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Poems

WHERE IS BETHLEHEM?

From the December 1968 issue of The Christian Science Journal


It may have been cold, as it is now
(we stand shivering in wool and fur)
with a stable—said to have been down there—
no fit place for a child newborn
or his young mother, bedded on straw.

The telling's all smoothed to the sound of a song.
All comes to pass as if played out
with ineffable ease, in hallowed air:
beasts gently kneel in a clean, sweet stall;
the immaculate girl, in her Mary-blue,
is already fixed in that sculptured pose;
the Wise Ones stand in a group, just so,
and the Shepherds, up from the fields below
(a long rough climb through mud and stones)
are olive-wood figures, not winded men,
in a light that falls as no light comes
rude and weak, from wax or oil,
but direct from a heaven still serenely known
to hang, all furnished, just overhead.
There are wings! there is singing! and a splendid star
especially shaped to announce the event

here—all here—where we stand tonight
in David's town, on a holy hill.

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