Spiritual Sunday
On Wednesday Christians celebrate the Epiphany, that moment when the world realized (had an epiphany) that God is in the world. George Mackay Brown has a poem that captures the magic, with ice and snow turned into ice swans and snow drops.
Brown appears to be responding to T.S. Eliot’s “The Three Magi,” which sees the journey differently:
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night, Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying That this was all folly.
In Brown’s version, by contrast,
They slept among dews.
A dawn lark broke their dream.
For them, at solstice
The chalice of the sun spilled over.
Even when Brown’s magi lose the star—when they fear that all is folly—their faith is rekindled by a fiddler at a fair, a “glim [lantern] on their darkling road,” children bringing apples to their horses. The poem reminds me somewhat of Cavafy’s “Ithaka,” which is about the magical moments experienced upon the journey.
What’s why, when they reach their goal, they unload their lesser treasures at a “midwinter inn.” They unburden themselves of their gold, frankincense and myrrh, having received so much more.
A Calendar of Kings
By George Mackay BrownThey endured a season
Of ice and silver swans.
Delicately the horses
Grazed among the snowdrops.
They traded for fish, wind
Fell upon crested waters.
Along their track
Daffodils lit a thousand tapers.
They slept among dews.
A dawn lark broke their dream.
For them, at solstice
The chalice of the sun spilled over.
The star was lost.
They rode between burnished hills.
A fiddle at a fair
Compelled the feet of harvesters.
A glim on their darkling road.
The star! It was their star.
In a sea village
Children brought apples to the horses.
They lit fires
By the carved stones of the dead.
A midwinter inn.
Here they unload their treasures.
Another George Mackay Brown Epiphany Poem: Brown talks about the magi experiencing moments of dryness and an arduous journey in “Epiphany Poem,” which I’ve written about in “The Star Began Its Singing.”