A Child

I've always loved the solid Anglican certainty of T.S.Eliot's The Journey of the Magi at Christmastime. The ministrations of belief, the miracle of birth, the ardor of every pilgrimage...

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down 
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

_