Editor’s note: Over the next week, in celebration of Epiphany, we will be publishing a series of poems on the Magi by Bishop Graham Kings, originally included in Andrew Wheeler’s Desire of Nations: The Magi, their Journey and the Child (2015).
Farcical Journey
Persians not Arabs
Farsi not Arabic,
Magi not Kings:
worship not rule.
Crazy and farcical,
leaving two rivers,
to follow a star,
to worship a King:
a journey afar.
Leaving behind
family and kin,
like Abram of old,
unlike the King:
outside his line.
Bishop Graham Kings’s other posts may be found here. The featured image is an etching in a 19th century Bible, and is licensed under Creative Commons.
The Rt. Rev. Dr. Graham Kings, in his retirement in Cambridge, is honorary assistant bishop in the Diocese of Ely and research associate at the the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide, which he founded in 1995. He has served as Mission Theologian in the Anglican Communion; Bishop of Sherborne; and vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Islington, London, where he co-founded Fulcrum.
