The Magi: A trilogy for winter

A hard year we had In the desert, We magi. They sometimes called us ‘wise men’. I don’t know why, For we seemed so alone In the desert that year, Blasted by the windstorms of facts.

Tornadoes of numbers. The billions gone missing. Thunderstorms of blaming. Treasure all gone. Fear for the future. Coffers all emptied; Bare as the promises of Herod.

In legend, there were three of us, But in fact, there were more. We had lost all we owned, Had only each other. Into the future, we rode that cold winter, A month before the end of the year.

I am told there is a book (Some consider it holy) Where our journey through the desert Is described. But I never got to read it. Perhaps it’s just as well. The small things, the details, I’ve no doubt were wrong.

Statistics always murder the truth. There was loneliness, fear. We didn’t know our destination. At night, with my wife, I was afraid. There was fear for our children. What would they inherit? In the embers of the campfire, I saw only troubles. We owed so much, And the taxes getting higher And the leaders in their castles Not listening.

The days were crucifixion, So we rode by night, Past strange, dark inns, That seemed to have no guests, And yet, there was no room at these inns.

Past dwellings in ghost towns With phantoms in the gardens, And the roads all unfinished Like roads in a dream, Or roads in a song Where a woman is waiting For her lover’s return from the sea.

November when we set out. The first month of winter. At night, the desert sky was alive, a dark sea,

The glistered mirages of creamy stars. For the world was still beautiful — At moments, still beautiful — Even in the land of broken chances, The country with no oases on its maps.

And at length, we came to the uplands of a village we didn’t know; A small place, ‘Bethelehem’, A ghost-estate, really. Very dark, almost empty. Its buildings all abandoned. A one-horse town. A dump.

And we quarrelled between us For some were not for stopping. There would be no water. The locals would rob us. I, myself, was for riding away. But my wife was grown weary by then.

Slowly, she pronounced the name of the town That no-one ever heard of, that appeared on no map.

It might be nothing; Might only be a moment. But my wife said: ‘Let us take it. Let us rest.’

Part two next week