Advent Calendar

Advent Calendar

BY GJERTRUD SCHNACKENBERG

Bethlehem in Germany,

Glitter on the sloping roofs,

Breadcrumbs on the windowsills,

Candles in the Christmas trees,

Hearths with pairs of empty shoes:

Panels of Nativity

Open paper scenes where doors

Open into other scenes,

Some recounted, some foretold.

Blizzard-sprinkled flakes of gold

Gleam from small interiors,

Picture-boxes in the stars

Open up like cupboard doors

In a cabinet Jesus built.

Southern German villagers,

Peasants in the mica frost,

See the comet streaming down,

Heavenly faces, each alone,

Faces lifted, startled, lost,

As if lightning lit the town.

Sitting in an upstairs window

Patiently the village scholar

Raises his nearsighted face,

Interrupted by the star.

Left and right his hands lie stricken

Useless on his heavy book.

When I lift the paper door

In the ceiling of his study

One canary-angel glimmers,

Flitting in the candelabra,

Peers and quizzes him: Rabbi,

What are the spheres surmounted by?

But his lips are motionless.

Child, what are you asking for?

Look, he gazes past the roofs,

Gazes where the bitter North,

Stretched across the empty place,

Opens door by door by door.

This is childhood's shrunken door.

When I touch the glittering crumbs,

When I cry to be admitted,

No one answers, no one comes.

And the tailor's needle flashes

In midair with thread pulled tight,

Stitching a baptismal gown.

But the gown, the seventh door,

Turns up an interior

Hidden from the tailor's eyes:

Baby presents like the boxes

Angels hold on streets and stairways,

Wooden soldier, wooden sword,

Chocolate coins in crinkled gold,

Hints of something bought and sold,

Hints of murder in the stars.

Baby's gown is sown with glitter

Spread across the tailor's lap.

Up above his painted ceiling

Baby mouse's skeleton

Crumbles in the mouse's trap.

Leaning from the cliff of heaven,

Indicating whom he weeps for,

Joseph lifts his lamp above

The infant like a candle-crown.

Let my fingers touch the silence

Where the infant's father cries.

Give me entrance to the village

From my childhood where the doorways

Open pictures in the skies.

But when all the doors are open,

No one sees that I've returned.

When I cry to be admitted,

No one answers, no one comes.

Clinging to my fingers only

Pain, like glitter bits adhering,

When I touch the shining crumbs.