After an Adoration

--Bruce Beasley

They don't know what to do now they're here, leaning

on the rotted beam of a manger

bisected by light,

among oxen and asses, a carpenter's

tools, scrub

hills receding into blurred ruins.

Into each adoration, some peculiar

averts his gaze from the Christ child

and glares accusingly outward

as though the arrival

had satisfied nothing. Only

the haoles redeem

the squalid scene: beasts'

breaths fuming in starlight,

barnfowl and peacocks flocked in the crossbeams.

One wise man's 

mind has begun to go, and he stares

at some evil he believes

has followed him

the whole way, lodged now

in the shadowed rafters of this shed. Not

one of them could tell you what

all their longing

has accomplished: they're left

to stare into a wooden shack

where the cold

child whimpers and its mother

flails her arms in her sleep. After

an adoration, the shock

of how much remains

unrevealed; so awkwardly

the Magi kneel

in the pawed dirt

littered with gold, beseeching the helpless savior.