The promise of our quickening

On the First day of Christmas, a poem by Scott Cairns:

Christmas Green

Just now the earth recalls His stunning visitation. Now

the earth and scattered habitants attend to what is possible:

that He of a morning entered this, our meagered circumstance,

and so relit the fuse igniting life in them,

igniting life in all the dim surround.

And look, the earth adopts a kindly affect. Look,

we almost see our long estrangement from it overcome.

The air is scented with the prayer of pines, the earth is softened

for our brief embrace, the fuse continues bearing to all elements

a curative despite the grave, and here within our winter this,

the rising pulse, bears still the promise of our quickening.

Scott Cairns. 'Compass of Affection: Poems New and Selected'

(Brewster, Mass: Paraclete Press, 2006 pp.136.)