Epiphany, etc

Today is January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany, Twelfth Night, El Dia de los Reyes, Three Kings Day. In my junior English class today we read T.S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi." I told my students a version of the Christmas story, which included Herod's Slaughter of the Innocents. As stories go, there's a poignant..."symmetry": the birth of a Savior (or a miraculous birth) juxtaposed with the murders of toddlers. "Journey of the Magi" is a tough poem. You look at that last stanza -- death, birth, death...."I should be glad of another death." Poor Wise Man. His life changed by that epiphany, and he can't go back to the old ways....and for that particular Magus and his companions, they couldn't know what was ahead. The Easter story offers rebirth, but that story hadn't happened (yet)for the Magi. Wisdom in the face of Mystery? The only wise thing to do is wonder, in all the ways that that word offers.

"Journey of the Magi" by T.S. Eliot

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,

Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;

With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,

And three trees on the low sky,

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.



All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down

This set down
This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.