In the days of Caesar

By Waldo Williams tr. Rowan Williams

In the days of Caesar, when his subjects went to be reckoned,

There was a poem mad, too dark for him (naïve with power)

to read

It was a bunch of shepherds who discovered

in Bethlehem of Judah, the great music beyond reason and

reckoning:

shepherds, the sort of folk who leave the ninety-nine behind

so as to bring the stray back home, dawning toward cock-crow,

the birthday of the Lamb of God, shepherd of mortals.

Well, little people, and my nation, can you see

The secret buried in you, that no Caesar ever captures in his lists?

Will not the shepherd come to fetch us in our desert,

Gathering us in to give us birth again, weaving us into one

In a song heard in the sky over Bethlehem?

He seeks us out as wordhoard for his workmanship, the laureate

of heaven