Grant us for grace
oppositions, stimyings
sand in our pet gears
a bubble in the cozy blood
Crowd our real estate
with the rag tag real, the world.
Marry us off, lonely girls
to Harlem and Asia. This Lent
celebrate in the haunted house, the world.
--Daniel Berrigan (1921-2016), American Jesuit priest, activist, dissenter, pacifist, and poet, from And the Risen Bread: Selected Poems, 1957–1997 (1998).
Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.
--Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), English poet and Jesuit priest
Grant us for grace
oppositions, stimyings
sand in our pet gears
a bubble in the cozy blood
Crowd our real estate
with the rag tag real, the world.
Marry us off, lonely girls
to Harlem and Asia. This Lent
celebrate in the haunted house, the world.
--Daniel Berrigan (1921-2016), American Jesuit priest, activist, pacifist, poet, and playwright, from And the Risen Bread, Selected Poems, 1957–1997 (1998).
