A Christmas Letter to an Irish Friend

Dear Maisie,
Your postcard came in May.
I knew the site at once --
the entrance stone, the roof-box, and gypsum face --
the passage-grave at Newgrange.
Without masonry, wheels, or shovels
your ancestors piled stone on stone
to welcome the frozen dawn of a new day,
the shortest day of the year.
They welcomed the sun of God
from a holy place.

In December
at sunrise,
I think of that marvelous hill.
I wonder at its antiquity -- some five thousand years!
With straw baskets and wooden sleds
they moved rocks into place.
They poured such energy into earth at the solstice --
how much more did they surely give to
eating, singing, dancing, dressing,
love-making, gift-giving, and worship
during that early Yuletide?
The angular, swirling lines of the entrance stone
describe a storm of festivity.
Even yet, those strands of memory
swirl around your churches and bind you to your past.

This postcard is an icon for me,
an entrance into earth.
The ghost of Christmas past
beckons from this tomb.
We will not comprehend the feast
nor save the world
until we follow her through that corridor
to those ancient times
to visit those who pray so earnestly.
She sings from that enchanted stone
as the sun mounts Earth’s eastern edge on Solstice Day.
Prostrate before his feeble strength,
Charming, seductive, passionate, and pious,
She lifts herself with intense human effort.
She welcomes his embrace with festive, religious effort.
His moist wanton eyes must worship her.
She pulls him down to her and into her,
Lest he forget her and her children.
He falls on that tumescent hill,
Covers, penetrates, and warms it now
with swelling strength.
Her people revel in their fond embrace
And in their bondage to sun and earth and seasons.
In spring she is pregnant
Thank God! – as you Irish would say --
And the sun is hot and whole and healed.

Our Santa Claus makes a sorry spook
of Christmas present.
Fixed on pleasure, besotted by greed,
Afflicted with futility,
With neither fear nor faith,
fertility nor fervor,
He has lost his memory -- poor soul --
and will pass by Easter.

I found the Ghost of Christmas Future
within the womb of Newgrange --
and I leapt for joy.
She said, “This is the only world
that you will ever see!”
Could we Christmas out there
without earth, without Solstice?
The future showed us Earth from outer space
whirling round her sun.
We saw his frank, admiring eye
inspiring her virginity,
filling her fecundity.
A child can spin a classroom globe
a thousand times a minute.
A thousand years are but a moment in his sight.
The future showed us that.

Christmas is as old as earth
And will last as long.
Before the first farmer
cried in panic at the cold distance of the sun,
before Africa ventured into northern lands,
before the first green slime of life appeared
she was whirling, twirling, dancing, swirling
around her lover-star.

Only moments ago,
as the ardent Earth embraced the sun at Newgrange,
Christmas welcomed her Lord --
“Fulfillment of the Feast!” --
she called him.
We were born neither to escape the earth,
nor to destroy her,
But to sing her songs, celebrate her seasons,
declare her thanks, and welcome her Savior.
When you and I, Maisie,
are nothing more than moldy dust,
waiting silent in some unremembered tomb
for a stirring breath of wind,
and the sounding of our names
in a dear familiar voice
she will yet be whirling, twirling, dancing, swirling around her lover-star.