A Modern Nativity

No shepherds or Kings

At this modern Christmas birth

No massed choirs of angels

Singing of Peace on Earth. 

 No symbolic manger,

No Frankincense and Myrrh,

Just two haggard parents 

To give love and tender care.

This the same Holy Land

Two thousand years on, 

Two thousand years,

Twenty centuries come and gone, 

And this miracle happens 

In a shrinking Palestine,

Under economic sanctions from 

A regime both cruel and asinine.

A child that will live and grow

And suffer and learn to hate

Because of the actions

Of a more advanced rogue state.

The pilgrims will flock

To this so called Holy Land,

In I'm sure sincere and 

Devout worshipful bands

But  the money changers again

Are back in the temples of this state

And rather than love and peace

The whole is ruled by hate.

The shepherds and Kings

Should they again travel there

This time I think would weep

From pity and despair.

No massed choirs of angels

Singing of Peace on Earth. 

No shepherds or Kings

At this modern Christmas birth.