Ah, my friend! <br />Come, sit, it has been a long while. <br />No, no, <br />It is just me now. <br />Melchior left us soon after, <br />Worn out by the journey. <br />Balthazar, gone just this year. <br />Yes, we kept in touch, <br />Who wouldn’t? <br />Yet it has been many years <br />Since we last heard <br />Anything about that boy in the barn. <br />Maybe Herod found him after all <br />Despite our precautions. <br />We were so sure. <br />The star guiding us straight to him, <br />The assured acceptance of the kingly gifts. <br /> <br />All seemed correct and inevitable. <br />But we returned with a sense of uncertainty, <br />Uncomfortable with a shifting of our time. <br />Does the boy yet live? <br />He is near a man now if he does. <br />Maybe a carpenter like his father; <br />Maybe a fisherman. <br /> <br />Will he be king? <br />Stranger things happen, <br />I know, <br />Though this child troubled me. <br />I see him still, <br />Lying in the feed trough. <br />Surely a king <br />Would be born in more comfortable surroundings. <br /> <br />They called us wise, <br />But I cannot see through this, <br />My conflicted mind asks <br />“Could we have been wrong? <br />Were we old fools already? ” <br />I suppose I shall not know. <br />My time is coming to its end. <br />I am too old for another journey <br />And no word, no word.<br /><br />Charles Darnell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-magi-5/
