Reflections on a Poem

 

Christ Climbed Down by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Christ Climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars

Christ Climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powederblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives

Christ Climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesman
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck creches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagon sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
with German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
from Saks Fifth Avenue
for everybody’s imagined Christ child

Christ Climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby Carollers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees

Christ Climbed Down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary’s womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody’s anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest
of Second Comings.

I seem to recall that this poem was in our Xmas worship service bulletin in about 1970, inserted by our "hippie" associate minister, and I for one thought it might be a little sacrilegious but overall the truth, and I liked it.  I still do.

Not a poet, but a lot of things of late come to mind about what Christ might climb down and run away from of late.  Just one update: 

...to where no family--congressman, spouse, and children--posted a Christmas greeting of smiling from their living room in the best holiday spirit--one might guess but for each one of them bearing firearms made expressly to kill their brothers and sisters. Second Amendment be damned.

Happiness Is Wanting What You Have

Four o’clock.  I’ve been walking.  While I was in Acacia Rez, on a walkway, I had a wave of gratitude.  Yes, I am 82.  Yes, I am “over the hill.”  But look at all I have!  I was able to make the walk, in peace and comfort, with all my faculties.  The day was pleasant, not cold or windy or raining or snowing.  It was not crowded or noisy or unsafe or unfriendly.  I walked fairly swiftly, without stopping or diminishing my pace.  It was good!  I was able to do it!  This old man’s still got it!  Thanks, Lord.  Thank you thank you thank you! 

Pearl Harbor: 80th Anniversary

Saw the WaPo front page for my birth date, which happens to be a summer day in 1939 antedating that "dastardly" attack on Pearl Harbor by two and a half years.

Honoring tradition of the bad news first, at the top of the first column the wire service reported the fatal electrocution in Tientsin of a Chinese civilian male.  He had made contact with an electrified fence that the occupying Japanese forces had erected around the British and French compounds.  The victim's body was left dangling on the fence.  The battles of World War II began in Asia before they did in Europe, and well before the "awakening of the sleeping giant" on December 7, 1941.  

Also at the page's top, King George V was pictured with the Queen and the two princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, the royal couple just back from a good-will visit to the States and Canada.

The day before, six people in D.C. had suffered heat exhaustion and one drowned.  Curiously, the Post used the convention of designating three of the victims as "colored."  Presumably (and ironically) the four victims with no identification were "white."

Plans were revealed for closing Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, which the Attorney General described as a "place of horror," operated under a system that was "necessarily vicious."  (Surely he meant unnecessarily vicious?)  Alcatraz was not closed until 1963--24 years later.

Lady Astor, a member of the British Parliament, who was notorious for saying outrageous things, some of them vicious (e.g anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic), advocated a tax increase on tobacco, saying that smoking is "almost" an egregious "crime." A peer thought this view was curious since she was born in Virginia, USA.  She replied, "When I was in Virginia hardly anyone smoked a cigarette, and the Bishop of Virginia ... said he would rather see his daughter drunk than smoking a cigarette."

A "pert Broadway showgirl," a Miss Maurice, testifying in a federal mail fraud case, said that the defendant, a Mr. Buckner, had romanced her by, among other enticements, inviting her to go with him to Manila on a business trip.  "Was that an elopement?" the Assistant US Attorney asked.  She said, "Oh no.  He often talked about marriage, but only like you'd talk about the war in China."  Cross-examining, the  defense attorney asked, "It's not uncommon for a gentleman to ask a lady to take a trip, is it?"  "Oh Mr Minton!" she said, flushing and lowering her shadowed eyelids.  Tee-hee-hee.  All present found that titillating.  The prosecution interjected, "I don't know where Mr. Minton comes from; that must be the new technique."  Mr. Minton (chuckling): "At any rate, I was young once."

Me too.