Come count with me, from nought to nine,

The years that measure earthly time.

Oh mystery! We’ll reckon ten,

When nine gives way to nought again.

Elizabeth, at sixty years,

Composed her heart and dried her tears.

Her child, at none, but never shy,

Leapt in the womb to prophesy.

The Spirit hovered low and spoke,

The moment that her water broke,

To Mary, virgin, twenty-one:

“Your pangs, dear heart, have just begun.”

Jesus, the Christ, without a beard,

Was just what scribes and lawyers feared—

A lad who mended all they knew

By majesty, at ten-and-two.

Joseph, employed in carpentry,

A journeyman at thirty-three,

Discovered he had mouths to feed:

Fathers and saints serve others’ needs.

“Anna! At temple every day?

What’s left, at such great age, to say?

Praying and fasting, what a chore!”

“What’s that? I’m only eighty-four!”

Dismiss your servant, now grown old,

His spirit warm, his body cold,

His hopes fulfilled, his duty done,

At seventy-five, your Simeon.

Dismiss not Herod, forty-six,

Who blushed and shouted “Fiddlesticks!

The nerve of John, his tongue so free,

But who’s the master—that we’ll see!”

Nor Pontius Pilate, forty-seven;

Even such men may be forgiven.

His health? No one could surely tell

If he were gravely ill or well.

And what of John? At twenty-eight

He lived on locusts, which he ate

With honey, salt, and watercress,

Alone, amid the wilderness.

Gray Zachariah, sixty-nine,

Communicated all by signs;

Unspeaking, blessed with silence, he

Enjoyed a second infancy.

For nine months mute, he spared his breath,

Said nought, while she, Elizabeth,

Grown young at heart, though long forlorn,

Spoke blessings to the yet unborn.

May Christ, the co-eternal Son,

Reduced to nought, make all things one!