Christmas Eve!

 Here, by way of food for Christmas thought, are two Nativity poems by the great R.S. Thomas.
First –

'Christmas Eve! Five
hundred poets waited, pen
poised above paper,
for the poem to arrive,
bells ringing. It was because
the chimney was too small,
because they had ceased
to believe, the poem passed them
by on its way out
into oblivion, leaving
the doorstep bare
of all but the sky-rhyming
child to whom later
on they would teach prose.'


   And then –

'The moon is born and a child is born, lying among white clothes as the moon among clouds.

They both shine, but
the light from the one
is abroad in the universe
as among broken glass.'

   The painting is Lorenzo Lotto's Adoration of the Shepherds. 

And I wish all who browse here a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.