The Nativity

by Pavel Chichikov

The barn is cold and dark, let’s make it warm –

Flame of olive, flame inside the lamp,

Rise, you brush of burning olive, form

These walls and slanting beams, drive out the damp

Who’s inside to friendship us, an ox?

A donkey too, and mourning doves, and swallows;

Scurry in the straw, you clever mouse,

Make some room for us, gray-suited fellow

Dearest, settle here, I’ll turn away –

Dusk outside is frosty and I hear

Golden singing in the eastern sky

As if the stars themselves had gathered near

I see my breath – be still a little while –

Where should I find miracles enough?

A place where yellow straw receives this Child

Of miracles, as if he were a calf

Hug the little baby from the cold,

Ox and donkey breathe a summer wind,

Doves and angels tell the shepherd’s fold

That Christ is born of she who never sinned

&#0151from Mysteries and Stations in the Manner of Ignatius (see here).