The Nativity

There was, sown in the thoughts of the world,
like perfume drowsing in the eyelids of roses,
a dream on the wings of a watery formless mist —
light, trembling awake in black darknesses.

And the cosmos was all winds, raving in their madness,
and the earth drunken on the wine of debauchery,
frozen stiff with lewdness, cracked and bowed,
the evils suckling at her branches and her blood.

And a star blossomed, tender and rose-hued,
and all the clouds crumbled away from her path;
on her tresses hang clusters leaved with dew,
the stars glimmering bright among her strands.

And she turned toward the cedars, toward the forest of the ages,
and plucked from its smile the daintiest boughs,
and carried in her palm the springtime of Lebanon,
and over the ridges of green Carmel went swaying.

And in the disk of the sky the bow of sparks stood up,
girdled with a sash from the heart of carnelian,
like a rooster's wing clapping for joy,
while morning kept plunging into its sleep and waking.

And summer came to me, branching with a winter shower,
and morning carrying its harvests of light,
and the sighs of the earth came to me wrapped around —
who knows what they said, what they told the ages.

And the violet woke from the bosom of the snows,
and the wild lily came to me, all shy,
and the white eagles rose up wheeling wildly —
O sky, pour down; and O earth, rejoice!

And the moon twisting along, yellow, weak,
pressing jars of wine from the vineyard of the suns,
bearing the flask of perfume, swaying lightly,
all eagerness to outrun the Magi kings.

And the world all dressed in white flowers,
and the hills sighing out cascades of fragrance,
and the eagles lifting up and bowing down
their splendid heads — to the beloved Child.

And the sky — a red pomegranate, burst and crumbled,
like a wedding wave, the whole of it hymns of praise,
and all of it songs... and all of it ululation:
Halleluia! Halleluia... to Christ.