Nativity Scene
Besançon Book of Hours (15th Century)
The saddled donkey seems to be eating
Joseph’s cake-like halo or at least testing
with mouth and nostrils
whether it might be edible.
In his carpenter’s hands,
bald and bearded Joseph is holding the baby
wrapped in orange swaddling.
Seated at the feet of Mary,
Joseph wears an overskirt
of Madonna blue.
A horned cow with a pewter cowbell
on a halter round her neck
is eyeing Mary with an expression
of bovine incredulity
from behind a woven fence of wattle hurdles.
The grass is alpine green.
Apparently oblivious,
Mary is wearing a luxurious
vermilion red rug or foot-mantle
stippled with golden stars.
White-wimpled and in a yellow blouse,
she is sitting on a wooden settle,
gazing at an open book on her lap.
But what is Mary reading
with downcast eyes?
Scripture, prayers or book of hours?
As are the future and the past,
the letters are illegible from here.