PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

I was very pleased to learn---while reading the Kontakion On The Nativity Of  Christ by Romanos the Melodist, who is, in my opinion, the greatest of the Orthodox Church's liturgical Poets---that, in the fifth stanza of that Kontakion, Romanos connected the pilgrimage of the Starwatchers to Bethlehem to the prophecy of Balaam, given centuries before, about the rising of a new star.  out of Jacob.

Some time ago, I came to the belief that an astronomical school, on a collegiate level, existed somewhere in, or near the edge of, the Roman Empire; and that the primary task of the scholars who studied there and maintained its existence was to see the prophecy of Balaam validated.  I am the kind of poet who believes that literary precedent is one of the most important aspects of Poetry; I was probably led to this conclusion by years of reading the Poemms of John Milton and T. S. Eliot.

The serendipity is knowing that my own thought on the subject dovetailed with the thinking, on the same subject, of a Christian Poet who lived in another land, another era of human history---and that the only similarity between us is a love for Orthodox theology.

Starward