Church of the Nativity

If Jesus is God,
and God is eternal, all-knowing,
I wonder if the infant Christ,
lying in a manger among sheep,
saw through Mary's gaze,
past the Magi and their gifts,
to an age when a church
arches hugely overhead,
and a polished star
marks that spot on the floor
where he first cried out,
a star, sacred for millenia
to pilgrims hungry for grace,
but now, where soldiers
crouch like bloody animals,
eyes burned black by hatred
staring outward, not in
through shattered windows,
at an impenetrable steel wall
of hundred-ton tanks
with humming hydraulic heads
and round, black muzzle eyes
aimed dead on the star
where the Prince of Peace lay
safe in Mary's arms.

Scott Speck
04/09/2002