So that before the end, the eightieth Christmas
(By "eightieth" meaning whichever is last)
The accumulated memories of annual emotion
May be concentrated into a great joy
Which shall be also a great fear, as on the occasion
When fear came upon every soul:
Because the beginning shall remind us of the end
And the first coming of the second coming.

Jesus, ¿qué se hará?            (What will be done)
He gives a sullen shrug
Silence – then she offers
Mañana es Tres Reyes
He smiles and rolls his eyes
¿Tiene una Rosca?” he concedes
Sí, con plazo de                 (Yes, with you within)
But shaking his head, he looks away
Yo soy otro

So that the reverence and the gaiety
May not be forgotten in later experience,
In the bored habituation, the fatigue, the tedium,
The awareness of death, the consciousness of failure,
Or in the piety of the convert
Which may be tainted with a self-conceit
Displeasing to God and disrespectful to children
(And here I remember also with gratitude
St.Lucy, her carol, and her crown of fire):

The winter harvest has begun
Lettuce, broccoli, carrots
Budding in the desert
Watered from far-off snow
Still not sufficient to ripen the desire
Maria's parents carried from Oaxaca
An only sister disappeared, older brother dead
The little brother she cradled
One more boy with a gun

Fear over-ripe in the winter sun.

So that the surprises, delight in new possessions
(Each one with its peculiar and exciting smell), 
The expectation of the goose or turkey 
And the expected awe on its appearance,

Kind eyes connect, but no words are said
Chewing instead, She continues her song
Until the men shout for her to come
Bringing flautas and cokes,

The child wonders at the Christmas Tree:
Let him continue in the spirit of wonder 
At the Feast as an event not accepted as a pretext; 
So that the glittering rapture, the amazement 
Of the first-remembered Christmas Tree,

Calloused fingers caressing a haggard face
She wonders what the men intend
As she offers a bite to eat
"Yo me la remendé,
Yo me eché un remiendo,"

For whom the candle is a star, and the gilded angel
Spreading its wings at the summit of the tree
Is not only a decoration, but an angel.

Where the captors do not care
That Maria sits with the captive
Her still small voice singing,"rin rin".

Christmas Postscript

I have finished with Little Gidding, but the twelve days of Christmas still has six more. So, a brief meditation on The Cultivation of Christmas Trees, one of Eliot's late works.

There are several attitudes towards Christmas,
Some of which we may disregard:
The social, the torpid, the patently commercial,
The rowdy (the pubs being open till midnight),
And the childish - which is not that of the child

Christmas has been captured
Seized at sea by a fleet of container ships
Diverted to the Port of LA/Long Beach
Held hostage in an abandoned El Centro warehouse
One wrist chained to a faded yellow forklift

End Notes to the First Draft

In the summer of 2012 my friend Chris Bellavita – a wonderful name – suggested I use Mary Ruefle’s poem, Fear, as the prompt for my morning meditations. I enjoyed the experience, but wanted something stronger and spent much of the Fall with The Waste Land.

After fifty-two days arguing with Eliot over the decline of Western Civilization, I needed a new source. It was December 1, the feast day of Nicholas Farrar, the founder of the religious community at Little Gidding. The Four Quartets was close at hand and I claimed the coincidence. The Waste Land had occasionally motivated a response in verse. I decided to make this my consistent form in responding to Little Gidding.

As is my morning discipline, I did not have a plan or particular purpose for the series. I did not even read all of Little Gidding, but simply began each morning responding to a portion of the poem.

Clearly I was predisposed from the start to an ontological theme which over the next thirty days I continued to explore. In constructing my thoughts I referred to Heidegger, Hegel, Heraclitus, Augustine, and others. The coincidence with Advent is as obvious. I spent the second Sunday in Advent at the National Cathedral. Michael McCarthy’s Matin Responsory was the Introit and is echoed in my meditations. I was at Saint Mark’s Philadelpha for Gaudete Sunday. In between was the Newtown Massacre. All these have specific influence.

It was not until the third week that I noticed Little Gidding is divided into five parts (a pattern often used by Eliot) which matches the four Sundays of Advent and the arrival of Christmas. This reinforced the ecclesiastical elements I had already introduced. There are, I perceive, interesting relationships to Advent in Eliot’s text, such as the prominence of love in the fourth part and the attention to words (logos?) in the final part.

For most of the first half I am very much responding to Eliot, sometimes quoting him or disagreeing. Throughout my text I adopt the architecture of Little Gidding. Eliot also inspired – and gave me permission – to draw from Julian of Norwich and Shakespeare’s Henry VI.

Gradually in the second half I am less attentive to Eliot’s themes than to my own. I was, however, occasionally surprised by unintentional conjunction. I was not conscious of my similarities to Eliot’s verse found at beginning of Part V until a second or third re-reading. By then I was using Eliot mostly as a template into which to fit my own thoughts, rather than as a call for my response.

In the three days before Christmas I was reading Rimbaud, who Eliot much admired. My poem’s title is taken from Rimbaud’s Une Saison En Enfer and the last line is from a letter to Verlaine. The English translation: “The one true word is: come back. I want to be with you, I love you.” In French the one true word is actually one word: reviens.

In the 1940s the Four Quartets was critiqued by some as “too religious” and my poem is more High Church in an even less religious era. But it was a wonderful way to spend Advent and begin Christmas.