Bob Schwartz

Kazuaki Tanahashi, Miracles of Each Moment

It is possible, possible, possible. It must
Be possible.
Wallace Stevens

The meaning of Christmas depends on who you are. From devout Christians to casual ones, from non-Christians to non-believers in anything but overall goodness, it is still an imposing and inescapable enough day to merit thought and maybe spiritual solace and strength, if that is something you seek.

The lines above are from the great American poet Wallace Stevens. I have for years quoted them out of their context, which is the multi-part epic called Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction.

Entire theses have been written about that masterwork, and I claim no depth to fully comprehend the poem, the poet, or the learned experts about its meaning. One thing I get is that among the Supreme Fictions he notes are the arts of creation and religion.

Those lines are taken from a section entitled It Must Give Pleasure:

It Must Give Pleasure

VII

He imposes orders as he thinks of them,
As the fox and snake do. It is a brave affair.

But to impose is not
To discover. To discover an order as of
A season, to discover summer and know it,

To discover winter and know it well, to find
Not to impose, not to have reasoned at all,
Out of nothing to have come on major weather,

It is possible, possible, possible. It must
Be possible. It must be that in time
The real will from its crude compoundings come,

Seeming at first, a beast disgorged, unlike,
Warmed by a desperate milk. To find the real,
To be stripped of every fiction except one,

The fiction of an absolute — Angel,
Be silent in your luminous cloud and hear
The luminous melody of proper sound.

So on Christmas morning, all that I believe, all that I have studied, all that I have embraced and discarded, tried and tried again, comes down to this. To the new possibility embodied in each birth, of the seeming lowliest to the seeming loftiest, which are themselves labels of convenience and fictional distinction:

It is possible, possible, possible. It must
Be possible.