THE COUNTERPOINT OF CAROLS
1958 Christmas Card |
|
Now softly come
the minstrels
heads bowed into hymnals
caroling for cookies and safe smiles.
We owe them more than candy
for the redness of their ears alone.
Faint footsteps down the hill and gone,
their music dying through the trees
as back to Bach we go
on phonographs and radios.
The needlepoint of patchwork quilts,
the counterpoint of carols.
Novembers come and gone too soon
there are so many quarrels
that we haven't finished,
and they might lessen
in the January rain.
Quarrel in December?
Never.
November comes up every year.
This Christmas comes but once.
I am not master of the holly,
nor are you mistress to the fire.
Still, together we're the Christmas people
and dancing down the year-end has its merits.
We can fire our memories as the Yule logs burn
and give away our secrets
each in turn.
Never mind what Whitman said,
proud music of the storm never kept the nations quiet;
lovers each to each do that -
they know that wars don't work forever.
Merry then and Alleluia too,
I love you just as much as I love Christ.
No.
More.
He opened up my life for me.
You unlocked the final door.
-from "Twelve Years of Christmas", 1969 |
