Author Information
To Wallace Stevens On Christmas Day
"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above,
"and cometh down from the Father of lights, with
"whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."
---James 1:17
[November 23rd through December 29th, 1978]
Has it been thirty-seven years ago,
Pop Stevens---the first Christmas that we spent
together; your collected poems aglow
and I not cognizant of this event,
transformative in scope, breadth and content?
Blunt worldliness and peers' pressed perfidy
along with my shy, clumsy history
made me awkward in any publicly
frought venue. I preferred my privacy.
That penetralia, my poetry,
provides a haven and accommodations
a permanent array, quite comfortably
arranged to summon certain evocations---
from tendered feelings to vast constellations;
and by the regnant Christ's kind grace, Salvation's
intensest joy and all its inspirations.
All this. not of my own, has made its way
(unwarped by flesh's eccentricity);
all this that I did not suspect or know
(as it moved through its own seasons and stages),
as I, in speechless wonder, turned your pages,
Pop Stevens, thirty-seven years ago;
yes, thirty-seven years, and Christmas Day.
Starward
[*/+/^]
