39 Christmas poems

The first day of Christmas, My true love sent to me A partridge in a pear tree. The second day of Christmas, My true love sent to me Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree. The third day of Christmas, My true love sent to me Three French hens, Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree. The fourth day of Christmas, My true love sent to me Four colly birds, Three French hens, Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree. The fifth day of Christmas, My true love sent to me Five gold rings, Four colly birds, Three French hens, Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree. The sixth day of Christmas, My true love sent to me Six geese a-laying, Five gold rings, Four colly birds, Three French hens, Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree. The seventh day of Christmas, My true love sent to me Seven swans a-swimming, Six geese a-laying, Five gold rings, Four colly birds, Three French hens, Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree. The eighth day of Christmas, My true love sent to me Eight maids a-milking, Seven swans a-swimming, Six geese a-laying, Five gold rings, Four colly birds, Three French hens, Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree. The ninth day of Christmas, My true love sent to me Nine drummers drumming, Eight maids a-milking, Seven swans a-swimming, Six geese a-laying, Five gold rings, Four colly birds, Three French hens, Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree. The tenth day of Christmas, My true love sent to me Ten pipers piping, Nine drummers drumming, Eight maids a-milking, Seven swans a-swimming, Six geese a-laying, Five gold rings, Four colly birds, Three French hens, Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree. The eleventh day of Christmas My true love sent to me Eleven ladies dancing, Ten pipers piping, Nine drummers drumming, Eight maids a-milking, Seven swans a-swimming, Six geese a-laying, Five gold rings, Four colly birds, Three French hens, Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree. The twelfth day of Christmas My true love sent to me Twelve fiddlers fiddling, Eleven ladies dancing, Ten pipers piping, Nine drummers drumming, Eight maids a-milking, Seven swans a-swimming, Six geese a-laying, Five gold rings, Four colly birds, Three French hens, Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree.

What crowding thoughts around me wake, What marvels in a Christmas-cake! Ah say, what strange enchantment dwells Enclosed within its odorous cells? Is there no small magician bound Encrusted in its snowy round? For magic surely lurks in this, A cake that tells of vanished bliss; A cake that conjures up to view The early scenes, when life was new; When memory knew no sorrows past, And hope believed in joys that last! — Mysterious cake, whose folds contain Life’s calendar of bliss and pain; That speaks of friends for ever fled, And wakes the tears I love to shed. Oft shall I breathe her cherished name From whose fair hand the offering came: For she recalls the artless smile Of nymphs that deck my native isle; Of beauty that we love to trace, Allied with tender, modest grace; Of those who, while abroad they roam, Retain each charm that gladdens home, And whose dear friendships can impart A Christmas banquet for the heart!

* O fury- bedecked! O glitter-torn! Let the wild wind erect bonbonbonanzas; junipers affect frostyfreeze turbans; iciclestuff adorn all cuckolded creation in a madcap crown of horn! It’s a new day; no scapegrace of a sect tidying up the ashtrays playing Daughter-in-Law Elect; bells! bibelots! popsicle cigars! shatter the glassware! a son born now now while ox and ass and infant lie together as poor creatures will and tears of her exertion still cling in the spent girl’s eye and a great firework in the sky drifts to the western hill.

In the cold season, in a locality accustomed to heat more than to cold, to horizontality more than to a mountain, a child was born in a cave in order to save the world; it blew as only in deserts in winter it blows, athwart. To Him, all things seemed enormous: His mother’s breast, the steam out of the ox’s nostrils, Caspar, Balthazar, Melchior—the team of Magi, their presents heaped by the door, ajar. He was but a dot, and a dot was the star. Keenly, without blinking, through pallid, stray clouds, upon the child in the manger, from far away— from the depth of the universe, from its opposite end—the star was looking into the cave. And that was the Father’s stare. December 1987

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. “Now they are all on their knees,” An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearthside ease. We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt in their strawy pen, Nor did it occur to one of us there To doubt they were kneeling then. So fair a fancy few would weave In these years! Yet, I feel, If someone said on Christmas Eve, “Come; see the oxen kneel, “In the lonely barton by yonder coomb Our childhood used to know,” I should go with him in the gloom, Hoping it might be so.

Sea-preserved, heaped with sea-spoils, Ribs, keels, coral sores, Detached faces, ephemeral oils, Discharged on the world’s outer shores, A dumb child-king Arrives at his right place; rests, Undisturbed, among slack serpents; beasts With claws flesh-buttered. In the gathering Of bestial and common hardship Artistic men appear to worship And fall down; to recognize Familiar tokens; believe their own eyes. Above the marvel, each rigid head, Angels, their unnatural wings displayed, Freeze into an attitude Recalling the dead.

Father’s opinion of savages And dogs, a gay Bloomsbury epigram: ‘The brutes may possibly have souls,’ he says, ‘But reason, no. Nevertheless, I am Prepared not to extend this to my spouse And children.’ This demands a careful pity: Poor Father! Whooping and romping in their house, A holiday from ruin in the City. His wit falls flat, his tie just will not tie. The dog’s in chains, the reasonable books Grazed by his children as they learn to fly. He takes his dear wife’s arm (his hands grow hooks). Pirates and pudding! Come, such cruelty! His beard is branching like a burning tree.

Diluvian, draggled and derelict posse, this barnacled pod so pales next to everything we hear of red tides and pilot whales that a word like “drama” makes me sound remiss except that there was a kind of littoral drama in the way the shells silently, sans the heraldry of bells, neatly, sans an astrological affair, and swiftly, sans a multitude of feet, flat-out arrived— an encrusted school of twenty-four Gabriellan trumpets at my beach house door and barely half-alive. Oh, you can bet I picked them up, waded right up to my ankles in there among ’em, hefted ’em up to my ears to hear the din of all things oceanwise and wet, but every of the ancient, bearded, anthracite, salt-water-logged spirals, every of the massive and unwieldy, magisterial mollusks shut tight— no din, no horns roaring reveille, no warning, no beat, no taps, no coral corpus, no porpoise purpose except it was a secret purpose kept strictly under wraps. A fine Christmas gift indeed, this obscure migration, this half-dead conch confederation which would have smelled yon tannenbaum like fish— a fine set of unwrappable presents and no receipt by which I could redeem them. I lifted one up by its stem and thought of how, by increments, all twenty-four must have lugged those preassembled bodies here sans Santa, sleigh, and eight little reindeer, to my drasty stretch of shore. And, no other explanation being offered for the situation, I thought that I might understand how one could argue that the impulse driving them to land was a sort of evolutionary one— misguided, yes, redundant, a million years too late, a needless, maybe rogue and almost campy demonstration of how history, even in the world of the invertebrate, repeats itself—breaker crashing down on breaker in the Gulf, Gulf War coming after Gulf War. O Maker, there is so much slug inside these shells, here, at the end of December, at the edge of a world I couldn’t blame if you did not remember. Miracles sell well, but Lord, it can be numbing to a people who cannot tell between a second nature and a second thought, a second chance, or a second coming.

The Twenty-fifth is imminent And every known expedient Designed for making Christmas pay Is getting swiftly under way. Observe the people swarming to And fro, somnambulating through The stores in search of ties and shirts And gloves to give until it hurts. They're eyeing gifts in Saks' and Hearn's And Macy's, not to mention Stern's, While earnest copywriters are Hitching their copy to the star Of Bethlehem quite shamelessly, For they are duty bound to see That Peace On Earth Good Will To Men Gets adequate results again.

Awake, glad heart! get up and sing! It is the birth-day of thy King. Awake! awake! The Sun doth shake Light from his locks, and all the way Breathing perfumes, doth spice the day. Awake, awake! hark how th’ wood rings; Winds whisper, and the busy springs A concert make; Awake! awake! Man is their high-priest, and should rise To offer up the sacrifice. I would I were some bird, or star, Flutt’ring in woods, or lifted far Above this inn And road of sin! Then either star or bird should be Shining or singing still to thee. I would I had in my best part Fit rooms for thee! or that my heart Were so clean as Thy manger was! But I am all filth, and obscene; Yet, if thou wilt, thou canst make clean. Sweet Jesu! will then. Let no more This leper haunt and soil thy door! Cure him, ease him, O release him! And let once more, by mystic birth, The Lord of life be born in earth.