No Hard Feelings

When my body won't hold me anymore
And it finally lets me free
Will I be ready?
When my feet won't walk another mile
And my lips give their last kiss goodbye
Will my hands be steady when I lay down my fears, my hopes, and my doubts?
The rings on my fingers, and the keys to my house
With no hard feelings

When the sun hangs low in the west
And the light in my chest won't be kept held at bay any longer
When the jealousy fades away
And it's ash and dust for cash and lust
And it's just hallelujah
And love in thought, love in the words
Love in the songs they sing in the church
And no hard feelings

Lord knows, they haven't done much good for anyone
Kept me afraid and cold
With so much to have and hold
Mmm, hmm

When my body won't hold me anymore
And it finally lets me free
Where will I go?
Will the trade winds take me south through Georgia grain?
Or tropical rain?
Or snow from the heavens?
Will I join with the ocean blue?
Or run into a savior true?
And shake hands laughing
And walk through the night, straight to the light
Holding the love I've known in my life
And no hard feelings

Lord knows, they haven't done much good for anyone
Kept me afraid and cold
With so much to have and hold
Under the curving sky
I'm finally learning why
It matters for me and you
To say it and mean it too
For life and its loveliness
And all of its ugliness
Good as it's been to me
I have no enemies

I have no enemies
I have no enemies
I have no enemies

--Robert William Crawford (1971- ), Scott Yancey Avett (1976- ), Timothy Seth Avett (1980- ), of the Avett Brothers, from the album True Sadness, 2016.

Fasting in Tunis

Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances.
- ROBERT HASS

My God taught me hunger
is a gift, it sweetens
the meal. All day, I have gone without
because I know at the end I will
eat and be satisfied. In this way,
my desire is bearable.

I endure this day
as I have endured years of days
without the whole of your affection.
Your desire is one capable of rest.
Mine keeps its eyes open, stalks
through heat that quivers,
waits to be fed.

The sun burns a hole through
the sky and I am patient.
The ocean eats and eats
at the sand and still hungers.
I watch its wide blue tongue, knowing
you are on the other side.

What is greater: the distance between
these bodies, or their need?

Noon gapes, a vacant maw-
there is long to go
until the moon is served, white as a plate.
You are far and still sleeping;
the morning has not yet slunk into your bed,
its dreams so vast and solitary.

Once, long ago,
I touched you,
and I will touch you again-
your mouth a song
I remember, your mouth
a sugar I drink.

--Leila Chatti (1990- ), Tunisian-American poet and teacher.

Scripture Reference: Isaiah 58:1-12, 5th Sunday After Epiphany A

Love Calls Us to the Things of This World

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
                       Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.

   Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;

   Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
                                                   The soul shrinks

   From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessèd day,
And cries,
                “Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.”

   Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,
   “Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
                     keeping their difficult balance.”

— Richard Wilbur (1921-2017), second poet laureate of the United States

Fasting

There’s hidden sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness.
We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox
is stuffed full of anything, no music.
If the brain and belly are burning clean
with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire.
The fog clears, and new energy makes you
run up the steps in front of you.
Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.
Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.
When you’re full of food and drink, Satan sits
where your spirit should, an ugly metal statue
in place of the Kaaba. When you fast,
good habits gather like friends who want to help.
Fasting is Solomon’s ring. Don’t give it
to some illusion and lose your power,
but even if you have, if you’ve lost all will and control,
they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing
out of the ground, pennants flying above them.
A table descends to your tents,
Jesus’ table.
Expect to see it, when you fast, this table
spread with other food, better than the broth of cabbages.

-- Rumi (Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī) (1207-1273), Persian Sufi mystic and poet

Scripture Reference: Isaiah 58:1-12, 5th Sunday After Epiphany A

God Speaks to the Soul

God speaks to the soul
And God said to the soul:
I desired you before the world began.
I desire you now
As you desire me.
And where the desires of two come together
There love is perfected.

--Mechthild of Magdeburg (1207-1292), Medieval German mystic and poet

The Wanderer

Always the one alone longs for mercy,
the Maker's mildness, though, troubled in mind,
across the ocean-ways he has long been forced
to stir with his hands the frost-cold sea,
and walk in exile's paths. Wyrd is fully fixed.

     Thus spoke the Wanderer, mindful of troubles,
of cruel slaughters and dear kinsmen's downfall:
"Often alone, in the first light of dawn,
I have sung my lament. There is none living
to whom I would dare to reveal clearly
my heart's thoughts. I know it is true
that it is a nobleman's lordly nature
to closely bind his spirit's coffer,
hold fast his treasure-hoard, whatever he may think.
The weary mind cannot withstand wyrd,
the troubled heart can offer no help,
and so those eager for fame often bind fast
in their breast-coffers a sorrowing soul,
just as I have had to take my own heart—
Often wretched, cut off from my own homeland,
far from dear kinsmen—and bind it in fetters,
ever since long ago I hid my gold-giving friend
in the darkness of earth, and went wretched,
winter-sad, over the ice-locked waves,
sought, hall-sick, a treasure-giver,
wherever I might find, far or near,
someone in a meadhall who might know my people,
or who would want to comfort me, friendless,
accustom me to joy. He who has come to know
how cruel a companion is sorrow
for one with few dear friends, will understand:
the path of exile claims him, not patterned gold,
a winter-bound spirit, not the wealth of earth.
He remembers hall-holders and treasure-caking,
how in his youth his gold-giving lord
accustomed him to the feast—that joy has all faded.

     And so he who has long been forced to forego
his lord's beloved words of counsel will understand:
when sorrow and sleep both together
often bind up the wretched exile,
it seems in his mind that he clasps and kisses
his lord of men, and on his knee lays
hands and head, as he sometimes long ago
in earlier days enjoyed the gift-throne.
But when the friendless man awakens again
and sees before him the fallow waves,
seabirds bathing, spreading their feathers,
frost falling and snow, mingled with hail,
then the heart's wounds are that much heavier,
longing for his loved one. Sorrow is renewed
when the memory of kinsmen flies through the mind;
he greets them with great joy, greedily surveys
hall-companions—they always swim away;
the floating spirits bring too few
familiar voices. Cares are renewed
for one who must send, over and over,
a weary heart across the binding waves.

     And so I cannot imagine for all chis world
why my spirit should not grow dark
when I think through all this life of men,
how suddenly they gave up the hall-floor,
mighty young retainers. Thus this middle-earth
droops and decays every single day;
and so a man cannot become wise, before he has weathered
his share of winters in this world. A wise man must be patient,
neither too hot-hearted nor too hasty with words,
nor too weak in war nor too unwise in thoughts,
neither fretting nor fawning nor greedy for wealth,
never eager for boasting before he truly understands;
a man must wait, when he makes a boast,
until the brave spirit understands truly
where the thoughts of his heart will turn.

     The wise man must realize how ghastly it will be
when all the wealth of this world stands waste,
as now here and there throughout this middle-earth
walls stand blasted by wind,
beaten by frost, the buildings crumbling.
The wine halls topple, their rulers lie
deprived of all joys; the proud old troops
all fell by the wall. War carried off some,
sent them on the way, one a bird carried off
over the high seas, one the gray wolf
shared with death—and one a sad-faced man
covered in an earthen grave. The Creator
of men thus destroyed this walled city,
until the old works of giants stood empty,
without the sounds of their former citizens.

     He who deeply considers, with wise thoughts,
this foundation and this dark life,
old in spirit, often remembers
so many ancient slaughters, and says these words:
'Where has the horse gone? where is the rider? where is the giver of gold?
Where are the seats of the feast? where are the joys of the hall?
O the bright cup! O the brave warrior!
O the glory of princes! How the time passed away,
slipped into nightfall as if it had never been!
There still stands in the path of the dear warriors
a wall wondrously high, with serpentine stains.
A storm of spears took away the warriors,
bloodthirsty weapons, wyrd the mighty,
and storms batter these stone walls,
frost falling binds up the earth,
the howl of winter, when blackness comes,
night's shadow looms, sends down from the north
harsh hailstones in hatred of men.
All is toilsome in the earthly kingdom,
the working of wyrd changes the world under heaven.
Here wealth is fleeting, here friends are fleeting,
here man is fleeting, here woman is fleeting,
all the framework of this earth will stand empty.’

     So said the wise one in his mind, sitting apart in meditation.
He is good who keeps his word, and the man who never too quickly
shows the anger in his breast, unless he already knows the remedy
a noble man can bravely bring about. It will be well for one who seeks mercy,
consolation from the Father in heaven, where for us all stability stands.

--Anonymous Old English poem (9th century), translated by Ray Liuzzo

Oft him anhaga are gebideð,

metudes miltse, þeah þe he modcearig

geond lagulade longe sceolde

hreran mid hondum hrimcealde sæ,

wadan wræclastas. Wyrd bið ful aręd!

Swa cwæð eardstapa, earfeþa gemyndig,

wraþra wælsleahta, winemæga hryre:

“Oft ic sceolde ana uhtna gehwylce

mine ceare cwiþan. Nis nu cwicra nan

þe ic him modsefan minne durre

sweotule asecgan. Ic to soþe wat

þæt biþ in eorle indryhten þeaw,

þæt he his ferðlocan fæste binde,

healde his hordcofan, hycge swa he wille.

Ne mæg werig mod wyrde wiðstondan,

ne se hreo hyge helpe gefremman.

Forðon domgeorne dreorigne oft

in hyra breostcofan bindað fæste;

swa ic modsefan minne sceolde,

oft earmcearig, eðle bidæled,

freomægum feor feterum sælan,

siþþan geara iu goldwine minne

hrusan heolstre biwrah, ond ic hean þonan

wod wintercearig ofer waþema gebind,

sohte sele dreorig sinces bryttan,

hwær ic feor oþþe neah findan meahte

þone þe in meoduhealle min mine wisse,

oþþe mec freondleasne frefran wolde,

weman mid wynnum. Wat se þe cunnað,

hu sliþen bið sorg to geferan,

þam þe him lyt hafað leofra geholena.

Warað hine wræclast, nales wunden gold,

ferðloca freorig, nalæs foldan blæd.

Gemon he selesecgas ond sincþege,

hu hine on geoguðe his goldwine

wenede to wiste. Wyn eal gedreas!

Forþon wat se þe sceal his winedryhtnes

leofes larcwidum longe forþolian,

ðonne sorg ond slæp somod ætgædre

earmne anhogan oft gebindað.

þinceð him on mode þæt he his mondryhten

clyppe ond cysse, ond on cneo lecge

honda ond heafod, swa he hwilum ær

in geardagum giefstolas breac.

ðonne onwæcneð eft wineleas guma,

gesihð him biforan fealwe wegas,

baþian brimfuglas, brædan feþra,

hreosan hrim ond snaw, hagle gemenged.

þonne beoð þy hefigran heortan benne,

sare æfter swæsne. Sorg bið geniwad,

þonne maga gemynd mod geondhweorfeð;

greteð gliwstafum, georne geondsceawað

secga geseldan. Swimmað eft on weg!

Fleotendra ferð no þær fela bringeð

cuðra cwidegiedda. Cearo bið geniwad

þam þe sendan sceal swiþe geneahhe

ofer waþema gebind werigne sefan.

Forþon ic geþencan ne mæg geond þas woruld

for hwan modsefa min ne gesweorce,

þonne ic eorla lif eal geondþence,

hu hi færlice flet ofgeafon,

modge maguþegnas. Swa þes middangeard

ealra dogra gehwam dreoseð ond fealleþ,

forþon ne mæg weorþan wis wer, ær he age

wintra dæl in woruldrice. Wita sceal geþyldig,

ne sceal no to hatheort ne to hrædwyrde,

ne to wac wiga ne to wanhydig,

ne to forht ne to fægen, ne to feohgifre

ne næfre gielpes to georn, ær he geare cunne.

Beorn sceal gebidan, þonne he beot spriceð,

oþþæt collenferð cunne gearwe

hwider hreþra gehygd hweorfan wille.

Ongietan sceal gleaw hæle hu gæstlic bið,

þonne ealre þisse worulde wela weste stondeð,

swa nu missenlice geond þisne middangeard

winde biwaune weallas stondaþ,

hrime bihrorene, hryðge þa ederas.

Woriað þa winsalo, waldend licgað

dreame bidrorene, duguþ eal gecrong,

wlonc bi wealle. Sume wig fornom,

ferede in forðwege, sumne fugel oþbær

ofer heanne holm, sumne se hara wulf

deaðe gedælde, sumne dreorighleor

in eorðscræfe eorl gehydde.

Yþde swa þisne eardgeard ælda scyppend

oþþæt burgwara breahtma lease

eald enta geweorc idlu stodon.

Se þonne þisne wealsteal wise geþohte

ond þis deorce lif deope geondþenceð,

frod in ferðe, feor oft gemon

wælsleahta worn, ond þas word acwið:

“Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago? Hwær cwom maþþumgyfa?

Hwær cwom symbla gesetu? Hwær sindon seledreamas?

Eala beorht bune! Eala byrnwiga!

Eala þeodnes þrym! Hu seo þrag gewat,

genap under nihthelm, swa heo no wære.

Stondeð nu on laste leofre duguþe

weal wundrum heah, wyrmlicum fah.

Eorlas fornoman asca þryþe,

wæpen wælgifru, wyrd seo mære,

ond þas stanhleoþu stormas cnyssað,

hrið hreosende hrusan bindeð,

wintres woma, þonne won cymeð,

nipeð nihtscua, norþan onsendeð

hreo hæglfare hæleþum on andan.

Eall is earfoðlic eorþan rice,

onwendeð wyrda gesceaft weoruld under heofonum.

Her bið feoh læne, her bið freond læne,

her bið mon læne, her bið mæg læne,

eal þis eorþan gesteal idel weorþeð!”

Swa cwæð snottor on mode, gesæt him sundor æt rune.

Til biþ se þe his treowe gehealdeþ, ne sceal næfre his torn to rycene

beorn of his breostum acyþan, nemþe he ær þa bote cunne,

eorl mid elne gefremman. Wel bið þam þe him are seceð,

frofre to fæder on heofonum, þær us eal seo fæstnung stondeð.

Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit

Did you ever understand this?

If my spirit was poor, how could I enter heaven?
Was I depressed?
Understanding editing,
I see how a comma, removed or inserted
with careful plan,
can change everything.
I was reminded of this
when a poor young man
in Tunisia
desperate to live
and humiliated for trying
set himself ablaze;
I felt uncomfortably warm
as if scalded by his shame.
I do not have to sell vegetables from a cart as he did
or live in narrow rooms too small for spacious thought;
and, at this late date,
I do not worry that someone will
remove every single opportunity
for me to thrive.
Still, I am connected to, inseparable from,
this young man.
Blessed are the poor, in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus. (Commas restored) .
Jesus was as usual talking about solidarity: about how we join with others
and, in spirit, feel the world, and suffering, the same as them.
This is the kingdom of owning the other as self, the self as other;
that transforms grief into
peace and delight.
I, and you, might enter the heaven
of right here
through this door.
In this spirit, knowing we are blessed,
we might remain poor.

--Alice Walker (1944- ) African American novelist, poet, and activist.

This poem refers to the story of Mohammed Bouazizi, who on December 17, 2010 set himself on fire in response to constant government harassment, and act of protest that helped spark the Arab Spring.

Scripture Reference: Matthew 5:1-12

The Way It Is

There's a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.

--William Stafford (1914-1993) American poet, teacher, and US Poet Laureate 1970.

For a' That and a' That

Is there, for honest poverty,
     That hings his head, an' a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by,
     We dare be poor for a' that!
          For a' that, an' a' that,
               Our toils obscure, an' a' that;
          The rank is but the guinea's stamp;
               The man's the gowd for a' that,

What tho' on hamely fare we dine,
     Wear hoddin-gray, an' a' that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
     A man's a man for a' that.
          For a' that, an' a' that,
               Their tinsel show an' a' that;
          The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,
               Is king o' men for a' that.

Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord
     Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
     He's but a coof for a' that:
          For a' that, an' a' that,
               His riband, star, an' a' that,
          The man o' independent mind,
               He looks and laughs at a' that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,
     A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's aboon his might,
     Guid faith he mauna fa' that!
          For a' that, an' a' that,
               Their dignities, an' a' that,
          The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,
               Are higher rank than a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may,
     As come it will for a' that,
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,
     May bear the gree, an' a' that.
          For a' that, an' a' that,
               It's coming yet, for a' that,
          That man to man, the warld o'er,
               Shall brothers be for a' that.

--Robert Burns (1759-1796), national poet of Scotland. January 25 is his birthday, and tonight is "Burns' Night," in which he is remembered and his work (and all things Scots) are celebrated. Image is a typical tenant farmer, or cottar, house. This poem, written in 1795, was one of Burns's last.

hings=hangs

guinea's stamp= face on a guinea coin, worth 21 shillings, or 1.05 pounds; a guinea was paid to gentlemen, while pounds were paid to tradesmen

gowd=gold

hamely=homely

hodden grey=rough woolen cloth

sae=so

yon birkie=arrogant dude over there

ca'd=called

coof=fool

aboon=above

guid=good

mauna fa'=must not come by

pith=strength, vigor

bear the gree=win first place

Ask Me

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.


--William Stafford (1914-1993), American poet and teacher, pacifist, winner of the National Book Award and US Poet Laureate in 1970

Beatitudes

1.
My child wants to know if the mountains really cowered.
“How do you know when a sea or a river is afraid?
How do you know when the sky is thinking yes or no?

And why did Adam say yes—Did he know that
all the other creatures refused? Was he arrogant
or just ignorant? Was he God’s last choice?”

2.
“Did you really have a party the day the dictator died?
And you had a cake decorated with all the flags?
Did you think his death will fix everything?

Why did we spend all that time there?
Why couldn’t we just stay here?
Isn’t this our country too?

And all these people fleeing and drowning,
what are they hoping for? Whose fault is it?
How long must we wait for things to improve?”

3.
She speaks to me in our language
in front of her friends, to share a secret,
or—cool and beaming—to show off.

I wonder how long it will last, this pride,
this intimacy. Sometimes she puts her arm
next to mine and tells me I have the lighter skin.

“Why are you doing this,” I ask.
But she doesn’t point to the flag
or say, “It’s the way of the world.”

Instead she tells me not to worry, that she is “the most
kid kid in my class, the least mature one, Baba!”
Not all kinds of wisdom console, I tell her.

Then I begin to think of words she’ll soon hear
that can make her wish she wasn’t who she is.
Lead me to virtue, O love, through the smoke of despair.

4.
“Let’s walk through the woods,” she tells me.
“Let’s walk by the rocky shore at sunrise.”
“Let’s walk through the clover fields at noon.”

In the rainforest she is silent, mesmerized.
She’d never prayed—we never taught her—
but she seemed to then, eyes alert with joy.

She points to a chameleon the size of a beetle,
teaches me the names of flowers and trees,
insects we can eat if we’re ever lost here.

“I’m teaching you how to entrust the world
to me,” she says. “You don’t have to live
forever to shield me from it.”

--Khaled Mattawa (1964- ), Libyan-born American poet and translator or Arabic poetry.

Scriptural reference: Matthew 5:1-12, 4 Epiphany A

Looking for Your Face

From the beginning of my life
I have been looking for your face
but today I have seen it

Today I have seen
the charm, the beauty,
the unfathomable grace
of the face
that I was looking for

Today I have found you
and those who laughed
and scorned me yesterday
are sorry that they were not looking
as I did

I am bewildered by the magnificence
of your beauty
and wish to see you
with a hundred eyes

My heart has burned with passion
and has searched forever
for this wondrous beauty
that I now behold

I am ashamed
to call this love human
and afraid of God
to call it divine

Your fragrant breath
like the morning breeze
has come to the stillness of the garden
You have breathed new life into me
I have become your sunshine
and also your shadow

My soul is screaming in ecstasy
Every fiber of my being
is in love with you

Your effulgence
has lit a fire in my heart
and you have made radiant
for me
the earth and sky

My arrow of love
has arrived at the target
I am in the house of mercy
and my heart
is a place of prayer

-- Rumi (Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī) (1207-1273), Persian Sufi mystic and poet

Scripture reference:  Psalm 27:1,4-9

3 Epiphany A

Prayer of St. Columba

Let me bless Almighty God,
Whose power extends over sea and land,
Whose angels watch over all.
Let me study sacred books to calm my soul.
I pray for peace,
Kneeling at heaven’s gates.
Let me do my daily work,
Gathering seaweed, catching fish,
Giving food to the poor.
Let me say my daily prayers,
Sometimes chanting, sometime quiet,
Always thanking God.
Delightful it is to live
On a peaceful isle, in a quiet cell,
Serving the King of Kings.

--St. Columba of Iona (521-597), Irish monastic, abbot, and missionary to the Picts in Scotland

The beautiful image is from a card I received from the artist, Kreg Yingst, who makes amazing religious prints at his shop, wORKINGaRTS, found on Etsy.

Frost at Midnight

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,

Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

                       But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger ! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the intersperséd vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the night-thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.


-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Romantic poet, critic and theologian

Afterwards

When the Present has slashed its postern behind my tremulous stay,
   And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
   ‘He was a man who used to notice such things’?

If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid’s soundless blink,
   The dew-fall hawk comes crossing the shades to alight
Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,
   ‘To him this must have been a familiar sight.’

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,
   When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,
One may say, ‘He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm,
   But he could do little for them; And now he is gone.’

If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door,
   Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,
Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,
   ‘He was the one who had an eye for such mysteries’?

And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom,
   And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,
Till they rise again, as they were a new bell’s boom,
   ‘He hears it not now, but used to notice such things’?

--Thomas Hardy (1840-1924), English novelist and poet

Vaclav Havel on Hope

 

“… the kind of hope I often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul, and it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation… it is an orientation of the spirit, and orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. I don't think you can explain it as a mere derivative of something here, of some movement, or of some favorable signs in the world. I feel that its deepest roots are in the transcendental, just as the roots of human responsibility are… 

“Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpromising the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. hope is not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. in short, I think that the deepest and most important form of hope, the only hope that can keep us above water and urge us to good works, and the only true source of the breathtaking dimension of the human spirit and its efforts, is something we get, as it were, from ‘elsewhere.’ It is also this hope, above all, that gives us the strength to live and continually to try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now.”

-- Vaclav Havel, poet, playwright, dissident against communism leader of the Velvet Revolution, Czechoslovakian president, from Disturbing the Peace, pp. 181-2, cited in part by Seamus Heaney, The Redress of Poetry, 4.

Psalm III

To God: to illuminate all men. Beginning with Skid Road.
—Let Occidental and Washington be transformed into a higher place, the plaza of eternity.
—Illuminate the welders in shipyards with the brilliance of their torches.
—Let the crane operator lift up his arm for joy.
—Let elevators creak and speak, ascending and descending in awe.
—Let the mercy of the flower’s direction beckon in the eye.
—Let the straight flower bespeak its purpose in straightness — to seek the light.
—Let the crooked flower bespeak its purpose in crookedness — to seek the light.
—Let the crookedness and straightness bespeak the light.
—Let Puget Sound be a blast of light.
—I feed on your Name like a cockroach on a crumb — this cockroach is holy.

Seattle, June 1956

--Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997), American Buddhist poet, writer, activist, and member of the Beat Generation of writer, National Book Award for Poetry winner in 1974

Fishing

The two of them stood in the middle water,
The current slipping away, quick and cold,
The sun slow at his zenith, sweating gold,
Once, in some sullen summer of father and daughter.
Maybe he regretted he had brought her—
She'd rather have been elsewhere, her look told—
Perhaps a year ago, but now too old.
Still, she remembered lessons he had taught her:
To cast towards shadows, where the sunlight fails
And fishes shelter in the undergrowth.
And when the unseen strikes, how all else pales
Beside the bright-dark struggle, the rainbow wroth,
Life and death weighed in the shining scales,
The invisible line pulled taut that links them both.


--A. E. (Alicia) Stallings (1968- ), American poet and translator, recipient of Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundation fellowships, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2018.

Scripture reference: Matthew 4:12-23 3 Epiphany A