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Finally, that strange darkness has been withdrawn.

It started rather suddenly at noon;

and gathered first above Jerusalem.

Onward it seemed to bleed, across the sky;

here, moving quickly, over Bethlehem---

a starless, moonless night---and very soon

I think the whole world was engulfed three hours.

Then, in an eye's blink, it was wholly gone.

Today's work must resume:  oxen and plowers

in fields; shepherds with grazing lambs; and I

must sweep this stable thoroughly  That manger

is clean already.  You know (this is stranger

than this day's weather), once an infant slept

in there on straw.  His parents could not find

room at the inn.  They did not seem to mind.

She gave the child birth, there.  Shepherds stopped by

later (a lad, I thought, "Why should they care

"about all this?")  They stood outside and kept

a vigil, saying angels sent them there---

angels who told them this child was someone.

I never learned his, or his parents', names;

nor what he might, after that time, have done

to meet, and to fulfill, those shepherds' claims.

Starward

[jlc]