Early Frost

This morning the world’s white face reminds us
that life intends to become serious again.
And the same loud birds that all summer long
annoyed us with their high attitudes and chatter
silently line the gibbet of the fence a little stunned,
chastened enough.

They look as if they’re waiting for things
to grow worse, but are watching the house,
as if somewhere in their dim memories
they recall something about this abandoned garden
that could save them.

The neighbor’s dog has also learned to wake
without exaggeration. And the neighbor himself
has made it to his car with less noise, starting
the small engine with a kind of reverence. At the window
his wife witnesses this bleak tableau, blinking
her eyes, silent.

I fill the feeders to the top and cart them
to the tree, hurrying back inside
to leave the morning to these ridiculous
birds, who, reminded, find the rough shelters,
bow, and then feed.

--Scott Cairns (1954- ) English professor at Mizzou and Orthodox Christian

Love's Body

Lean in! I was a child, and spoke like one;
        My thought? very like a child’s.
                I gripped my reason with both
my little fists. It smelled suspiciously of milk.
        Now, as a man, I’ve learned to let it go.
                Just now, we squint to see the Image through
this latent, bleak obscurity. One day, we’ll see the Image—
        as Himself—gleaming from each face.
                Just now, I puzzle through a range
of incoherencies; but on that day,
        the scattered fragments will cohere.
                In all of this, both now and ever,
faith and hope and love abide, these
        sacred three, but the greatest of these (you surely
                must have guessed) is love.


-- Scott Cairns (1954- ) English professor at Mizzou and Orthodox Christian, reconceiving 1 Corinthians 13:11-13 by St. Paul the Apostle

Bad Theology: A Quiz

"And lo, the Angel of the Lord came upon them,
and the glory of the Lord shone round about them:
and they were sore afraid."

Whenever we aver “the God is nigh,”
do we imply that He is ever otherwise? 

When, in scripture, God's anger is said
to be aroused, just how do you take that? 

If --whether now or in the fullness --we
stipulate that God is all in all, just where

or how could you position Hell ? Which
is better -- to break the law and soothe 

the wounded neighbor, or to keep the law
and cause the neighbor pain? Do you mean it? 

If another sins, what is that to you?
When the sinful suffer publicly, do you 

find secret comfort in their grief, or will
you also weep? They are surely grieving; 

are you weeping now? Assuming sin is sin
whose do you condemn? Who is judge? Who 

will feed the lambs? The sheep? Who, the goats?
Who will sell and give? Who will be denied? 

Whose image haunts the mirror? And why
are you still here? What exactly do you hope 

to become? When will you begin?



--Scott Cairns (1954- ), American poet, Orthodox Christian, and former professor at the University of Missouri, from Slow Pilgrim: the Collected Poems

Shoring Up and Shoring Down

With near-anaphoric repetition
   the tedious Pacific yet insists
on pressing this our gritty beach
   for further evidence. And look!
At intervals the shore concedes. And Look!
   Here and there the cliffs
reveal the land has altogether
   acquiesced, having shrugged
its shoulders, shedding heaps
   of clay onto the grit.

With near-anaphoric repetition
   the melancholic ebb and flow
repeat their endless question, just as we
   interrogate the rock and clay
and fossil-bearing strata for a clue
   regarding what has brought us here,
regarding what might lead us hence.

--Scott Cairns (1954- ), American poet and former professor at the University of Missouri, from Anaphora: New Poems

Possible Answers to Prayer

Your petitions—though they continue to bear
just the one signature—have been duly recorded.
Your anxieties—despite their constant,

relatively narrow scope and inadvertent
entertainment value—nonetheless serve
to bring your person vividly to mind.

Your repentance—all but obscured beneath
a burgeoning, yellow fog of frankly more
conspicuous resentment—is sufficient.

Your intermittent concern for the sick,
the suffering, the needy poor is sometimes
recognizable to me, if not to them.

Your angers, your zeal, your lipsmackingly
righteous indignation toward the many
whose habits and sympathies offend you—

these must burn away before you’ll apprehend
how near I am, with what fervor I adore
precisely these, the several who rouse your passions.

-- Scott Cairns (1954- ) American poet and spiritual writer