There will be no lights
this year in Bethlehem.
What singing there is
will be dirges or wishes.
Not fifty miles away
there will be the whistling
before the explosion,
the lights of flares and fire,
then ruin in the darkness.
I have heard that Herod
clung to his power
on the bodies of children.
His killers still pick off
the ones who can’t get away—
girl in a hospital,
old woman in a courtyard,
cameraman in his blue vest.
Up above no angels
proclaim peace on earth,
but drones keep buzzing
like giant flies smelling death
as F-16s desecrate the sky.
And yet, every night high
in the heavens above you
and me and Bethlehem—
the silent stars go by.
