A Christmas Feast of Poems

With its emphasis on mystery and wonder, the Christmas season isn’t just well-suited to poetry — it’s almost as if poems become essential this time of year, like lanterns to make our way through the shadows, or a set of keys to help us unlock the season’s many doors, or dishes in a feast of delicate pleasures.

In that spirit, here’s a selection of poems for this year, each one as lovely as the last:

From Mary Oliver: “Making the House Ready for the Lord”

From Lucille Clifton: “john,” “a song of mary,” and “mary’s dream”

From Wendell Berry: “Remembering that it happened once” and “The Birth (Near Port William)”

From Robert Hayden: “Those Winter Sundays”

From Marie Howe: “Annunciation”

From Ted Kooser: “Christmas Mail”

From Jane Kenyon: “Mosaic of the Nativity: Serbia, Winter, 1993”

From Denise Levertov: “On the Mystery of the Incarnation”

From Naomi Shihab Nye: “Different Ways to Pray”

From Billy Collins: “Christmas Sparrow”

From E. E. Cummings: “Christmas Poem”