looking for christmas, again

Every Christmas i comb through poetry anthologies, search the internet, the works - looking for a Christmas poem that meets my stringent editorial standards (haha!). Actually, i don't think it's so much a good poem that i'm looking for, though that is of course the bottom-line as far as Christmas selections are concerned. A colleague told me once that i was probably the kind of art-buyer who would never even imagine buying any artwork, and then, one day, suddenly come across a piece that i just had to have. i suppose that applies to poetry too. i'm looking for the X-factor - that undefinable something that gives that 'Ahhh...' feeling that tells me 'This is home.'

And inevitably, what i find just never cuts it.

The best Christmas poem, as i said in a similar post this time last year, is TS Eliot's Journey of the Magi - but that's already been put up elsewhere on this blog.

Anyways, so this year i've decided to settle for something that's caught my eye before. No 'Ahhh...' here, but this will do for the moment while i look for something better for next year.


He

He runs before the wise men: he
Is moving on the hills like snow.
No gifts, no tears, no company
He brings, but wind-rise and water-flow.

In meadows of descended day
His motion leans, dividing air:
He takes the unforgiving way
Beneath the apostolic star.

She who has known him calls him stranger.
Parting the night's long hair, he steals
Within the heart, that humble manger
Where the white, astonished spirit kneels.

His vertical inflicting pride,
Whose shadow cuts the nib of space,
Bends to this virtue fructified.
But though he kiss the little face

Like rapture breaking on the mind,
The necessary fierce details
Implacably he has designed.
Redemption hangs upon the nails.


(Stanley Kunitz)
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