Home

no one leaves home unless

home is the mouth of a shark

you only run for the border

when you see the whole city running as well

your neighbours running faster than you

breath bloody in their throats

the boy you went to school with

who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory

is holding a gun bigger than his body

you only leave home

when home won't let you stay.

no one leaves home unless home chases you

fire under feet

hot blood in your belly

it's not something you ever thought of doing

until the blade burnt threats into

your neck

and even then you carried the anthem under

your breath

only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets

sobbing as each mouthful of paper

made it clear that you wouldn't be going back.

you have to understand,

that no one puts their children in a boat

unless the water is safer than the land

no one burns their palms

under trains

beneath carriages

no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck

feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled

means something more than journey.

no one crawls under fences

no one wants to be beaten

pitied

no one chooses refugee camps

or strip searches where your

body is left aching

or prison,

because prison is safer

than a city of fire

and one prison guard

in the night

is better than a truckload

of men who look like your father

no one could take it

no one could stomach it

no one skin would be tough enough

the

go home blacks

refugees

dirty immigrants

asylum seekers sucking our country dry

niggers with their hands out

they smell strange

savage

messed up their country and now they want

to mess ours up

how do the words

the dirty looks

roll off your backs

maybe because the blow is softer

than a limb torn off

or the words are more tender

than fourteen men between

your legs

or the insults are easier

to swallow

than rubble

than bone

than your child body

in pieces.

i want to go home,

but home is the mouth of a shark

home is the barrel of the gun

and no one would leave home unless home

chased you to the shore

unless home told you

to quicken your legs

leave your clothes behind

crawl through the desert

wade through the oceans

drown 

save

be hunger

beg

forget pride

your survival is more important

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear

saying-

leave,

run away from me now

i dont know what i've become

but i know that anywhere

is safer than here.

--Warsan Shire (1988- ), Somali-British poet, musician, and artist

Image: Flight, an installation by war artist Arabella Dorman in St. James's Church, Picadilly, London, from December 20, 2015-February 8, 2016. The dinghy was recovered from the island of Lesbos.

According to Victoria Emily Jones at her Art & Theology blog, "The rubber sea vessel Dorman used in the installation was designed to carry fifteen people but ended up carrying sixty-two. (Such overcrowding on refugee-filled boats is the norm.) While en route, it began taking on water, and its passengers had to be rescued by the Greek coast guard. Luckily, everyone survived. Passengers on other overtaxed vessels between Turkey and Greece have not been so lucky."

The Still, Small Voice

Open, Lord, my inward ear,
  And bid my heart rejoice;
Bid my quiet spirit hear
  The comfort of thy voice:

Never in the whirlwind found,
  Or where earthquakes rock the place, —
Still and silent is the sound,
  The whisper, of thy grace.

From the world of sin and noise
  And hurry I withdraw;
For the small and inward voice
  I wait with humble awe:
Silent am I now and still,
  Would not in thy presence move:
To my waiting soul reveal
  The secret of thy love!

--Charles Wesley, Anglican priest, poet, hymn writer, and founder of Methodism

Scriptural reference: 1 Kings 19:1-15a (Proper 7, Year C of the RCL, track 1)

Once the World Was Perfect

Once the world was perfect, and we were happy in that world.
Then we took it for granted.
Discontent began a small rumble in the earthly mind.
Then Doubt pushed through with its spiked head.
And once Doubt ruptured the web,
All manner of demon thoughts
Jumped through—
We destroyed the world we had been given
For inspiration, for life—
Each stone of jealousy, each stone
Of fear, greed, envy, and hatred, put out the light.
No one was without a stone in his or her hand.
There we were,
Right back where we had started.
We were bumping into each other
In the dark.
And now we had no place to live, since we didn't know
How to live with each other.
Then one of the stumbling ones took pity on another
And shared a blanket.
A spark of kindness made a light.
The light made an opening in the darkness.
Everyone worked together to make a ladder.
A Wind Clan person climbed out first into the next world,
And then the other clans, the children of those clans, their children,
And their children, all the way through time—
To now, into this morning light to you.

-- Joy Harjo (1951- ), Muscogee (Creek) American, US Poet Laureate 2019- . musician and artist, from Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, 2015.

On Children

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of children.

And he said:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that his arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
He also loves the bow that is stable.

--Khalil Gibran (1883-1931), Lebanese-American artist, painter, writer, and poet, from The Prophet, 1923

An American Sunrise

We were running out of breath, as we ran out to meet ourselves. We
were surfacing the edge of our ancestors’ fights, and ready to strike.
It was difficult to lose days in the Indian bar if you were straight.
Easy if you played pool and drank to remember to forget. We
made plans to be professional — and did. And some of us could sing
so we drummed a fire-lit pathway up to those starry stars. Sin
was invented by the Christians, as was the Devil, we sang. We
were the heathens, but needed to be saved from them — thin
chance. We knew we were all related in this story, a little gin
will clarify the dark and make us all feel like dancing. We
had something to do with the origins of blues and jazz
I argued with a Pueblo as I filled the jukebox with dimes in June,
forty years later and we still want justice. We are still America. We
know the rumors of our demise. We spit them out. They die
soon.

--Joy Harjo (1951- ), Muscogee (Creek) American, US poet laureate 2019-, from Poetry magazine, February 2017


Photo by Shawn Miller for the Library of Congress, June 19, 2019

Eagle Poem

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

--Joy Harjo (1951- ), Muscogee (Creek) American, named US Poet Laureate today, from Mad Love and War, 1990



Photo of a Golden Eagle in Flight from the US Geological Survey.

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

—Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), Irish poet, Nobel laureate, teacher, and translator, from Death of a Naturalist, 1966.

She looks into me

She looks into me
The unknowing heart
To see if I love
She has confidence she forgets
Under the clouds of her eyelids
Her head falls asleep in my hands
Where are we
Together inseparable
Alive alive
He alive she alive
And my head rolls through her dreams.

--Paul Eluard (ne Eugene Grindel) (1895-1952), French surrealist, Dadaist, and member of the French Resistance in World War II.



My photo of Van Gogh's La Meridienne (1889) in the Musee d'Orsay, which was itself inspired by Millet's Noonday Rest.

Epousailles (Wedding)

To One who is at the seashore

Love wed the absence of a summer night;
So much so that my love for your soft youth
Slowly accompanies its wife, your absence,
Who, sweet and tranquil, leads him and is still.

And love which went away to find the sea,
Where nudes would make the sky seem Greek,
Weeps to be still a god and still unknown,
A jealous god as only gods can be.

--Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), French poet


L'amour a épousé l'absence, un soir d'été;
Si bien que mon amour pour votre adolescence
Accompagne à pas lents sa femme, votre absence,
Qui, très douce, le mène et, tranquille, se tait.

Et l'amour qui s'en vint aux bords océaniques,
Où le ciel serait grec si toutes étaient nues,
Y pleure d'être dieu encore et inconnu,
Ce dieu jaloux comme le sont les dieux uniques.

Prayer of Thanksgiving for Columba

Columba of

the rocks and roots and rolling waves,

of rain-drenched earth, changing skies and empty horizons,

of coming home and moving on.

Columba of

the music of wind and seabird cries,

the poetry of wild geese and lowing cattle,

the vision of sharing bread and stories.

Columba

man of solitude and simplicity,

community and compassion,

soul friend.

We celebrate with gratitude and hope

your being and openness

to the blessedness of all things.

Columba who saw the blessing of beauty

and Iona as a light for all times,

with you

we weep

for depths of poverty

and pinnacles of wealth;

for hostility, impersonality,

suffering, indifference,

and all that harms people

and all living things.

With you

we laugh

for humaity's raucous energy

and generosity of spirit;

for angels, smiling faces

and all that heals people.

We celebrate with gratitude and hope

your being and your openness

to the blessedness of all things.

Because of imagination, legend and prayer,

because of love and grace,

no act is inconsequential

and no story without significance.

In our knowing and unknowing;

in the quiet held within

that is Columba's vision and forever Iona,

we hold memories, remembrance,

and the whisperings

of a people's pride.

We hold out for others

the poet's bread

and the people's poetry.

We celebrate with gratitude and hope

the holiness of being

and the blessedness of all things.

--Joy Mead, from In The Gift of This New Day: Praying With the Iona Community, edited by Neil Paynter, 2015

Image: Stained glass window from Iona Abbey

Columba's Affirmation

Alone with none but Thee, My God,
I journey on my way;
What need I fear when Thou art near,
O King of night and day?
More safe I am within Thy hand,
Than if a host did round me stand.

My destined time is fixed by Thee,
and death doth know his hour.
Did warriors strong around me throng,
they could not stay his power;
no walls of stone can man defend
when Thou Thy messenger dost send.

My life I yield to Thy decree,
and bow to Thy control
in peaceful calm, for from Thine arm
no power can wrest my soul.
Could earthly omen e'er appal
A man that heeds the heavenly call!

The child of God can fear no ill,
His chosen dread no foe;
we leave our fate with Thee and wait
Thy bidding when we go.
Tis not from chance our comfort springs,
Thou art our trust, O King of kings.

--St. Columba, from A Celtic Psaltery, compiled by David Adam, 2001

The Protecting God

Lord, be with us this day,
Within us to purify us;
Above us to draw us up;
Beneath us to sustain us;
Before us to lead us;
Behind us to restrain us;
Around us to protect us.

--St. Patrick, from A Celtic Psaltery, 2001, compiled by David Adam

St. Columba at Iona

Delightful it would be
From a rock pinnacle to trace
Continually
The Ocean's face:
That I might watch the heaving waves
Of noble force
To God the Father chant their staves
Of the earth's course.
That I might mark the level strand,
To me no less distress,
That I might mark the sea-bird's wondrous band-
Sweet source of happiness.
That I might hear the clamorous billows thunder
On the rude beach.
That by my blessed church side I might ponder
Their mighty speech.
Or watch surf-flying gulls the dark shoal follow
With joyous scream,
Or mighty ocean monsters spout and wallow,
Wonder supreme!
That I might well observe the ebb and flood
All cycles therein;
And that my mystic name might be for good
But 'Cul-ri. Erin.'
That gazing toward her on my heart might fall
A full contrition,
That I might bewail my evils all,
Though hard the addition;
That I might bless the Lord who all things orders
For their good.
The countless hierarchies through heaven's bright borders-
Land, strand, and flood/
That I might search all books and from their chart
Find my soul's calm.
Now kneel before the Heaven of my heart,
Now chant a psalm;
Now meditate upon the King of heaven,
Chief of the Holy Three;
Now ply my work by no compulsion driven
What greater joy could be?
Now plucking dulse from rocky shore,
Now fishing eager on,
Now furnishing food unto famished poor;
In hermitage anon:
The guidance of the King of kings
Has been vouchsafed to me;
If I keep watch beneath his wings
No evil shall undo me.

--Alfred P. Graves (1846-1931), Irish poet, from A Celtic Psaltery, 1917

All Labourers' Helper

All labourers' helper,
Blessed men's ruler,
Chief ramparts' warder,
Deep faith's defender,
Each small man's lifter,
Fashion-plates' humbler,
Great navigator,
Heretic crusher,
Just judges' judger,
Keen sinners' punisher,
Light of good-livers,
Man's sanctifier,
O endless giver,
Perfect in vigour,
Quicken my prayer:
Receive it, Master,
So, though I am no braver
Than the weakest rower
Under loud thunder's
Violent clamour,
Welcome me to the Father's
X- Christ the Kepper's
Yearned-for-Cros,, Saviour,
Zealously may you conquer.
     Per dominum nostrum
     Forever and ever.

-- attributed to St. Columba, translated from Latin, from Iona: An Anthology

God of All

Our God is the God of all,
the God of heaven and earth,
of the sea and of the river;
The God of the sun and of the moon and of all the stars;
The God of the lofty mountains
and of the lowly valleys.
He has his dwelling around heaven and earth,
and sea, and all that in them is.
He inspires all,
He gives life to all,
He dominates all,
He supports all.
He lights the light of the sun.
He furnishes the light of the night.
He has made springs in dry land...
He is the God of heaven and earth,
of sea and rivers,
of sun, moon, and stars,
of the lofty mountain and the lowly valley,
the God above heaven,
and in heaven,
and under heaven.

-- St. Patrick, from A Celtic Psaltery, compiled by David Adam

Prayer at Dressing

Bless to me, O God,
my soul and my body;
Bless to me, O God,
My belief and my condition;

Bless to me, O God,
My heart and my speech;
Bless to me, O God,
The handling of my hand;

Strength and busyness of morning,
Habit and temper of modesty,
Force and wisdom of thought,
And Thine own path, O God of virtues,
Till I go to sleep this night;

Thine own path, O God of virtues,
Till I go to sleep this night.

--anonymous, collected by Alexander Carmichael (1832-1912), folklorist among the Scots, and published in Carmina Gadelica (Hymns of the Gael) I.

Psalm 46 Redux

Sheltering God, 
I hide myself in You.
Head swathed and bowed,
I listen for the still, small voice.

Strengthening God,
in times of tumult and terror,
as the earth moves
and the horizon shifts,
You call me back,
to shelter and to strengthen.

Your song is in the sighing of trees.
Your light is in flicker and spark,
knowing and unknowing.
Your power is in the greening,
and in its passing.

Those with ears to hear, listen.
Those with eyes to see, look.

War and peace,
trembling and tenderness,
all that we create
and all that we destroy
hold a holiness
we do not understand.

Illumine our being,
that our doing
might manifest You.

--Carla A. Grosch-Miller, British theologian and pastor, from Psalms Redux: Poems and Prayers, 2014