CHRISTMAS AND EPIPHANY

The visible night is tall and overstarred;
cold like a ringing glass, the hound-fang wind,
its tower of echoes: Christmas; and the cord
of the old year drawn tight (my hungering hand
roving along it, rediscovering
airs first awakened in it by your touch,
then given me).  And do you know how much
will shudder at the breaking of that string?

Withdraw your senses from that outward night:
the true (ten-fingered on my calendar,
ten-petalled, doubly-bloomed, within my heart)
is hidden-all that have been ours, and are,
in one calm darkness; you its warmth of wheat,
its threefold gift, its one prophetic star.