“A cold coming we had of it”?
Well actually
The cold was the least of it.
The heat was much worse:
Cold you can combat,
But searing heat….
There is no escape from that.
“Just the worst time of the year
For a journey”?
Well what good time was there
Leaving wives and familiarity
Power and prestige
On an enigmatic quest
With an uncertain end.
“With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly”?
Actually the voice between my ears
Was far more troublesome:
Incessantly whispering subterfuge
To my fragile hope
That this search was worthwhile.
And those “three trees on the low sky”?
How that memory came back to me years later
When my son, back from business in Judea,
Told me a tale
of a crucified Messiah
Praying forgiveness on his torturers
And my old bones shivered.
“no longer at ease here,
in the old Dispensation”?
well something changed that day, yes.
The quest, which seemed concluded
I realised on that long journey home
Had only just began:
That somehow I was still waiting.
It was not “another death”
I sought, but Life
Which came at last one day
With a friend’s news
Of a new start he had found
In that same Jerusalem
We had once so fruitlessly
– and disastrously – visited;
And at last I knew
The search began so long ago
Was finally completed.
Poem by Jeannie Kendall, reproduced with permission
Note: I have taken liberties here quoting from TS Eliot’s famous poem about the Magi, for a bit of fun. See Poetry X for his far superior poetry. Re the ending
according to Acts 2:9 there were Persians, Parthians and Medes among the very first new Christian converts at Pentecost. Since then there has been a continuous presence of Christians in Iran, though it remains a minority faith there.