James Matthew Wilson
Twilight falls now earlier
And in with its swift dark
Comes the ring of the courier
Whose truck has paused, not parked,
With hazards burning, grill
Crusted in salt and slush,
His load about to spill,
And face strained, slick and flushed.
The boys stand watching him,
From halfway up the stairs,
With reverent eyes pinned
On the great box he bears.
Little alcoves of light
Kindle the living room,
And smoke takes ribboned flight
As piled logs are consumed.
I sign for what has come.
The boys resume their noise.
The delivery truck’s deep hum
Is lost in a carol’s voice
From the kitchen radio.
The stars are singing, too,
As they did long ago,
When history went askew.
Some hear them and cry, “Go,
We do not want you here,”
While others presume to know
The sense of what draws near.
Some wait for packages,
And some for the earth to crack;
Some assess the damages
In a bulb-lit room at the back.
In the stars’ circulations,
Their measure, number, and weight,
We find no affirmation
Of our natural state.
For, it is not their mission
To soothe the stinging brain
In its current position,
Its memories of pain,
Dissolving them within
That vast indifferent map
Of what is, what has been,
And the bone-fingered rap
Of those things yet to come.
But rather, to light the hour
With time’s full benison,
When all we know of power,
And of the taste of meat,
Of precious expectations,
Of trash cans lining the street,
And a hundred hesitations,
Are overturned at once,
In an unheralded place,
Where once, and only once,
God cries to reveal his face.
James Matthew Wilson is Associate Professor of Religion and Literature at Villanova University. He is the author of five books including, most recently, Some Permanent Things, The Catholic Imagination in Modern American Poetry, and The Ruined Colonnade: Chapters on Contemporary Poetry and the Academy.
