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The kings they came from out the south, All dressed in ermine fine; They bore Him gold and chrysoprase, And gifts of precious wine. The shepherds came from out the north, Their coats were brown and old; They brought Him little new-born lambs— They had not any gold. The wise men came from out the east, And they were wrapped in white; The star that led them all the way Did glorify the night. The angels came from heaven high, And they were clad with wings; And lo, they brought a joyful song The host of heaven sings. The kings they knocked upon the door, The wise men entered in, The shepherds followed after them To hear the song begin. The angels sang through all the night Until the rising sun, But little Jesus fell asleep Before the song was done.

for Vincent Warren Behind the black water tower under the grey of the sky that feeds it smoke speeds to where a pigeon spreads its wings This is no great feat Cold pushes out its lust We walk we drink we cast our giggling insults Would you please leave the $2.50 you owe me I would rather not talk about it just now           Money bores me I would like to visit someone who will stay in bed all day           A forest is rising imperceptibly in my head not a civilized park I think it would be nice this “new moral odor” no it would not mean “everything marching to its tomb” The water tower watches over us            Is there someone you would like to invite        no one.

My mother was not impressed with her beauty; once a year she put it on like a costume, plaited her black hair, slick as cornsilk, down past her hips, in one rope-thick braid, turned it, carefully, hand over hand, and fixed it at the nape of her neck, stiff and elegant as a crown, with tortoise pins, like huge insects, some belonging to her dead mother, some to my living grandmother. Sitting on the stool at the mirror, she applied a peachy foundation that seemed to hold her down, to trap her, as if we never would have noticed what flew among us unless it was weighted and bound in its mask. Vaseline shined her eyebrows, mascara blackened her lashes until they swept down like feathers; her eyes deepened until they shone from far away. Now I remember her hands, her poor hands, which, even then were old from scrubbing, whiter on the inside than they should have been, and hard, the first joints of her fingers, little fattened pads, the nails filed to sharp points like old-fashioned ink pens, painted a jolly color. Her hands stood next to her face and wanted to be put away, prayed for the scrub bucket and brush to make them useful. And, as I write, I forget the years I watched her pull hairs like a witch from her chin, magnify every blotch—as if acid were thrown from the inside. But once a year my mother rose in her white silk slip, not the slave of the house, the woman, took the ironed dress from the hanger— allowing me to stand on the bed, so that my face looked directly into her face, and hold the garment away from her as she pulled it down.

Let midnight gather up the wind and the cry of tires on bitter snow. Let midnight call the cold dogs home, sleet in their fur—last one can blow the streetlights out.   If children sleep after the day’s unfoldings, the wheel of gifts and griefs, may their breathing ease the strange hollowness we feel. Let midnight draw whoever’s left to the grate where a burnt-out log unrolls low mutterings of smoke until a small fire wakes in its crib of coals.

O little fleas of speckled light all dancing like a satellite O belly green trees shaded vale O shiny bobcat winter trail Amoebic rampage squamous cock a Chinese hairpiece burly sock A grilled banana smashes gates and mingeless badgers venerate The asses of the winter trees rock on fat asses as you please Be jumpy or unhinged with joy enlightened fry cakes Staten hoy.

Christmas is coming. The goose is getting fat Please put a penny in the old man’s hat. If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do. If you haven’t got a ha’penny, God bless you. Tonight the wide, wet flakes of snow Drift down like Christmas suicides, Layering the eaves and boughs until The landscape seems transformed, as from A night of talk or love. I’ve come From cankered ports and railroad hubs To winter in a northern state: Three months of wind and little light. Wood split, flue cleaned, and ashes hauled, I am now proof against the cold And make a place before the stove. Mired fast in middle age, possessed Of staved-in barn and brambled lot, I think of that fierce-minded woman Whom I loved, painting in a small, Unheated room, or of a friend, Sharp-ribbed from poverty, who framed And fitted out his house by hand And writes each night by kerosene. I think, that is, of others who Withdrew from commerce and the world To work for joy instead of gain. O would that I could gather them This Yuletide, and shower them with coins.

This seablue fir that rode the mountain storm Is swaddled here in splints of tin to die. Sofas around in chubby velvet swarm; Onlooking cabinets glitter with flat eye; Here lacquer in the branches runs like rain And resin of treasure starts from every vein. Light is a dancer here and cannot rest. No tanagers or jays are half so bright As swarms of fire that deep in fragrance nest In jungles of the gilt exotic night Where melons hang like moonstone. White above Rises that perfect star, the sign of love. On carpets’ fairy turf, in rainbow dark, Here once the enchanted children laid their heads, Reached for the floating moon above the park, And all their hopes were simple blues and reds. Beneath the electric halo, none could see Swords in the ankle of the victim tree. Each named a patron star: Arthur said green For August in the country; and Betty blue For swinging and the Florida surf; while Jeanne Decided gold. One horoscope was true: The star of Donald low and lava-red— Enlisted Donald, in Australia dead. Our lives were bound to sorcery and night. Zodiacs crumble on the boughs of rust For every child is gone. Some burned too bright And now lie broken in the bins of dust; And some, a fortunate few, adventured far And found assurance in the perfect star.

How should I now recall the icy lace of the pane like a sheet of cellophane, or the skies of alcohol poured over the saltbox town? On that stony New England tableau, the halo of falling snow glared like a waxy crown. Through blue frozen lots my giant parents strolled, wrapped tight against the cold like woolen Argonauts, searching for that tall perfection of Scotch pine from the hundreds laid in line like the dead at Guadalcanal. The clapboard village aglow that starry stark December I barely now remember, or the brutish ache of snow burning my face like quicklime. Yet one thing was still missing. I saw my parents kissing, perhaps for the last time.

(A Christmas Circular Letter) The city had withdrawn into itself And left at last the country to the country; When between whirls of snow not come to lie And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove A stranger to our yard, who looked the city, Yet did in country fashion in that there He sat and waited till he drew us out A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was. He proved to be the city come again To look for something it had left behind And could not do without and keep its Christmas. He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees; My woods—the young fir balsams like a place Where houses all are churches and have spires. I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees. I doubt if I was tempted for a moment To sell them off their feet to go in cars And leave the slope behind the house all bare, Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon. I’d hate to have them know it if I was. Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees except As others hold theirs or refuse for them, Beyond the time of profitable growth, The trial by market everything must come to. I dallied so much with the thought of selling. Then whether from mistaken courtesy And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether From hope of hearing good of what was mine, I said, “There aren’t enough to be worth while.” “I could soon tell how many they would cut, You let me look them over.” “You could look. But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.” Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close That lop each other of boughs, but not a few Quite solitary and having equal boughs All round and round. The latter he nodded “Yes” to, Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one, With a buyer’s moderation, “That would do.” I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so. We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over, And came down on the north. He said, “A thousand.” “A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?” He felt some need of softening that to me: “A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars.” Then I was certain I had never meant To let him have them. Never show surprise! But thirty dollars seemed so small beside The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents (For that was all they figured out apiece), Three cents so small beside the dollar friends I should be writing to within the hour Would pay in cities for good trees like those, Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools Could hang enough on to pick off enough. A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had! Worth three cents more to give away than sell, As may be shown by a simple calculation. Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter. I can’t help wishing I could send you one, In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.

were lifted over the valley, its steepling dustdevils the redwinged blackbirds convened vibrant arc their swift, their dive against the filmy, the finite air the profession of absence, of being absented, a lifting skyward then gone the moment of flight: another resignation from the sweep of earth jackrabbit, swallowtail, harlequin duck: believe in this refuge vivid tips of oleander white and red perimeters where no perimeter should be here is another in my long list of asides: why have I never had a clock that actually gained time? that apparatus, which measures out the minutes, is our own image forever losing and so the delicate, unfixed condition of love, the treacherous body the unsettling state of creation and how we have damaged— isn’t one a suitable lens through which to see another: filter the body, filter the mind, filter the resilient land and by resilient I mean which holds which tolerates the inconstant lover, the pitiful treatment the experiment, the untried & untrue, the last stab at wellness choose your own adventure: drug failure or organ failure cataclysmic climate change or something akin to what’s killing bees—colony collapse more like us than we’d allow, this wondrous swatch of rough why do I need to say the toads and moor and clouds— in a spring of misunderstanding, I took the cricket’s sound and delight I took in the sex of every season, the tumble on moss the loud company of musicians, the shy young bookseller anonymous voices that beckoned to ramble to be picked from the crepuscule at the forest’s edge until the nocturnal animals crept forth their eyes like the lamps in store windows forgotten, vaguely firing a desire for home hence, the body’s burden, its resolute campaign:  trudge on and if the war does not shake us from our quietude, nothing will I carry the same baffled heart I have always carried a bit more battered than before, a bit less joy for I see the difficult charge of living in this declining sphere by the open air, I swore out my list of pleasures: sprig of lilac, scent of pine the sparrows bathing in the drainage ditch, their song the lusty thoughts in spring as the yellow violets bloom and the cherry forms its first full buds the tonic cords along the legs and arms of youth and youth passing into maturity, ripening its flesh growing softer, less unattainable, ruddy and spotted plum daily, I mistake—there was a medication I forgot to take there was a man who gave himself, decently, to me & I refused him in a protracted stillness, I saw that heron I didn’t wish to disturb was clearly a white sack caught in the redbud’s limbs I did not comprehend desire as a deadly force until— daylight, don’t leave me now, I haven’t done with you— nor that, in this late hour, we still cannot make peace if I, inconsequential being that I am, forsake all others how many others correspondingly forsake this world light, light: do not go I sing you this song and I will sing another as well