This was found on Bishop Seraphim Sigrist's LiveJournal:
Star Of The Nativity
[December 24, 1987]
In the cold season, in a locality accustomed to heat more than
to cold, to horizontality more than to a mountain,
a child was born in a cave in order to save the world;
it blew as only in deserts in winter it blows, athwart.
To Him, all things seemed enormous: His mother's breast, the steam
out of the ox's nostrils, Caspar, Balthazar, Melchior—the team
of Magi, their presents heaped by the door, ajar.
He was but a dot, and a dot was the star.
Keenly, without blinking, through pallid, stray
clouds, upon the child in the manger, from far away—
from the depth of the universe, from its opposite end—the star
was looking into the cave. And that was the father's stare.
Joseph Brodsky, Nativity Poems
Well this is all very interesting. Compare the sparseness and imagery of Brodsky's poem to that of Parker's posted by Laurie.
ReplyDeleteIs it my imagination or don't they both share the same poetic imagination to actually place themselves at the Nativity and then engage upon reflections upon the significance of the birth of Christ for the world.
Take a look at Pasternak's poem of the same name.
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