(GR 135-6)

[Michael Bailey]

There must have been evensong here long before the news of Christ.
Surely for as long as there have been nights bad as this one -
something to raise the possibility of another night that could
actually, with love and cockcrows, light the path home, banish the
Adversary, destroy the boundaries between our lands, our bodies, our
stories, all false, about who we are: for the one night, leaving only
the clear way home, and the memory of the infant you saw, almost too
frail, there's too much shit in these streets, camels and other beasts
stir heavily outside, each hoof a chance to wipe him out, make him
only another Messiah, and sure somebody's around already taking bets
on that one, while here in this town the Jewish collaborators are
selling useful gossip to Imperial Intelligence, and the local hookers
are keeping the foreskinned invaders happy, charging whatever the
traffic will bear, just like the innkeepers who're naturally delighted
with this registration thing, and up in the capital they're wondering
should they, maybe, give everybody a *number*, yeah, something to help
SPQR record-keeping, and Herod or Hitler, fellas (the chaplains out in
the Bulge are manly, haggard, hard drinkers), what kind of a world is
it ("You forgot Roosevelt, padre," come the voices from the back, the
good father can never see them, they harass him, these tempters, even
into his dreams: "Wendell Wilkie!"  "How about Churchill?" "'Arry
Pollitt!") for a baby to come in tippin' those Toledos at 7 pounds 8
ounces thinkin' he's gonna redeem it, why, he oughta have his head
examined....

But on the way home tonight, you wish you'd picked him up, held him a
bit.  Just held him, very close to your heart, his cheek by the hollow
of your shoulder, full of sleep.  As if it were you who could,
somehow, save him.  For the moment not caring who you're supposed to
be registered as.  For the moment anyway, no longer who the Caesars
say you are.