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Robert Ward

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Christmas Eve

(for Peter Stileman)

‘I was sorry for my coming, and missing of what I had expected; which was, to have had a child born and dressed there, and a great deal of do: but we broke up, and nothing like it done’
                                                   Pepys’ Diary, 24th December 1667.


Queens’ Chapel at St James
heaved with the Restoration.
Society left their cards for God
on pressing up against the rail
but the child refused to come.
Overhead no super-nova shone
or Kit Wren might have noted it;
at least the moon stayed on patrol.
The palace chapel made no stall,
oxen and ass were not in place
yet real straw lay at hand
and horses outside in the street
snorted between their shafts.
A couple of the coachmen
had been fathered by a shepherd
(or so they thought) upon a hill.
Although the King was occupied
elsewhere with orange peel
and his Queen departed early,
there was a whiff of royalty,
so given a wink or two
weren’t the props there makeshift
enough for a gospel replay?
But the child refused to come.
The woman had reached her time
barely behind a screen;  belly
fit to burst, she pinched her breath
with each renewed contraction
but the child refused to come.
Sam picked at straw,
shuffled his prayer five hours.
He put his faith in spectacle:
the brave new-born, wrinkled,
pug-faced, blotchy red, the lungs
offended by burnt wax
wailing the wordless cry
that speaks to any heart,
a baby to be swaddled
in a legend, hailed messiah
for present adulation,
future disregard,
and the child refused to come.

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