1 Christmas sonnets de Noël

Sonnetto Poesia Vol 2. no 1

1 Christmas sonnets de Noël

A Christmas Sonnet

  The guns have ceased. Their steady pounding roar

Echoes and re-echoes in our ears,

Today we take a respite from the war

And try to sooth our nervousness and fears.

The Christmas truce will last but for a day,

Tomorrow dawn the guns will pound again

And spill more blood. Because we will not pay

The price in love, we must remit in pain.

Today we read of angel choirs that sing

Of peace on earth, good will to all mankind,

Can we not hope, like ancient Magi wandering,

A total and a lasting peace to find?

Some day the guns will cease; to pound no more,

And Christmas morn will hail the end of war.

  © 1998 by Henry F. Heald

Gabriel appears to Mary: Bartolome Estevan, 1617- 1682

Christmas Sonnet

They choose the coldest midnight of the year
To set the dark ablaze with starry cheer.
Oh, what a hard time it was to be born;
When no one let us in, we met but scorn.
I was in pain before we reached a place
and even that was but the feeding space
for animals whose breath re-warmed the air
while Joseph comforted and helped me there.
That poor old man; what did he know of birth?
Yet he stayed with me, with his smell of earth,
Through all the lowly goings-on, while from on high
Wild joyous light spread out across the sky;
Here no one knew that one small babe would grow
To light the darkness; to forever glow.

© 2002 Robert Lyle Temple