Winter Coming to Bethlehem

The beautiful, the ruined—
what doesn’t end
as stillness after all,
ruthless the laws of entropy
and loss, immutable?
Pale, spotted light
settles like sediment
on stone walls, angled slate,
the cogwheel’s rusted teeth,
unroofed rooms, brick litter
of foundries shuttered, shut.

---

BOB WATTS is an Assistant Professor in English and Creative Writing at Lehigh University. His first collection, Past Providence (David Robert Books, 2005), won the 2004 Stanzas Prize from David Robert Books, and his poems have been published in Poetry, The Paris Review, and reDivider, among other journals.