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Nativity

 

In the dark, a child might ask, What is the world?

just to hear his sister

promise, An unfinished wing of heaven,

just to hear his brother say,

a house inside a house,

but most of all to hear his mother answer,

One more song, then you go to sleep.

 

How could anyone in that bed guess

the question finds its beginning

in the answer long growing

inside the one who asked, that restless boy,

the night’s darling?

 

Later, a man lying awake,

he might ask it again,

just to hear the silence

charge him, This night

arching over your sleepless wondering,

 

this night, the near ground

every reaching-out-to overreaches,

 

just to remind himself

out of what little earth and duration,

out of what immense good-bye,

 

each must make a safe place of his heart,

before so strange and wild a guest

as God approaches.

 

            Li-young Lee