Christmas is for the Weak: A Poem

Bitter is the warmth
From a thousand smiling storefronts,
Where banality stalks in the long shadows
Stretched on snowless streets

Crushed is the spirit
Of unbroken loneliness,
Piteous in sinful body and imperfect hymns
Sung in silent sighs

Black is the memory
Where the light once was,
The grin of vile prisons’ maw,
Smeared in souls’ basest use.

Lo it came upon
Such a middle night as this,
Strange star a’wandering
Awash in the dark hour.

Cherubim, proclaim him,
Glorious herald in prismatic tongue,
Dazzling light stretched out 
Over the fields of ignorance.

What an absurdity of glory,
In no way mighty and no dignity giv’n
But kingly gifts a’kneeling low
Amid that stench of dung and wailing.

So low, too, are we
Entire lands of bruises and unholy slurs
Unto ourselves; weak ones,
We’re reaching, we’re hurting, we’re kneeling: 

O come let us adore
O come let us adore
The weak one, the child one,
The lowly one, the meek one

The God one, Truly He was,
Sayeth the Roman without guile,
Knowing no mere iron torture could
Pin this Word to wood
Nor keep this King from His people. 

No, for to such a place as this
He has come,
Into such grime as ours,
Into such hurts, such hearts.
Into such ignorant fields and broken prisons, dark.

Such dim halls,
Let them be decked in His glory,
For his life brings light, 
And is Himself our tree of grace: 

Let the conquered snake
Be trodden upon;
The head of pitiless evil
Now killed by the Child
Who ageless one Was and Is.
God One, born in the darkest of our days,
The light which persists…

Bright is the night,
Lit by inexorable warmth,
Where redemption’s price lies in a mother’s arms,
Singing hope over him, over us, over all.