Another Poem

If Everything Is Lost

If everything is lost, thanks be to God
If I must see it go, watch it go,
Watch it fade away, die
Thanks be to God that He is all I have
And if I have Him not, I have nothing at all
Nothing at all, only a farewell to the wind
Farewell to the gray sky
Goodbye, God be with you evening October skye.
If all is lost, thanks be to God
For He is He, and I, I am only I.

- Dom Julian OSB, in a Severe Mercy

Another poem here sent to me by a good friend, who shared that this is one of her favorites. It's worth moving from my comments into my main blog. I remember this poem from reading a Severe Mercy, but had forgotten it until my friend reminded me of it. It's written on the death of Sheldon Vanauken's wife, which C.S. Lewis dubbed a "severe mercy" since she offered her life up on behalf of the salvation of her husband. Powerful stuff.

Another poem

A good friend of mine sent this to me, and I thought I would post it here.

NO SCAR?

Hast thou no scar?
No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?
I hear thee sung as mighty in the land;
I hear them hail thy bright, ascendant star.
Hast thou no scar?

Hast thou no wound?
Yet I was wounded by the archers; spent,
Leaned Me against a tree to die; and rent
By ravening beasts that compassed
Me, I swooned.
Hast thou no wound?

No wound? No scar?
Yet, as the Master shall the servant be,
And piercèd are the feet that follow Me.
But thine are whole; can he have followed far
Who hast no wound or scar?

BY AMY CARMICHAEL,
IRISH MISSIONARY TO INDIA FOR 55 YEARS

A Poem about Meg

Schism

It is like a death, this loss of you,
a loss that I do not understand.
Yet this I know:
you love me not.

Your love for me has
shriveled and dried.
Scorched by a hellish sun,
it is desiccated to a gritty dust.

I grasp at the remnant of my dreams,
but they pour through my fingers,
blown by a bitter wind,
irretrievably scattered into the chasm between us.

A poem for this night

The New Silence

There are times
when the heart closes down,
the metal grate drawn
and padlocked,
the owner's footprints covered by snow.

Someone may come to peer through the glass,
but soon leaves.
Someone may come to clean, but turns away.

What is still inside
settles down for the darkness: clocks stop,
newspapers pass out of date.

The new silence goes unheard
under so many grindings of engines,
so many sounds of construction.

Only the three pigeons,
refusing to eat,
lower their heads and grieve.

--Jane Hirshfield in The Lives of the Heart

Now this is good stuff!

In the Making

The gift, when it comes,
comes always from where
you least expect: either

from that hurt void you feel
after actual loss
or from mere absence

of a longed-for music,
from a line or a theme
you cannot seem to recall

or a phrase of a poem
you cannot complete.
But then with an instinct

born from that lack
or that need--suddenly,
out of the side

of the poem, another music
begins, another song.
And there it is on its feet,

bone of your bone and yet
free, flesh of your flesh
but not yours, a theme

like a new Eve emerging.

--Paul Murray in These Black Stars

Another Poem

Seasons

In quick or in slow succession, frost
into fire, fire into frost,
the seasons of the year return
and leave us numb with cold
or warm us, like the seasons of the heart.

But that last season you endured
--your heart’s dark winter—
was so bleak and cold that still
to this day, to this hour,
the frost remains in your blood.

But now is the moment of change,
now the apocalypse.
Today, swept by the winds of another
season, the blossoms
of the fruit trees are ablaze with colour.

Surely it is the end of spring,
the promised summer?
So say “yes” and “yes” again
to this moment
while it turns, for soon it will be gone.

And soon the trees of spring
will become the trees of memory,
and will be shaken by the powerful winds
of memory, cowering
like blown candles and blazing askew.

----Paul Murray in The Absent Fountain

Another Poem

The Well of Grief

Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief

turning down to its black water
to the place that we can not breathe

will never know
the source from which we drink
the secret water cold and clear

nor find in the darkness
the small gold coins
thrown by those who wished for something else

David Whyte

More Poetry

INCARNATION

When the Holy One stepped from endless order
into the chaos of our days, it was winter.
Weather blew everywhere. Time itself was dying.
The squirrel, with a tail soft as breath,
curled inside the maple trunk.

The cold stayed. Five-fingered leaves pressed the ground,
their stems perpendicular, thin wrists above each flame-tipped palm.
Cataclysm scanned the days; like any future, like our own.
The Holy One took face and voice, beginning with an infant cry,
took food and sleep, nestled in arms not unlike yours.

He listened to the dropping rain, watched it bead the naked twigs,
saw it polish stones and faces, stood once under this lift of sky
and still, in a word, understands.

---Penelope Duckworth

Some more poetry

But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,
And frequent sights of what is to be borne!
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here:--
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.

--William Wordsworth

For ten bucks, that's a bargain.

A deep distress hath humanized my soul.

--William Wordsworth

I think I'm a wiser man than I was just two months ago. I think pain has a way of transforming us, of humanizing us and forcing us to grow. I ran into a homeless man the other day who asked me for money for a sandwich outside of a great sandwich shop. What's $10 to me? Nothing. But to him? I was surprised at the utter joy that entered his face when he saw that I had given him two five dollar bills. His toothless grin lit up as if he was a kid at Christmas. He leaped up and thanked me profusely and since I had also given him a recommendation of a great sandwich to try, he wanted to hear again which one I recommended. Shaking his hand and seeing his gratitude and happiness humbled me and gave me a healthy dose of perspective. I quickly realized that I received more out of the transaction than he did. It made me think that perhaps when we are going through difficult things that one of the best things we can do is to do something for other people. I believe we are more "human" when we suffer and in suffering we become more compassionate and caring towards our fellow man. In times like what I'm going through now I know it's easy for me to dwell on just me, but I'm becoming convinced that the only way through, and the only way to deal with the trials of life is to embrace them and think of others, all the while trusting in a God who loves us.

That toothless grin is something I don't want to forget.

More Poetry

Throw Yourself Like Seed

Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit
sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate
that brushes your heel as it turns going by,
the man who wants to live is the man in whom life is abundant.

Now you are only giving food to that final pain
which is slowly winding you in the nets of death,
but to live is to work, and the only thing which lasts
is the work; start then, turn to the work.

Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your own field,
don't turn your face for that would be to turn it to death,
and do not let the past weigh down your motion.

Leave what's alive in the furrow, what's dead in yourself,
for life does not move in the same way as a group of clouds;
from your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.

~ Miguel De Unamuno ~

Some Poetry

THE WIDOW'S LAMENT IN SPRINGTIME

by: William Carlos Williams

Sorrow is my own yard

where the new grass

flames as it has flamed

often before but not

with the cold fire

that closes round me this year.

Thirtyfive years

I lived with my husband.

The plumtree is white today

with masses of flowers.

Masses of flowers

load the cherry branches

and color some bushes

yellow and some red

but the grief in my heart

is stronger than they

for though they were my joy

formerly, today I notice them

and turned away forgetting.

Today my son told me

that in the meadows,

at the edge of the heavy woods

in the distance, he saw

trees of white flowers.

I feel that I would like

to go there

and fall into those flowers

and sink into the marsh near them.

Some Poetry

A Note on Human Passion

Sacred or profane
--it does not matter--
one must not anaesthetize
or dull the pain
but instead sustain
the splintered heart's
helpless yet terrifying
and sharp desire
never to be healed
of the wound of living.

--Paul Murray in The Absent Fountain

The State of Things

MIRAGE

by: Christina Rossetti

The hope I dreamed of was a dream,

Was but a dream; and now I wake

Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old,

For a dream's sake.







I hang my harp upon a tree,

A weeping willow in a lake;

I hang my silenced harp there, wrung and snapt

For a dream's sake.







Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart;

My silent heart, lie still and break:

Life, and the world, and mine own self, are changed

For a dream's sake.

A Brief for the Defense

I heard this on NPR today, and was really taken by the poem. Beautiful, thoughtful stuff. Thank God for poets.


A Brief for the Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies

are not starving someplace, they are starving

somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.

But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.

Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not

be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not

be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women

at the fountain are laughing together between

the suffering they have known and the awfulness

in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody

in the village is very sick. There is laughter

every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,

and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.

If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,

we lessen the importance of their deprivation.

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,

but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have

the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless

furnace of this world. To make injustice the only

measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.

If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,

we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.

We must admit there will be music despite everything.

We stand at the prow again of a small ship

anchored late at night in the tiny port

looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront

is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.

To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat

comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth

all the years of sorrow that are to come.

From REFUSING HEAVEN by Jack Gilbert. Copyright © 2005 by Jack Gilbert.