Merry Christmas and Peace to All

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

Merry Christmas and Peace to ALL

This Christmastide of [1998],
with the War settled and the Nation bickering itself into Fragments,
wounds bodily and ghostly, great and small, go aching on,
not ev'ry one commemorated,-
nor, too often, even recounted....
for the Times are as impossible to calculate, this Advent,
as the Distance to a Star.
                        -TRP-


Ich finde dich in allen diesen Dingen,
denen ich gut und wie ein Bruder bin;
als Samen sonnst du dich in den geringen
und in den groBen giebst du groB dich hin.

Das ist das wundersame Spiel der Krafte,
daB sie so dienend durch die Dinge gehn:
in Wurlzeln wachsend, schwindend in die Schafte
und in den Wipfeln wie ein Auferstehn.
                                    -RMR-

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all this way for
Birth or Death?  There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death...
I shoulf be glad of another death.
                            -TSE-