Christmas Prose Poem

Wood and rock-hearted pagans, unless transformed
by the child in the blooming desert, cannot change
their own hearts to flesh. Only the child does this.
No development but newness can deal our fullness,
and the newness brought to the shepherds in the night
is the new that is not comparatively new;
is the new that makes no sense and makes all sense;
is the new that makes of the old an unknown precedence:

Every heart is of wood and rock, and to hear the news
of the child in the blooming desert is to be stricken dumb
and emptied, as the soul becomes a cosmos that holds the child;
a desert that painfully blooms, and tenderfully, in the night.