Like a soft doll the raptured angel lolls
above the dusty creche; lights flicker
in all the downtown trees, while carols
crisscross the air from boxy speakers.
I'm in two places now: my country,
where the Nativity is clumsy but familiar,
and that inept museum, east of Nervi,
which shows me creches of another order:
elaborate pageants, carefully arranged,
all lace and straw and flat-out piety,
the underside of what made art both strange
and wonderful, that Catholic sense of deity.
We're never going to get God right. But we
learn to love all our failures on the way.