SECTION 1 

Soprano solo

O shut your bright eyes that mine must endanger 
With their watchfulness; protected by its shade 
Escape from my care: what can you discover 
From my tender look but how to be afraid? 
Love can but confirm the more it would deny.
         Close your bright eye.

Sleep. What have you learned from the womb
                                                                    that bore you

But an anxiety your Father cannot feel? 
Sleep.      What will the flesh that I gave do
                                                                    for you, 
 

Or my mother love but tempt you from His will.
Why was I chosen to teach His Son to weep? 
         Little One, sleep.

Dream. In human dreams earth ascends to
                                                                    Heaven

Where no one need pray nor ever feel alone.
In your first few hours of life here, O have you 
Chosen already what death must be your own? 
How soon will you start on the Sorrowful Way? 
         Dream while you may. 

SECTION 2

2 Tenors, 2 Baritones, 2 Basses

MAGUS l : Led by the light of an unusual star, 
We hunted high and low.

MAGUS 2:                             Have traveled far,
For many days, a little group alone
With doubts, reproaches, boredom, the unknown.

MAGUS 3: Through stifling gorges.

MAGUS l:                                              Over level lakes,

MAGUS 2: Tundras intense and irresponsive seas.

MAGUS 3: In vacant crowds and humming silences 

MAGUS 1: By ruined arches and past modern shops 

MAGUS 2: Counting the miles,

MAGUS 3:                                             And the absurd mistakes.

TRIO: O here and now our endless journey stops.

SHEPHERD I: We never left the place where we were born,

SHEPHERD 2: Have only lived one day but every day,

SHEPHERD 3 : Have walked a thousand miles yet only worn 
The grass between our work and home away.

SHEPHERD I : Lonely we were though never left alone. 

SHEPHERD 2: The solitude familiar to the poor
Is feeling that the family next door,
The way it talks, eats, dresses, loves, and hates, 
Is indistinguishable from one's own.

SHEPHERD 3 : Tonight for the first time the prison gates 
  Have opened.

SHEPHERD I:                                  Music and sudden light 

SHEPHERD 2 : Have interrupted our routine tonight 

SHEPHERD 3 : And swept the filth of habit from our hearts,

TRIO: O here and now our endless journey starts.

MAGI: Our arrogant longing to attain the tomb

SHEPHERDS: Our sullen wish to go back to the womb

MAGI:      To have no past

SHEPHERDS:                    No future

MAGI AND SHEPHERDS:                 Is refused.
And yet without our knowledge Love has used
Our weakness as a guard and guide. We bless

MAGI: Our lives' impatience.

SHEPHERDS :                        Our lives' laziness.

MAGI AND SHEPHERDS: And bless each other's sin,
                                                                   exchanging here

MAGI: Exceptional conceit

SHEPHERDS:                      With average fear. 

MAGI AND SHEPHERDS: Released by Love from
                                                                 isolating wrong,
Let us for Love unite our various song,
Each with his gift according to his kind
Bringing this child his body and his mind.

SECTION 3

Sextet

MAGI: Child, at whose birth we would do obsequy 
For our tall errors of imagination,
Redeem our talents with your little cry.

SHEPHERDS: Clinging like sheep to the earth for
                                                                                 protection,

We have not ventured far in any direction: 
    Wean, Child, our aging flesh away
From its childish way.

MAGI: Love is more serious than Philosophy
Who sees no humor in her observation
That Truth is knowing that we know we lie.

SHEPHERDS: When to escape what our memories
                                                                               are thinking
We go out at nights and stay up drinking,
   Stay then with our sick pride and mind
   The forgetful mind.

MAGI: Love does not will enraptured apathy; 
    Fate plays the passive rule of dumb temptation
    To wills where Love can doubt, affirm, deny.

SHEPHERDS: When chafing at the rule of old offenses
     We run away to the sea of the senses,
        On strange beds then O welcome home
        Our horror of home.

MAGI: Love knows of no somatic tyranny;
    For homes are built for Love's accommodation
    By bodies from the void they occupy.

SHEPHERDS: When exhausting our wills with our evil
                                                                             courses
We demand the good-will of cards and horses,
    Be then our lucky certainty
    Of uncertainty.

MAGI: Love does not fear substantial anarchy
But vividly expresses obligation
With movement and in spontaneity.

SHEPHERDS: When feeling the great boots of the rich
                                                                            on our faces

We live in the hope of one day changing places,
    Be then the truth of our abuse
    That we abuse.

MAGI: The singular is not Love's enemy;
Love's possibilities of realization
Require an Otherness that can say "I."

SHEPHERDS: When in dreams the beasts and cripples of
                                                                                   resentment
Rampage and revel to our hearts' contentment,
Be then the poetry of hate
That replaces hate.

MAGI: Not In but With our time Love's energy
Exhibits Love's immediate operation;
The choice to love is open till we die.

SHEPHERDS: O Living Love, by your birth we are able
Not only like the ox and ass of the stable
     To love with our live wills but love, Knowing we love.

CHORUS: O Living Love replacing phantasy,
O Joy of life revealed in Love's creation;
Our mood of longing turns to indication: 
Space is the Whom our loves are needed by,
Time is our choice of How to love and Why.