The Feast of the Epiphany

This poem appears in the Winter 2019 issue of Modern Age. To subscribe now, go here.

Hard going, yes, for an astronomer,
A man of science, the cold journey long.
Especially for three such as we were:
Scatterbrains, mooncalves, heads full of sphere-song,
Kings of forgotten realms, perhaps not extant
For all we knew. Applying esoteric terms
Of azimuths, nuances of the sextant,
To striking tents and goading pachyderms,
We lumbered day and night through desert places,
Incarcerated by pain, hunger, thirst,
Our one hope that hope held, in fact, no basis.
What doesn’t kill us only makes us stranger.
Among the oxen, sheep, and pigs, we cursed
Our charts, and stared, lost, starving, at the manger.

Founded in 1957 by the great Russell Kirk, Modern Age is the forum for stimulating debate and discussion of the most important ideas of concern to conservatives of all stripes. It plays a vital role in these contentious, confusing times by applying timeless principles to the specific conditions and crises of our age—to what Kirk, in the inaugural issue, called “the great moral and social and political and economic and literary questions of the hour.”