For in this time of Christmas In the long Day totalling up to Eight, We see the light, we know the dark; And creatures lifted, born, thrust free of so much night No matter what the world or time or circumstance Must love the light, So, children of all lost unnumbered suns Must fear the dark
Which mingles in a shadowing-forth on air.
And swarms the blood.
No matter what the color, shape, or size Of beings who keep souls like breathing coals In long midnights,
They must need saving of themselves.
So on far worlds in snowfalls deep and clear Imagine how the rounding out of some dark year Might celebrate with birthing one miraculous child!
A child?
Born in Andromeda's out-swept mysteries?
Then count its hands, its fingers, Eyes, and most incredible holy limbs!
The sum of each?
No matter. Cease.
Let Child be fire as blue as water under Moon.
Let Child sport free in tides with human-seeming fish.
Let ink of octopi inhabit blood Let skin take acid rains of chemistry All falling down in nightmare storms of cleansing burn.
Christ wanders in the Universe A flesh of stars,
He takes on creature shapes To suit the mildest elements,
He dresses him in flesh beyond our ken.
There He walks, glides, flies, shambling of strangeness.
Here He walks Men.
Among the ten trillion beams A billion Bible scrolls are scored In hieroglyphs among God's amplitudes of worlds; In alphabet multitudinous Tongues which are not quite tongues Sigh, sibilate, wonder, cry: As Christ comes manifest from a thunder-crimsoned sky.
He walks upon the molecules of seas All boiling stews of beast All maddened broth and brew and rising up of yeast.
There Christ by many names is known.
We call him thus.
They call him otherwise.
His name on any mouth would be a sweet surprise.
He comes with gifts for all, Here: wine and bread.
There: nameless foods
At breakfasts where the morsels fall from stars And Last Suppers are doled forth with stuff of dreams.
So sit they there in times before the Man is crucified.
Here He has long been dead.
There He has not yet died.
Yet, still unsure, and all being doubt, Much frightened man on Earth does cast about And clothe himself in steel And borrow fire
And himself in the great glass of the careless Void admire.
Man builds him rockets
And on thunder strides
In humble goings-forth
And most understandable prides.
Fearing that all else slumbers, That ten billion worlds lie still, We, grateful for the Prize and benefit of life, Go to offer bread and harvest wine; The blood and flesh of Him we Will To other stars and worlds about those stars.
We cargo holy flesh
On stranger visitations,
Send forth angelic hosts, To farflung worlds
To tell our walking on the waters of deep Space, Arrivals, swift departures Of most miraculous man
Who, God fuse-locked in every cell Beats holy blood
And treads the tidal flood And ocean shore of Universe,
A miracle of fish
We father, gather, build and strew In metals to the winds
That circle Earth and wander Night beyond all Nights.
We soar, all arch-angelic, fire-sustained In vast cathedral, acry apse, in domeless vault Of constellations all blind dazzlement.
Christ is not dead
Nor does God sleep
While waking Man
Goes striding on the Deep
To birth ourselves anew
And love rebirth
From fear of straying long On outworn Earth.
One harvest in, we broadcast seed for further reaping.
Thus ending Death
And Night,
And Time's demise,
And senseless weeping.
We seek for mangers in the Pleides Where man the god-fleshed wandering babe May lay him down with such as these Who once drew round and worshipped innocence.
New Mangers lie waiting!
New Wise men Descry
Our hosts of machineries
Which write immortal life And sign it God!
Down, down Alien skies.
And flown and gone, arrived and bedded safe to sleep Upon some winters morning deep Ten billion years of light From where we stand us now and sing, There will be time to cry eternal gratitudes Time to know and see and love the Gift of Life itself, Always diminished,
Always restored,
Out of one hand and into the other Of the Lord.
Then wake we in that far lost Nightmare keep of Beast
And see our star recelebrated in an East Beyond all Easts.
Beyond a snowdrift sifting down of stars.
In this time of Christmas Think on that Morn ahead!
For this let all your fears, your cries, Your tears, your blood and prayers be shed!
All numb and wild one day You shall be reborn
And hear the Trump break forth from rocket-trembled air All humbled, all shorn
Of pride, but free of despair.
Now listen! Now hear!
It is the Ninth Day's morn!
Christ is risen!
God survives!
Gather, Universe!
Look, ye stars!
In the exultant countries of Space In a sudden simple pasture Far beyond Andromeda!
O Glory, Glory, a New Christmas Torn
From the very pitch and rim of Death, Snatched from his universal grip,
His teeth, his most cold breath!
Under a most strange sun
O Christ, O God,
O man breathed out of most incredible stuffs.
You are the Savior's Savior, God's pulse and heart companion, You! The Host He lifts On high to consecrate;
His dear need to know and touch and cry wonders At Himself.
In this time of Christmas Prepare
In this holy time
Know yourself most rare!
Beyond the vast Abyss
See those men grown Wise
Who gather with their gifts Which are but Life!
And Life that knows no end.
Behold the rockets, more than chaff, on air, All seed that save a holy seed And cast it everywhere in mindless Dark.
In this time of Christmas This holy time of Christmas, Like Him, you are God's son!
One Son? Many?
All are gathered now to One And will wake cradled in Beast-summer breath That warms the sleeping child to life eternal.
You must go there.
In the long winter of Space And lie you down in grateful innocence At last to sleep.
O New Christmas,
O God, far-motioning.
O Christ-of-many-fleshed made one, Leave Earth!
God Himself cries out.
He Goes to Prepare the Way For your rebirth
In a new time of Christmas, A holy time of Christmas, This New Time of Christmas, From all this stay?
No, Man. You must not linger, wonder.
No, Christ. You must not pause.
Now.
Now.
It is the Time of Going Away.
Arise, and go.
Be born. Be born.
Welcome the morning of the Ninth Day.
It is the Time of Going away.
Praise God for this Annunciation!
Give praise,
Rejoice!
For the time of Christmas And the Ninth Day,
Which is Forever's Celebration!
About the Author
RAY BRADBURY, the author of more than thirty books, is the recipient of the National Book Foundation's 2000 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Some of his best-known works are Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Dan
delion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. A writer for both theater and cinema, he has adapted sixty-five of his stories for television's The Ray Bradbury Theater. He won an Emmy for his teleplay of The Halloween Tree and was nominated for an Academy Award. He lives with his wife, Marguerite, in Los Angeles.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
Other Books by Ray Bradbury
DANDELION WINE
DARK CARNIVAL
DEATH IS A LONELY BUSINESS
DRIVING BLIND
FAHRENHEIT 451
THE GOLDEN APPLES OF THE SUN
A GRAVEYARD FOR LUNATICS
GREEN SHADOWS, WHITE WHALE
THE HALLOWEEN TREE
I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC!
THE ILLUSTRATED MAN
JOURNEY TO FAR METAPHOR
KALEIDOSCOPE
LONG AFTER MIDNIGHT
THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES
THE MACHINERIES OF JOY
THE OCTOBER COUNTRY
ONE TIMELESS SPRING
QUICKER THAN THE EYE
R IS FOR ROCKET
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES
THE STORIES OF RAY BRADBURY
S IS FOR SPACE
THE TOYNBEE CONVECTOR
WHEN ELEPHANTS LAST IN THE DOORYARD BLOOMED
YESTERMORROW
ZEN IN THE ART OF WRITING
Copyright
"Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's Is a Friend of Mine" (originally titled "Charlie Is My Darling") and "I Sing the Body Electric!" (originally titled "The Beautiful One Is Here") first appeared in McCall's magazine. "The Cold Wind and the Warm" was originally published in Harper's magazine. "The Women" was originally published in Famous Fantastic Mysteries. "The Tombling Day" was originally published in Shenandoah. "Heavy-Set," "The Man in the Rorschach Suit," "Lost City of Mars," and "Downwind from Gettysburg" were originally published in Playboy magazine "The Kilimanjaro Device" (originally titled "The Kilimanjaro Machine") first appeared in Life magazine. "Henry IX" (originally titled "A Final Sceptre, a Lasting Crown") first appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction. "The Blue Bottle" Copyright 1950 by Love Romances Publishing Inc. "Punishment Without Crime" Copyright 1950 by Other Worlds. "One Timeless Spring" first appeared in Collier's. "A Piece of Wood" first appeared in Esquire. "The Utterly Perfect Murder" (originally titled "My Perfect Murder") and "The Parrot Who Met Papa" first appeared in Playboy magazine. "Drink Entire: Against the Madness of Crowds" first appeared in Gallery.
I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC. Copyright (c) 1946, 1947, 1948, 1951, 1952, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1969, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1976 by Ray Bradbury. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
First Avon Books edition published 1998.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 0-380-78962-0
EPub Edition (c) JUNE 2013 ISBN: 9780062242280
05 FOLIO/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5
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Ray Bradbury, I Sing the Body Electric
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