December 15, 2009
If every person in the world turned to the one on her left
and asked, “What would you walk across continents for?
What would compel you to sell off everything you had,
just to have it?” There would be stuttering and blushing,
made-up answers, then people would walk away angry
but not knowing why.
We have conformed, with amazing accuracy,
to a sort of contentment, and have learned
to speak without moving our lips. We’ve acquired
the skill of devotion without love—love always
tears something open; it batters and wounds.
You might say the world was a devoted place
before the Baby, before Kingdom Come.
Then the Baby grew up and began asking people
right and left: What would compel you to sell off
everything you had, just to have it?
—VH Wright, copyright © 2009
December 16, 2009
They were on their way to go stand in line
at a government office, to fill out forms
and pay taxes. She was probably relieved
to get out of town and away from the rumor mill.
And—let’s be honest—he may have been ambivalent.
Many hours into the trip, she knew the labor had begun.
She wanted to stop then and there,
cast a blanket in a secluded spot and be done with it.
He didn’t think it would be safe, not on this road,
with so many people moving around.
It was the first time she got really angry with him.
And he thought they could stay at his cousin’s
but who knew the place would be full of other relatives?
He saw how stung she looked at their inhospitality,
he knew she thought of her mother and aunts,
and the midwife who would not be there.
The woman who did help was a stranger and reeked of onions.
Just outside an argument erupted over a game of dice,
men’s thick voices crowding the night air. Then more
disturbance when goat herders walked into camp, filthy
and stinking and babbling about angels. What a racket,
their pounding on doors, eliciting curses.
But they found the child and grew peaceful.
Suddenly they seemed wise and good, and no one
could mistake their awe or miss how they wept—
those grown, impoverished men trembling ecstasy.
To be truthful, the parents were so weary
they did not think much about any of it then.
After months and years had rolled on by
they remembered the graces of that night
and were amazed.
—VH Wright, copyright © 2009
December 17, 2009
People who traveled the road often were first to notice:
the night sky had become more luminous.
Halting, they identified the strange star.
Jabbing fingers upward, voices tight with unknowing,
they murmured debates of what this visitation might mean.
But nothing had changed; the road was still the road.
Their lives passed by beneath their feet,
moving forever in the same direction, only now,
across their bent necks, a band of warmth,
a deep hum that would not leave.
—VH Wright, copyright © 2009
"But nothing had changed; the road was still the road.
Their lives passed by beneath their feet"
oh... that slowed me. Nice.
Posted by: L.L. Barkat | December 23, 2009 at 03:45 PM