At Christ’s birth
the world turned white
and the sky, dark with blood and adultery,
became as gentle as the hand of a ten-day-old baby

SUBAGIO Sastrowardoyo understood the miraculous transformation of the Christmas story. He was not Christian, but this poem comes from an Indonesia of a few decades back that understood immediately what was universal in that extraordinary but simple story: Jesus was born, but only one star in the sky shone cl