For followers of a well-known religion, the birth of Christ was the start of a new age – a year zero, or rather the year zero. And even for those who do not believe, there is some truth in this: a fair handful of the seeds of the West were first sown there in small-town Judea. The Nativity, then, is first and foremost a story of beginnings. And so, as we waft our way through the school Nativity season, it seems a natural time to think of new beginnings. And as the bombs fall on Aleppo, as the birth cries are drowned in the howls of the dying, one can’t help but wonder what might come of this age we seem somehow to have stumbled upon.

Nativity

Three wise men in desert dark
In darkened, golden, gold and sand
Stirred by camel hoof and train,

 

Chart the sky, the dove – it flies,
Its wings, some silver of the sky above
The stable, Syrian: mothering pains –

 

The dove, they spy, a starry bright
To follow far, so tomorrow
Clasped, to open heaven, dry of rain;

 

Or, better, world anew.
Gifts for whom they bring tonight
Huddle deep in sandy night
                    Beneath the fiery rain.

  

Still, the three wise [boys, for,
Mr. Jay could not hide that
Through the robes were boys

 

Who grin to their mummies,
And wave, and trip] men came,
Manhandled the manger,

  

For there was no room for
mangers; but beds, all, witness all,
Children unto gifts they come:
                      Fiery rain.

 

Fiery rain: for the rain it raineth
When flies the plane
On high, and drops its gifts
                      down chimneys.

  

For the baby was born today,
An age was born a baby today,
Nursed on red-cold tears

 

Of the children on the darkened plain,
On the fields of night, in the sandy rain;
Another age

 

Born; and murder done. Watched
[A shepherd’s crook knocked Gabriel
Off his foot. Mr. Jay sighs;

 

But it’s done, till next year
When the baby doll comes once again
From the stock-cupboard]

  

By the three wise men, standing
By. One speaks soft, the other coughs,
And the other never came in the end,

  

But went to a play. Now
The curtain portends the walk home
On this dark evening
             On this dark eve of things.