Juanita, 2013 MMHC Options

[Psyche]

- Juanita, it’s Christmas Eve:
here’s plum cake and a bottle of cider.
Celebrate by your father’s side,
village folks will make merry,
drinking wine and grape-sherry.
There’ll be no talk of sorrow,
no work tomorrow,
you’ll be absent with my leave.
It’s a fine festivity, Juanita!

- Señora, thank you for these gifts
but I’ll not take them home.
Our life´s adrift, my Dad roams the land,
labouring this eve on an icy isthmus.
Paucity offers scant shelter,
but Dad taught me something better:
he says little Jesus was poor like me,
was born in a manger and rode a donkey.
He summoned little children to Him,
so we’ll sing a communal hymn
when Dad returns from the distant sea.

Dad taught me splendid things,
memories that help me go on living;
that all folks are our brothers,
neither riches nor penury make us different from others.
We’ll not be unmoved by pain,
wars will not harden our hearts:
wars are monsters stomping insanely
on innocence, on youngsters, on the old and feeble.
So tonight I’ll pray for the future,
for a change of heart written in the Scriptures.

Our ailing mother will abide
by my siblings and I,
we’ll hold hands in the summer solstice,
fancying peace and justice
under angel’s wings.
Oh little Star of Bethlehem,
a twinkling miracle
in our Southern night sky!


Sylvia Evelyn, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2013.


Note: I was inspired to write this poem by a song in Spanish called "La Navidad de Luis" by León Gieco, a famous Argentine singer/composer. ("Luis's Christmas").