Christmas in Cadence .2

Hello friends. I hope your Christmas days are gliding by like Tolkien’s elves in a throng of laughter, song, and merry feasting (and not, conversely, in an orc-like stomp of noise, which holidays are all-too prone to do). The poem below is by the modern poet, Richard Wilbur, a writer I have only recently discovered. His words are nourishing. They still me when I read them and work upon me like quiet hands that grip mine until I am calm. The work below is titled simply, A Christmas Hymn:

A stable-lamp is lighted

Whose glow shall wake the sky;

The stars shall bend their voices,

And every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry,

And straw like gold shall shine;

A barn shall harbor heaven,

A stall become a shrine.

This child through David’s city

Shall ride in triumph by;

The palm shall strew its branches,

And every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry,

Though heavy, dull, and dumb,

And lie within the roadway

To pave His kingdom come.

Yet He shall be forsaken,

And yielded up to die;

The sky shall groan and darken,

And every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry

For stony hearts of men:

God’s blood upon the spearhead,

God’s love refused again.

But now, as at the ending,

The low is lifted high;

The stars shall bend their voices,

And every stone shall cry.

And every stone shall cry

In praises of the child

By whose descent among us

The worlds are reconciled.

-Richard Wilbur