The Christmas Journey
1.
The Massacre of the Innocents by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and his son Pieter Brueghel the Younger, 1565-67. Based on the Dutch Revolt against Spanish rule (the Eighty Years’ War) and Matthew 2:16-18.
During war, innocence is the first to die.
It could be any country enforcing harsh rules,
casting out immigrants, the unwanted,
even this small Flemish town during a severe winter,
snow-obliterating any and all hope,
icicles hanging like daggers, an iced cover pond.
During war, violence marches and hearts drumbeat.
There is a clamp-down, strictness rules.
A mounted soldier guards a bridge with a lance.
No one will enter or exit. A man hides a child,
but solders are everywhere, checking for immigrants.
One soldier urinates on a wall of a sanctuary house.
Another soldier yanks the last surviving child
from a mother and will kill the child while she watches.
Another soldier forces some women into a house,
and they will never be seen again.
A chorus of four mourners wail about injustice,
and their cries are unheard by us.
A lone woman stands grieving over her dead baby
lying on blood spilled snow. Another couple pleas
to take their daughter, not their son, but bribes fail.
A soldier guards a dead baby making certain
no one can gather the body as a part of the purge.
People try to stop a father from attacking a soldier
killing his son. A seated woman grieves for a dead baby
in her lap. Babies are stabbed. These images will be erased
by government censors. In war and time, truth vanishes.
One soldier has an axe while another has a battering ram,
three are climbing through an open window
while leaders have a meeting. This feels familiar.
Let our lives be a living testimony to who we truly are.
2.
The Census at Bethlehem (also known as The Numbering at Bethlehem), an oil-on-panel by the Flemish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1566, based on Luke 2, 1-5.
It could be Bethlehem or Kiev or a southern border
or a Flemish village during winter at sundown.
All stories are really only a handful of stories.
People are gathered to read the warnings
under the Habsburg double-headed eagle.
There are not always warnings.
A man leads a donkey past the notice
indicating immigrants are not welcome.
He knows he needs to keep moving.
A pregnant woman rides on a slow donkey.
She will give birth soon, and on the run
is dangerous for delivering a baby. Can’t stay.
No one notices. The troops are searching.
People are too busy to notice the couple.
An empty barn is the closest shelter.
A man in a small hut rings a bell
to warn about leprosy or smallpox
or influenza or Covid. It doesn’t matter.
The world is going crazy. Troops are nearby.
A woman gives birth in this bitter situation.
Let our lives be a living testimony to who we truly are.
Editor’s Note: This brilliant ekphrastic poem draws on multiple histories, paintings, and literature in order to remind us that madness is always happening everywhere all at once.
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