THE BABE SLEEPS EASY

The Babe sleeps easy, and bewhiskered Santa
presents no problems: the one's innocence
matched up later by the other's strictly seasonal
secular benevolence
—the one, through vulnerability
calls forth our care,
while the other (safely still this side of senility)
at his universal Yule-tide party will declare
increased dividends for all
who still believe
the world's a special stocking where,
on Christmas Eve,
good children will be recompensed
and those who were bad
will snivel in the morning for the many
gifts they never had.

But the Babe, less mythic, born of flesh and blood,
cannot forever stay
mangered, despite our natural longing
to prolong that Day
—we cannot freeze the moving frame
for that Child, any more
than we can with our own, when winter comes,
bar every door
against the world where some would, even today,
quite eagerly kill
ours, just as when the word went forth
at Herod's will,
and later powers ensured that Babe, full-grown,
hung on a hill.

No, that Child, in whatever guise
He appear to us,
should, as all children do,
grow luminous
within our lives if we would, in turn, see
what His birth truly meant
and what He gave and gives throughout His life
('given, not lent')
—so that, incarnate in the Birth are still
these unfolding times of joy and sorrow:
Cana, Bethany, Golgotha, Pentecost,
today, tomorrow...

Bruce Dawe