endings than we do in happy endings. The same holds for harmony in music or realism in art: only skepticism, irony, mockery feel valid responses to our circumstances, to hell with hallelujah.

            The lilt of my little outing made me smile. Then and now, it recalled the comforts of my boyhood Christmas, smoke from crackling fires, the tangy scent of evergreens indoors. Onto a fractious, sniping household, a holiday peace descended like a snow-bla…