"Messiah (Christmas Portions)"    A little heat caught in gleaming rags, in shrouds of veil,    torn and sun-shot swaddlings:    over the Methodist roof, two clouds propose a Zion of their own, blazing    (colors of tarnish on copper)    against the steely close of a coastal afternoon, December, while under the steeple    the Choral Society    prepares to perform Messiah,pouring, in their best blacks and whites, onto the raked stage.    Not steep, really,    but from here, the first pew, they're a looming cloudbank of familiar angels:    that neighbor who    fights operatically with her girlfriend, for one, and the friendly bearded clerk    from the post office    --tenor trapped in the body of a baritone? Altos from the A&P, soprano    from the T-shirt shop:    today they're all poise, costume and purpose conveying the right note    of distance and formality.    Silence in the hall, anticipatory, as if we're all about to open a gift we're not sure    we'll like;    how could they compete with sunset's burnished oratorio? Thoughts which vanish,    when the violins begin.    Who'd have thought they'd be so good? Every valley, proclaims the solo tenor,    (a sleek blonde    I've seen somewhere before -- the liquor store?) shall be exalted, and in his handsome mouth the word    is lifted and opened    into more syllables than we could count, central ah dilated in a baroque melisma,    liquefied; the pour    of voice seems to makethe unplaned landscape the text predicts the Lord    will heighten and tame.    This music demonstrates what it claims: glory shall be revealed. If art's    acceptable evidence,    mustn't what lies behind the world be at least as beautiful as the human voice?    The tenors lack confidence,    and the soloists, half of them anyway, don't have the strength to found    the mighty kingdoms    these passages propose -- but the chorus, all together, equals my burning clouds,    and seems itself to burn,    commingled powers deeded to a larger, centering claim. These aren't anyone we know;    choiring dissolves    familiarity in an up- pouring rush which will not rest, will not, for a moment,    be still.    Aren't we enlarged by the scale of what we're able to desire? Everything,    the choir insists,    might flame; inside these wrappings burns another, brighter life,    quickened, now,    by song: hear how it cascades, in overlapping, lapidary waves of praise? Still time.    Still time to change.