by Carl Nellis ***Exposition: If we follow church tradition, Melchior was Persian. At the end of the first century BC, Persia was ruled by the Parthian Empire, and was as unstable as Crimea is today. The last fifty years had seen decades of conflict with Rome and bloody civil wars. The Parthian king Phraates IV, who killed his father and brothers to take the Parthian throne in 37 BC, made peace with Augustus Caesar sometime before the turn of the century, likely so that he could focus his attention on ruling a turbulent empire. To secure this peace, he sent four of his sons to Rome as hostages. In 2 BC, Phraates IV was killed by his Roman wife, Musa of Thrace, who married their son and seized power for herself. This was the land that Melchior would have left behind to worship "one born king of the Jews."
Seen from where we are today, this looks like a dark world in a dark time: political control seized and misused for personal gain, armies crossing and recrossing the landscape, the next generation literally traded to foreign powers to advance the purposes of the current regime. This puts Israel's Herod in context for me. The Magi who met him would not be unfamiliar with the scheming of corrupt and violent princes.
I wonder what it was like to be a servant of Melchior, traveling with him to Jerusalem looking for a newborn king. What would a camel driver think of a Magus, a philosopher, a priest, who left a mangled homeland behind to worship a foreign baby? Relief, resentment, grief, apathy, wonder, confusion? ***
Sandals
I hear from outside
The tent their talk,
Waving like wands
Along the oasis,
I see
We are
What is
Invisible
Falling
Too small
To see
Light offers itself
Onto my feet
From the open flap,
My leather sandal straps
Without
purifying
fire
Tattered. My fingers
Stiff from driving toward
Jerusalem all month--
Tugging at the bit,
I
cannot
emerge
Fumble in the half light
Of the oil lamps hanging
Inside. To overhear I
Must myself be silent.
Little tongue
Secret little fire
And eye
Watching
Silver sand
Scattered in the ink
Flowing out
Melchior's words lifted
From the marks on his skin,
Spoken aloud to the rest
Hiding from the dark.
Without the silk walls
We, whom Phraates did not
Send to Rome, huddle around
dim fires before sleep.
Bright
Gentle and good
At the horizon