Christmas greetings to you all! Today your Editor decides to reprise a poem which admittedly has appeared before on this website, but it is still apposite for Christmas Day, despite our warming climate. It is Day 752 of the Daily Poems.
A fable of Christmas Past, Christmas Present
The wintry day was closing fast
and through the streets the snows had crept;
the Town Hall steps were rimmed with ice,
as there a traveller slept.
That ragged beggar blue with cold
had not a penny to his name;
yet many people passed him by
with eyes cast down in shame.
That ragged man was Christ uncrowned;
sleep down huddle down under the snow
and all the bells of Heaven made sound
for Christmas morning there below.
The huddled man no longer sleeps
down by the empty Town Hall door;
our Big Issue vendor vigil keeps
outside the Co-operative store.
I took the vendor by the wrist
and in his hand I pressed five pound.
He wished me “Craciun fericit”
and the Christmas bells rang through the town.
“Craciun fericit”: Happy Christmas in Romanian
Peter Ualrig Kennedy
published in The New European January 11-17 2018