it grow so I can see
Where to walk and where to rest,
I may sweep and order here
For the coming of our Guest.
I had sensed the pits and bones;
Firelight tells me nothing new,
Only steeping my shut eyes
In the miserably true.
If this little flame will grow,
He may come to grace my day,
So the breath that helps it climb
Blows in words with which I pray.
QUEST OF THE MAGI
Nothing is true below the moon;
Only the stars are wise.
That's why we blink at things of earth,
Searching the steadfast skies.
Once we'd observed the rising star,
Each from his proper land,
Three of us took a mount and food,
Met as if all were planned.
On went the star, and we went on
Following where it led.
Give no belief to those who say
Truth will elude the head.
We had no sense where God's Son lay;
All we pursued was truth.
When we were there, we found our goal
Lodged in a kind of booth.
Down we dismounted, knelt and gave
Frankincense, gold and myrrh.
Herod demanded we report,
But we did not concur.
We then returned to our homelands,
Better for having gone,
All of us changed by truth we'd seen:
Light of the coming dawn.
MATURING
Each day means fewer things that he can do.
Some years ago he lost his sense of smell,
and now he hardly bends to tie his shoe.
You understand. I'm sure that you can tell
he's getting old, he's edging toward his grave.
Slave traders aren't enticed; he wouldn't sell.
I won't say he is cowardly or brave—
he's just uninterested in pain or fear.
He's lived from birth inside an autoclave.
But now his heart is cooked, his eyes are blear,
and he has seen some things he'll never say,
except by tangents, from this biosphere.
One thing he still delights in is to play
while kneeling with the children as he'd pray.
BIRTHPLACES OF IMMORTALITY
Cities and hamlets that lay wherever the Greeks
pronounced their Hellenic language claimed
to be birthplace and home of the father of poets, great Homer:
Chios, Salamis in Cyprus, Ionia, Smyrna,
and even Egyptian Thebes. But a man can be born
in a single location alone, and so one speaks true,
while the others are wishful pretenders who wink at the truth.
So do the tumbled adorings of India lie,
and the horse and the flame of the Persians, the disengagement
of Buddha in China, the worship of trees and of animals,
Arabic efforts to bolster their racial esteem—
lies to acquire for themselves the home-place of God.
But He broke into time at a single location, a Man,
perturbing the ones who, if able, had sent Him back home.
THE CAMEL AND THE NEEDLE'S EYE
The rich young man speaks
I have more sheep and goats, more houses, slaves
than Job before disaster laid him low.
My wife is out of Solomon and bears
a stair-step line of children to my fame.
But here and there I see a boil upon
the smooth skin of my life, a sign that all
may one day, in a sudden wind, collapse
and leave me naked, unprotected, shamed.
I woke some nights ago and felt the hands
of doubt, of indecision, of my youth
that gripped my neck and told me I am small.
When dawn returned (how long the night can be)
I checked my wealth and saw fragility.
So when I heard a teacher was nearby
I went to him and caught Him on the point
of leaving us. I wanted some assurance
that my acts, which held to Moses' law,
were adequate to buy eternal life.
He seemed at first to ratify my goal
by listing those commands I had obeyed.
But
