ADORATION OF THE MAGI, Charles-Dominique-Joseph Eisen (1720-1778)  

“Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, ‘Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.’” Matthew 2:7

“After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.” Matthew 2:9-12

THE BLESSING 

She holds him so he doesn't fall   
or climb on the old man's head.   

Who, meekly, surrenders to him.  

The baby marvels at his bald head, 
the first one he sees, at his smell, which, besides age,   
has incense in it.    

He marvels at his words,
no less wondrous   
and undecipherable   
than his smell.    

Everything is new. Everything
is important. Everything   
is the only thing, a shooting star, a blowing   
dandelion,
in baby's eyes.   
In his myopic fingers, in his velvety, moist   
mouth.    

How can anyone not surrender to him,   
how can anyone resist to be   
the center of things,  
even only for a second?   

To be prolonged by his wonderment,   
to be pushed, like a feather, upward
in time  
not enough to be saved, but enough to prolong   
the fall?    

Overwhelmed, the baby releases himself, coloring  
the whole drawing.  

—Stefan Balan