Poem: "Bethlehem"

Bethlehem

You come home to be counted but no room

is to be had at a cost you can afford,

having silenced the lathe and stilled the loom,

paying the hours with your heart toward

a vast accumulating sense of doom

that counts the certain end its own reward.

The journey stops, not in Jerusalem,

but backward, dirty, crowded Bethlehem.

Go into this unwholesome stable where,

before the beastly eye picks out its blank,

a stench of piss has stenciled in the air

muscular curve, bold stroke, animal flank;

hands, filling in detail of flesh, declare

the body a deposit and a bank,

care less what cock has shafted home what ass,

mad with desire and mad with disease.

The kings, they come with their gold offering,           

to bless the body’s lust with frankincense,

and bitter myrrh the body’s lingering.

The shepherds stand astonished by presence.

And you, unkept, soon to be undone, sing

of the swift massacre of innocence,

sing of the body’s torture on the thorn,

keep singing of the place where love is born.

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