Come in, signor. Quickly. I’ll show you round.
Bend, please, the gate is four foot three.
We call it the Door of Humility.
You can interpret this in many ways. Some say
this little entry speaks to us today
of hope. Of other bad times the church survived.
We’re safe now, friend. Touch this wall inside
and you have at your fingers’ end
the start of the Church Herself.
Take your breath. The basilica you see
was built by Emperor Justinian, sixth century AD.
But under is church of Constantine.
consecrated, 325, to Maria Theotokos.
We honour Mary-Giving-Birth-in-Pain-
to-God. Not the Madonna, though her good
lily’s our native flower. You’re free, signor,
to go into limesinks of the north
and find it blooming, now - white hands
of leathery velvet, moony, wild. Stand
here on paving in the nave, let me lift
a hatch. Yes — there! — see amber snakeskin
glimmer, lower floor? That’s mosaic, cut
for Constantine in 324. Like carpet, isn’t it?
Our Church is built on that. Mortar shells last week
broke many but these tesserae, wine-dark wave
and cinnamon-beige geometries, survive.
The tall pale church above is fortified
like praying heart. Like castle — this is true.
Signor, it had to be. Look at what’s happening now.
Asylum is safe place. But Justinian knew
(step round citizens, please) asylum’s danger, too.
He built high walls round Bethlehem, so Church
could have wide doors. See the outline,
triple-arched? (Sorry the smell. Don’t mind the guns.
They won’t be breaking through.) Welcoming,
wouldn’t they be, those doors? Impressive, yes?
That didn’t last. We blocked them in,
the Ottoman years, so Turkish giaours
couldn’t gallop inside, full fig, on horses. Did you bring
food or water? Medicine?

●

Well… come among the rows — a forest, isn’t it? —
of shadow-columns. Run your fingers
down them: local sandstone, khaki-ginger,
quarried from hills where fruit trees of the Bible
are (must be) in bloom. Pomegranate blossom,
scarlet fizz against gloss leaves. Mulberry,
almond, purple cream of Judas trees
in flower just this season, when he hung himself.
See that flicker, when I open door a crack?
That brachiating goldfish shimmer
on Corinth-petal capitals, every pillar?
They’d glisten, if we lit the hanging lamps between.
Have you seen mother-of-pearl on column-heads before?
Our town is famous, sir, for mother-of-pearl.
We understand its vulnerability. How to incise curls
on brittle mucus cloud without it breaking.
Another time, I take you to my brother’s shop,
our haven from the sun, down steep crusader stairs
behind the church. We sell earrings like milk air,
translucent buttons carved like roses, carved like birds.

●

In the Bible it’s a stable where He’s born. Round here
they say it was a cave. Take my hand for rock-
steps down to crypt. Dark… narrow… yes. But Greek Orthodox
run this part. Even now, there’ll be a candle.
This cave, Emperor Hadrian proclaimed in 135, was sacred
to pagan god, Adonis. He made it criminal act for Christian sect
telling stories of rebirth. Dictator’s nightmare, isn’t it,
monsieur — you write it, in your paper - the appeal
of vulnerability? So, the manger! Feel it, that’s OK…
touch it, like Helena, Roman empress. She crept
in here, scooped her hand in secret
wall of living rock, and found a basin made of clay.
Her son built his basilica above. They were late-comers
to our faith. The Bible says it’s never too late
to remake who you are. To reconsider. In next cave,
here, Saint Jerome worked Bible into Latin.
Next cave, these too-short tombs commemorate
Slaughter of the Innocents outside. King Herod —
he was trying, they say, to murder God —
told soldiers to exterminate little sons of Bethlehem.
Did you see Schindler’s List? That guy on horse
above some town, watching the SS
enter a white-black ghetto, bayonet
doors of flats, drag children out of wardrobes,
out from under beds? That happened here also,
in Manger Square where you came in.
All the mothers of Bethlehem one by one,
their mouths torn open, screaming for their sons.
In this cave, the One that got away was born.
But real stuff ’s covered now. You can’t see
what it was. Helena sleeved
the clay manger in silver, Justinian
plastered marble on these walls, roof, floor.
You like this outer curtain round the manger, orange-
flame brocade? My mother stitched the fringe.
Real gold tassels, real gold knots.
The inner curtain, sky-blue silk like cupola
of heaven, with racy-lacy angels, came from the isle
of Cos. But the spot beneath, my friend (I
may say, “friend”?) is where He first touched earth.
1717, they cut into floor a silver star. Fourteen
flaming points: a waving starfish, tamped
into the marble. Lit from above by fourteen silver lamps
to represent communities all over world
who worship here. Because this church is sustained —
that’s why you’re here, sir, isn’t it? — by every heart,
even in Africa, America, upon the planet.
Marble’s stained where cracks round screws have let in water,
but these altars, facing each other across the cave,
are Altar of the Manger and the Magi. Wise men
from the east stood here before Him
in their starry, complicated robes:
here where you’re standing now. Take my hand,
please, up steps. This way. That sound… A monk
is lying in robing room, on floor, wounded. Tanks
shot him yesterday. We’ve done what we can.

●

Have you seen Shepherds’ Field, outside the town?
That’s where the sky lit up. Christmas cards
in West have snow, running deer, green shards
of fir and holly, but it happened here. Twisted-toffee gnarls
of winter olive, silver in angels’ glow, and our
flowers dormant in the ground. Sparrow-wort,
broomrape - and Yeruham iris, logo of Society
for Protection (I belong to it) of Nature.
In our shop we sell, also, figures carved in olive wood.
Three different kings. A donkey, ox and camel,
very beautiful. A shepherd boy, running to tell
about the angel, cradling justborn lamb. Our church
is part of Bethlehem. The convents, like satellite
snowdrop bulbs, are clustering round this centre.
They say it looks from air
like ivory carved from a single tusk.

●

Our town must be most captured, most destroyed,
in history. Persians sacked it, 614,
but left the church alone. They saw
Wise Men’s clothes on Byzantine mosaic. They recognized
the holiness. In 634 Arabs took the church and made
a shrine for Muslim prayer. In 747, again
the town was dust. From earthquake, but the same
thing happened — the church, unharmed.
In eleventh century, with Crusaders in the West,
there was feeling against Christians here. Of course there was.
But Al-Hakim didn’t danger church because
of the Muslim shrine. Everything played its part.
Before Western occupation, capture of Jerusalem,
Tancredi rode to Bethlehem with Baldwin
of le Bourg. They took our church (a lot of “taking”,
sir) in 1099. Baldwin was crowned, the “First Crusader King,
on Christmas Day, 1101. In 1187 his kingdom fell.
Nothing here lasts long, that’s from outside.
The Latins left but in 1192 Salah al-Din allowed
priests back, to tend the altar. Khwarizmian Turks
took the town in 1244, but left basilica
alone… Am I boring you? Each time, so far,
our white small town was battered into powdered
stone, the church survived. That’s what I meant to say:
everyone’s let it be. Yet by 1350, it already looked
as you see it now — a castle. All the West, faithfully,
always, gave money to protect and fortify.
Philip of Burgundy gave pinewood, Edward IV
sent roofing lead from England. We’ll get help, you’ll see.
from America. Any day. We have two hundred here.
No food. They’re very weak… You’re leaving, sir?
Take care. They’ve mounted cranes around the church
with snipers. If you think my voice is wrong,
I’m not myself, today. You could have seen the garden.
Flowers of the Bible that belongs to everyone.
Blue alkanet, white asphodel. This is your story too.
I thought you were a friend. What happens to the man
who has betrayed his moral anchor, or its earthly image,
glances at crafts of holiness, then looks away?
Another time, it may be all you see is tinsel
among rubble, mother-of-pearl dust, heaven rolled back
like a bolt of mourning cloth on a market stall
and darnels of the Bible. Spiny zilla, holy thistle,
Syrian acanthus, grey nightshade, Christ Thorn.