On Christmas Eve, 25 years ago, a poem told of a humble birth
And of three men lambing on a cold December night who heard a low singing in the wind
On that Christmas Eve, 25 years ago, we were heading home from Fowlerville, having spent the day working on our weekly newspaper. We planned to attend the early-evening services at the United Methodist Church in Hastings—the town where we lived at the time—and afterwards enjoy a special meal. Later, when our then ten-year-old son settled down and went to bed, we’d assist Santa with putting his presents under the holiday tree.
We were in the midst of the 65-mile drive, listening to NRP’s All Things Considered, when a segment came on featuring Wendell Berry, a Kentucky-based writer. More precisely, it dealt with a poem he had written “The Birth (Near Port William)” that included a bit of explanation and his reading the poem in its entirety.
What I heard during those few minutes was both intellectually and emotionally moving—a thought-provoking narrative that also spoke eloquently of nature’s mysteries.
How much of that judgment came on that December night in 1998 as we drove through the dark Michigan countryside, parts of it illuminated by the lights of our car, and how much came later, after I’d read the piece a few times, I can’t say. But even during the initial introduction, listening to Berry, I knew it was meant to resemble in some ways the birth in Bethlehem, only with a modern, American setting and that it touched as much on our earth-bound world as the heavenly realm.
Having grown up on a dairy farm which included spending my youthful Christmas Eves in a barn, surrounded by cattle, the imagery hit close to home. Perhaps more importantly, it made the story of a baby born in a humble stable with only shepherds around to witness the arrival more relevant—not a tale from long ago in a far away place.
By way of background, Wendell Berry (now 89) has produced numerous novels and essays as well as poems. He’s also a farmer and noted environmental activist. His hometown of Port Royal is located near the Kentucky River in the northeast part of the state, and he used that area in much of his fictional work, only calling it Port William.
The poem—described as a Kentucky countryside nativity story—begins with three men squatting next to a lantern near the open door of a barn, overseeing the newborn lambs and their mothers. It’s late at night, and being December in a northern clime, it’s chilly.
There is Billy, a young man who said he’d like to be home in bed “curled up in a warm nest like an old groundhog, and sleep till spring;” his uncle Stanley who told him that at his age he had other things in mind than sleep although nowadays sleeping is mostly what he does, and Raymond—seemingly middle-aged, experienced in the ways of the world, and given to reflective statement.
Raymond demonstrates this when he tells his two companions, after their exchange, that “To sleep till spring you’d have to have a trust in things the way animals do. Been a long time, I reckon, since people felt safe enough to sleep more than a night. You might wake up someplace you didn’t go to sleep at.”
The thought caused them to turn quiet. Behind, we’re told, a sheep stirred in the bedding and coughed, it was close to midnight, and their plan was to check the row of penned ewes, making sure of the well-being of the baby lambs before heading to their homes.
We learn of how the barn is situated “between the ridgeway and the woods along the bluff and the valley floor below and the river they could not see.”
It’s a rural setting and likely a bit remote.
As might be expected the wind was blowing, enhancing the cold night and causing an otherworldly quality to the dark hour—or as the line in the poem read, “They could hear the wind dragging its underside through the bare branches of the woods.”
Nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps nothing much different than other nights during the lambing season. But then their world changed; got more mysterious and less familiar.
“And suddenly the wind began to carry a low singing. They looked across the lantern at each other’s eyes and saw they all had heard.”
Quickly arising, they raced downhill toward the sound—“the dry leaves underfoot and mud under the leaves”—coming to another barn, not normally in use. Upon arriving “by the light of the open stove door they saw the man, and then the woman and the child lying on a bed of straw on the dirt floor.”
Their responses were part greeting and part surprise at the unusual situation they had come across. They were used to lambs being born on this hillside, not a newborn babe in a barn.
Then the trio “did what they could.”
“They brought a piece of rug and some sacks to ease the hard bed a little, and one wedged three dollar bills into a crack in the wall in a noticeable way.” As might we all, they stayed on longer than necessary, both “looking, and looking away.” Finally the man told them that he and his family were fine and “should be left alone.”
As did the shepherds in the Gospel of Luke, the three men left and “went back to their sheep…tired, wanting sleep,” but also in need of talk and “stirred by wonder.”
Stanley marveled at the humble circumstances of the birth, but otherwise tried to brush off the situation. “They’ll have ‘em anywhere. Looks like a man would have a right to be born in bed, if not die there, but he don’t.”
But Billy, not wishing to frame it in such ordinary terms, replies, “But you heard that singing in the wind. What about that?”
Stanley replies, “Ghosts, They do that way.”
“Not that way,” Billy counters.
Then his older uncle tries another tack, joking that the young fellow got scared and that “We’ll have to hold his damn hand for him, and lead him home.”
But it was not fear that the young man felt, answering “It’ don’t even bother you. You go right on just the same. But you heard.”
The old man admits he heard something.
To which Raymond said, “You heard a good deal more than you’ll understand, or him or me either.”
We then learn that the speaker has “a talent for unreasonable belief” and that his companions, used to his reflections, “were tolerant.”
They listen as he tells them that “It’s the old ground trying it again. Solstice, seeding and birth — it never gets enough. It wants the birth of a man to bring together sky and earth, like a stalk of corn. It’s not death that makes the dead rise out of the ground, but something alive straining up, rooted in darkness, like a vine.”
He adds that “if you’re in the right mind when it happens,” it can evoke a strong response, adding that it might be “music passing on the wind” or “a light where there wasn’t one before.”
To which his companions asked “How do you know if it amounts to anything?”
Or put another way, was this simply a homeless couple whose baby arrived at an inopportune time and place or was the singing and situation a portent of something more profound?”
“You don’t,” Raymond replied. “It usually don’t. It would take a long time to ever know.”
An expression of faith and hope that endures over the centuries, passed from generation to generation? Or a statement of unreasonable belief? Or simply an admittance that there exist things beyond our knowing?
The story of “The Birth (Near Port William)” ends with our being told that the men were left with feeling that night, one that would return on other nights during the late hour, “familiar to them, but always startling in its strength” and with the suggestion that this feeling is “like the thought, on a winter night” of the lambing ewes resting contently in the barn and of those wild creatures asleep underground.
An image of the known and the unknown; of that which is familiar and less so.
While the story of “The Birth (Near Port William)” is not quite the same as that which took place over thousand years ago in Bethlehem, the latter highlighted by angels heralding the birth of a savior and Wise Men showing up with gifts, there are a few similarities. We have a husband and wife away from home—if they even have a home—whose baby arrives in the humblest of situations—an event witnessed by three men tending to their sheep on a cold night.
Given this scenario, the child’s prospects going forward might not seem too promising. Conventional wisdom at the time would have likely said the same about the baby in the Bethlehem stable. Still, there was that “sound” heard by the men hinting otherwise, along with their ensuing consideration of what this birth might signify.
It was a consideration of death and rebirth, of the spiritual amid the seemingly mundane, of nature’s many mysteries; and of having a trust in things beyond our sight and understanding.
On that Christmas Eve 25 years ago, driving through the dark Michigan countryside, the words of the poem were as if “the wind began to carry a low singing.”
They told of hope and possibility. The hope that even in the most ordinary of circumstances, there is the possibility that life can be extraordinary.
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“The Birth" is from "Collected Poems 1957-1982," by Wendell Berry and published by North Point Press.