Making the House ready for the Lord

Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but
still nothing is as shining as it should be
for you. Under the sink, for example, is an
uproar of mice — it is the season of their
many children. What shall I do? And under the eaves
and through the walls the squirrels
have gnawed their ragged entrances — but it is the season
when they need shelter, so what shall I do? And
the raccoon limps into the kitchen and opens the cupboard
while the dog snores, the cat hugs the pillow;
what shall I do? Beautiful is the new snow falling
in the yard and the fox who is staring boldly
up the path, to the door. And still I believe you will
come, Lord: you will, when I speak to the fox,
the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering sea-goose, know
that really I am speaking to you whenever I say,
as I do all morning and afternoon: Come in, Come in.

--Mary Oliver (1934-2019), American poet

A Ream of Paper

I have a ream of paper,
a cartridge of ink, 

almonds,
coffee,
a wool scarf for warmth. 

Whatever handcuffs the soul,
I have brought here. 

Whatever distances the heart,
I have brought here. 

A deer rises onto her haunches
to reach for an apple,

though many fallen apples are on the ground.

--Jane Hirshfield (1953- ), American poet, translator, and essayist, from Ledger

A Wild Embrace

How creation dares us into
a wild embrace of what is
too beautiful to ignore. You open
your front door.
Breathe, and all the old dust and confusion
of your life falls behind you.
You are not to obsess about it, 

no matter how it calls you.
Instead, bend and examine
closely how the grass has grown
an inch under last night’s rain,
and the peony buds are swelling,
the tips of pink petals already
bursting free like prisoners
wrongly convicted and now
released. There is such generosity
out there, reaching towards you
with hands open, claiming you,
a created being issuing
from the open mouth of God.

--Luci Shaw (1928- ), poet, editor, and Episcopalian, from The Generosity: Poems (2020).

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. 
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

-- William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright

I Worried

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.

--Mary Oliver (1935- ), American poet, from Swan: Poems and Prose Poems, 2010

E Tenebris

Come down, O Christ, and help me! reach thy hand,
For I am drowning in a stormier sea
Than Simon on thy lake of Galilee:
The wine of life is spilt upon the sand,
My heart is as some famine-murdered land,
Whence all good things have perished utterly,
And well I know my soul in Hell must lie
If I this night before God’s throne should stand.
“He sleeps perchance, or rideth to the chase,
Like Baal, when his prophets howled that name
From morn to noon on Carmel’s smitten height.”
Nay, peace, I shall behold before the night, 
The feet of brass, the robe more white than flame,
The wounded hands, the weary human face.

--Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Sonnet 27 (Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed)

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind, when body's work's expired:
For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see
Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.
     Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
     For thee and for myself no quiet find.

--William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

-- Wendell Berry (1934- ),