A nativity poem

Ok, this is sort of goofy--but I just encountered this poem that I loved-- and it's about the Nativity--when I was wanting to find Easter poems--

still, I loved it so much I wanted to have a record of it here. My word--I keep rereading it and rereading it and loving it more and more right now. I guess that's my prayer-- that the boy I love and that I too (and as many as want this) would have the grace to work and work on this question--"What is the world?"--and maybe to find, little by little... the "answered" experience written here...

(it's probably another illegal post. I don't know if this releases me from any guilt to say this. but i thought I would try).


Nativity
Li-Young Lee


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.