Charles Darnell - The Magi

Ah, my friend!
Come, sit, it has been a long while.
No, no,
It is just me now.
Melchior left us soon after,
Worn out by the journey.
Balthazar, gone just this year.
Yes, we kept in touch,
Who wouldn’t?
Yet it has been many years
Since we last heard
Anything about that boy in the barn.
Maybe Herod found him after all
Despite our precautions.
We were so sure.
The star guiding us straight to him,
The assured acceptance of the kingly gifts.

All seemed correct and inevitable.
But we returned with a sense of uncertainty,
Uncomfortable with a shifting of our time.
Does the boy yet live?
He is near a man now if he does.
Maybe a carpenter like his father;
Maybe a fisherman.

Will he be king?
Stranger things happen,
I know,
Though this child troubled me.
I see him still,
Lying in the feed trough.
Surely a king
Would be born in more comfortable surroundings.

They called us wise,
But I cannot see through this,
My conflicted mind asks
“Could we have been wrong?
Were we old fools already? ”
I suppose I shall not know.
My time is coming to its end.
I am too old for another journey
And no word, no word.

Charles Darnell

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-magi-5/