Christmas
A God’s born. Others die. Reality
Has neither come nor gone: a change of Error.
Now we have another Eternity,
And always the one passed away was better.
Blind, Science is working the useless ground.
Mad, Faith is living the dream of its cult.
A new God is a word – or the mere sound.
Don’t seek and don’t believe: all is occult.
Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935)
Selected Poems (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics: 1996) translated from Fernando Pessoa by J.Griffin.
Still one of the best summations of the strange semi-secular brew we imbibe around this time each year. The old God has gone and, by and large, we don’t want Him, or His Son, back. We wait anxiously for something else to take its place. Contenders jostle in front of our eyes – and fingertips. Meanwhile, Christmas itself looks ever more like an invincible illusion.
IM