When it’s Christmas we’re all of us magi.
At the grocers’ all slipping and pushing.
Where a tin of halvah, coffee-flavored,
is the cause of a human assault-wave
by a crowd heavy-laden with parcels:
each one his own king, his own camel.
Nylon bags, carrier bags, paper cones,
caps and neckties all twisted up sideways.
Reek of vodka and resin and cod,
orange mandarins, cinnamon, apples.
Floods of faces, no sign of a pathway
toward Bethlehem, shut off by blizzard.
And the bearers of moderate gifts
leap on buses and jam all the doorways,
disappear into courtyards that gape,
though they know that there’s nothing inside there:
not a beast, not a crib, nor yet her,
round whose head gleams a nimbus of gold.
Emptiness. But the mere thought of that
brings forth lights as if out of nowhere.
Herod reigns but the stronger he is,
the more sure, the more certain the wonder.
In the constancy of this relation
is the basic mechanics of Christmas.
That’s what they celebrate everywhere,
for its coming push tables together.
No demand for a star for a while,
but a sort of good will touched with grace
can be seen in all men from afar,
and the shepherds have kindled their fires.
Snow is falling: not smoking but sounding
chimney pots on the roof, every face like a stain.
Herod drinks. Every wife hides her child.
He who comes is a mystery: features
are not known beforehand, men’s hearts may
not be quick to distinguish the stranger.
But when drafts through the doorway disperse
the thick mist of the hours of darkness
and a shape in a shawl stands revealed,
both a newborn and Spirit that’s Holy
in your self you discover; you stare
skyward, and it’s right there:
a star.
The holidays are looming on the horizon and I keep coming back to this poem like it's a mixtape I never learned to stop rewinding. Brodsky gives us Christmas as grocery-store chaos—nylon bags twisting, vodka breath mixing with mandarin peel, bodies heavy with parcels pushing through fluorescent aisles like we're all searching for something we can't name in the cereal section.
The whole thing reads like a bootleg miracle. He strips away the velvet curtain, shows us there's no stable, no star-led camels—just us feral magi clutching coffee tins and last-minute gifts, each of us our own king stumbling through the blizzard. "Floods of faces, no sign of a pathway toward Bethlehem, shut off by blizzard." We're lost in the mundane holy war of consumption, trading myrrh for scratch-offs, frankincense for whatever's left on the clearance rack.
But here's where Brodsky gut-punches you: "in your self you discover." The stranger we're hunting through those crowded aisles—that mystery with unknown features—it's us. The star only flickers after we quit scanning the ceiling and finally look at our own cracked checkout-face long enough to see it shine back.
Christmas becomes DIY sainthood. The bags are just decoys, tinsel camouflage so we don't notice we're carrying each other home. The receipt is the relic, not the ramen. We're the frankincense—broke, bruised, still burning anyway.
And 1971 haunts me in this. I picture paper bags crackling like vinyl, real tungsten snow instead of LED glare, halvah passed like communion between ink-stained fingers. No scanners judging your last five dollars. Just the soft clunk of a manual till and someone's unfiltered Lucky Strike hissing in the background.
Makes you homesick for a time you never even saw. Makes you realize the star was always just a mirror, waiting for you to look long enough to recognize your own cracked face as holy.
**I just want to state that I do not own copyrights to this poem. It is shared with 'fair use' copyright laws intact as it is used for educational and informative purposes only. No copyright infringement is intended!
