Let The Stable Still Astonish

by Leslie Leyland Fields

Let the stable still astonish:

Straw-dirt floor, dull eyes,

Dusty flanks of donkeys, oxen;

Crumbling, crooked walls;

No bed to carry that pain,

And then, the child,

Rag-wrapped, laid to cry

In a trough.

Who would have chosen this?

Who would have said: “Yes,

Let the God af all the heavens

and earth

Be born here, in this place?”

Who but the same God

Who stands in the darker, fouler

rooms

of our hearts

and says, “Yes,

let the God of Heaven and Earth

be born here-

in this place.”