Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, which celebrates not so much the visit of the Magi as the manifestation of Jesus figured in the story of their coming. This feast is also the twelfth and last day of Christmas, the capstone of the season.
For whatever reason, I’m thinking about three Epiphany poems, written by poets whose faith in the revelation sometimes guttered—a very modern Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. The first is by R.S. Thomas, a priest for whom, as Jim Gordon has said, faith was “no easy trust”:
The First King
The first king was on horseback. The second a pillion rider. The third came by plane. Where was the god-child? He was in the manger with the beasts, all looking the other way where the fourth was a slow dawning because wisdom must come on foot.
The second poem is by A.R. Ammons, whom Christian Wiman calls “an unbelieving believer”:
Epiphany
Like a single drop of rain, the wasp strikes the windowpane: buzzes rapidly away, disguising error in urgent business: such is the invisible, hard as glass, unrenderable by the senses, not known until stricken by: some talk that there is safety in the visible, the definite, the heard and felt, pre-stressing the rational and calling out with joy, like people far from death: how puzzled they will be when going headlong secure in "things" they strike the intangible and break, lost, unaccustomed to transparency, to being without body, energy without image: how they will be dealt hard realizations, opaque as death.
The third is by a Jew with “Christian leanings,” Joseph Brodsky (translated from Russian by Seamus Heaney):
Nativity Poem
Imagine striking a match that night in the cave: Imagine crockery, try to make use of its glaze To feel cold cracks in the floor, the blankness of hunger. Imagine the desert—but the desert is everywhere. Imagine striking a match in that midnight cave, The fire, the farm beasts in outline, the farm tools and stuff; And imagine, as you towel your face in the enveloping folds, Mary, Joseph, and the Infant in swaddling clothes. Imagine the kings, the caravans’ stilted procession As they make for the cave, or, rather, three beams closing in And in on the star, the creaking of loads, the clink of a cowbell; (No thronging of Heaven as yet, no peal of the bell That will ring in the end for the Infant once he has earned it). Imagine the Lord, for the first time, from darkness, and stranded Immensely in distance, recognizing Himself in the Son Of Man: His homelessness plain to him now in a homeless one.
I said three, but here’s a fourth (in honor of R.S. Thomas), this one by Geoffrey Hill:
Epiphany at Saint Mary and All Saints
The wise men, vulnerable in ageing plaster, are borne as gifts to be set down among the other treasures in their familial strangeness, mystery's toys. Below the church the Stour slovens through its narrow cut. On service roads the lights cast amber salt slatted with a thin rain doubling as snow. Showings are not unknown: a six-winged seraph somewhere impends—it is the geste of invention, not the creative but the creator spirit. The night air sings a colder spell to come.
I’m drawn to these poems (and others like them), as well to these poets (and others like them), in part because they cut hard against the grain of a faith that’s too easy, too pleasant, too handy. The truth is, the promise of Epiphany is also a threat of a sort, because we are still “unaccustomed to transparency,” too aware of “things.” “Wisdom must come on foot,” as Thomas says—and that takes time and leaves us sore and winded.
Now, the last thing I want is to romanticize “the cost of discipleship” and its “hard realizations.” Nothing good can come from that kind of zeal. But somehow the homelessness of God has to hit home for me. Somehow, the restlessness that moved the Magi must unsettle me. The good news is, “showings are not unknown”!
I don’t have to invent that unsettling or make myself feel the dis-ease. I don’t have to give myself a revelation. My resourcefulness is not what sustains. My faith is not my hope. I just am sustained—despite everything, despite even my unbelief. And I have every reason to believe I will be able to hold to faith even to the end, hoping against hope, because Epiphany is God’s work, first and last. The work of the Creator Spirit, not human creativity. Yes, we are meant to be “closing in” on Christ. But we can arrive where we’re wanted, bearing our gifts, only because we ourselves are always being “borne as gifts.”
Showings are not unknown! Think of that.
Showings are not unknown. Seraphs impend.
Here and now.
Even for riders.
Come Holy Spirit. Give me a restlessness that will stir me to seek again and again.
Yes we are sustained, despite ourselves and yes it is all HIS WORK.
A lovely piece thank you.