The Agony & The Garden

 

i.
Now all he dreams are ropes,
sees them in the trees at the beginning of
the world: grim slide of vines
through first light
throat-tails dangled, mother-arms,
an instinct of the hand to twist, like a heart,
around what it holds.

ii.
Half his heart is a campfire.
Father, he begins, father,—
He stands there and the black gears of night lurch
through sand. On the other side of the hill olive trees
descend into questions, into women, into merchants,
into emperor flesh, into pottery, into bread, into a child’s
mouth, into a waltz, into the printing press, into thermometers,
into sighing gardens, into motion pictures, into
glass, into bedposts, into soup, into car exhaust, into rain,
into glaciers, into unread letters, into ATMs.

Father, the wind. The ordinary life.

iii.
He does not understand women,
was given no glimpse or direction. He only
knows the world unfolds from their robes the way
wine spills from a cup.

He knows they sometimes take the form of angels,
and they will take the bruised form of saints,
and celestial bodies,
they are like long roads, the hushed underneck
of a swan, and they reach, wanting
to know you, palms uncoiling
past
you in ecstasy.

iv.
It’s the nightmare again in which his feet
are splinters, and his mother is gasping,
and his face peels off onto linen,
and his father watches him from a night tree,
and there is some great secret he must shove
up the hill, to the sky,
where he is loved, loved
only by thieves.

v.
The world lights a broken man.
And the apparition he sweats beside,
realized into angel, into lamp, how it
bears him as the soldiers push
their way through blackness, through
the olives, thistle, and his dark-eyed heart,
a dinghy tossed in another life’s dream.
Far rain on the ocean, where a father is nowhere
to be found. If grace is the fixed star
we long for, the good disciples must sleep their parts,
hands folded on their hearts like oak
doors. Somewhere at the hillfoot the crossmaker
is roping beams in his shop’s
half-light. So they come and they come
in their armor, mirroring moonlight.
Now the moon opens on his heel.
The moon is the scent of a shy girl’s letter.
When they stand, and they stand, her feather tips
brush the wall.


-- Eve Jones, poet, photographer, former instructor at Lindenwood University, from Dappled Things journal.

Scripture reference: Matthew 26:31-41; Mark 14:27-37; (The Passion Liturgy, years A and B)

Image: Christ on the Mount of Olives, Paul Gauguin, 1889

Oratorio: Christ on the Mount of Olives, Op. 85, Ludwig van Beethoven, UC Davis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus

 

Gossip

She always asks you, How is so-and-so?
--Her wary eyes as self-contained as beads.
She takes each anecdote and makes it grow,
or keeps it like a farmer hoarding seeds.
Conscious of being one who never fell,
Who never laid a single brick on sand,
She sees her neighbor stumbling to hell
And points a little plump triumphant hand.
When one is middle-aged and well-to-do
And free of care, existence might be flat
If fascinating troubles did not brew
In other lives, to taste in private chat
Before the cozy fire-- a cup of tea
Precarious on a well-toasted knee.


---Elizabeth Bohm, from Poetry magazine, February 1941

The Gossips

The vulturine necks stretch out; the mean eyes bunch, 

Float over hedges, witch-like, branch after branch,
Droop down from grim windows; lust to Lynch;

Or narrow to a dark reptilian stare,
Glide, poison-fanged, from bridge tea to the store.
The victim walks, his curdled spine aware.

Whatever could this bumbling man have done
That these cold venomous eyes should merge as one,
Freeze and transfix him like an evil sun?


--Theodore Roethke (1908-1963),  American poet and teacher

Judas, Peter

because we are all
betrayers, taking
silver and eating
body and blood and asking
(guilty) is it I and hearing
him say yes
it would be simple for us all
to rush out
and hang ourselves

but if we find grace
to cry and wait
after the voice of morning
has crowed in our ears
clearly enough
to break out hearts
he will be there
to ask us each again
do you love me?


--Luci Shaw (1928- ), British born American poet, retreat leader, teacher, and Episcopalian

Saint Judas

When I went out to kill myself, I caught
A pack of hoodlums beating up a man.
Running to spare his suffering, I forgot
My name, my number, how my day began,
How soldiers milled around the garden stone
And sang amusing songs; how all that day
Their javelins measured crowds; how I alone
Bargained the proper coins, and slipped away.

Banished from heaven, I found this victim beaten,
Stripped, kneed, and left to cry. Dropping my rope
Aside, I ran, ignored the uniforms:
Then I remembered bread my flesh had eaten,
The kiss that ate my flesh. Flayed without hope,
I held the man for nothing in my arms. 

-- James Wright (1927-1980), American poet and Pulitzer Prize winner for his Collected Poems.

Ethel's Sestina

Ethel Freeman's body sat for days in her wheelchair outside the New Orleans Convention Center. Her son Herbert, who had assured his mother that help was on the way, was forced to leave her there once she died.

Gon’ be obedient in this here chair, 

gon’ bide my time, fanning against this sun. 

I ask my boy, and all he says is Wait. 

He wipes my brow with steam, says I should sleep. 

I trust his every word. Herbert my son. 

I believe him when he says help gon’ come. 

Been so long since all these suffrin’ folks come 

to this place. Now on the ground ’round my chair, 

they sweat in my shade, keep asking my son 

could that be a bus they see. It’s the sun 

foolin’ them, shining much too loud for sleep, 

making us hear engines, wheels. Not yet. Wait. 

Lawd, some folks prayin’ for rain while they wait, 

forgetting what rain can do. When it come, 

it smashes living flat, wakes you from sleep, 

eats streets, washes you clean out of the chair 

you be sittin’ in. Best to praise this sun, 

shinin’ its dry shine. Lawd have mercy, son, 

is it coming? Such a strong man, my son. 

Can’t help but believe when he tells us, Wait. 

Wait some more. Wish some trees would block this sun. 

We wait. Ain’t no white men or buses come, 

but look—see that there? Get me out this chair, 

help me stand on up. No time for sleepin’, 

cause look what’s rumbling this way. If you sleep 

you gon’ miss it. Look there, I tell my son. 

He don’t hear. I’m ’bout to get out this chair, 

but the ghost in my legs tells me to wait, 

wait for the salvation that’s sho to come. 

I see my savior’s face ’longside that sun. 

Nobody sees me running toward the sun. 

Lawd, they think I done gone and fell asleep. 

They don't hear Come. 

Come. 

Come. 

Come. 

Come. 

Come. 

Come. 

Ain’t but one power make me leave my son. 

I can’t wait, Herbert. Lawd knows I can’t wait. 

Don’t cry, boy, I ain’t in that chair no more. 

Wish you coulda come on this journey, son, 

seen that ol’ sweet sun lift me out of sleep. 

Didn’t have to wait. And see my golden chair?

--Patricia Smith (1955- ), award-winning African American poet, professor, poetry slam champion

Hurricane Katrina made landfall (for the second time after crossing Florida) near New Orleans on this day and at this hour in 2005.

The Sifting of Peter

“Behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat.”—LUKE xxii. 31.

IN Saint Luke’s Gospel we are told
How Peter in the days of old
          Was sifted;
And now, though ages intervene,
Sin is the same, while time and scene 
          Are shifted.

Satan desires us, great and small,
As wheat, to sift us, and we all
          Are tempted;
Not one, however rich or great, 
Is by his station or estate
          Exempted.

No house so safely guarded is
But he, by some device of his,
          Can enter; 
No heart hath armor so complete
But he can pierce with arrows fleet
          Its centre.

For all at last the cock will crow
Who hear the warning voice, but go 
          Unheeding,
Till thrice and more they have denied
The Man of Sorrows, crucified
          And bleeding.

One look of that pale suffering face 
Will make us feel the deep disgrace
          Of weakness;
We shall be sifted till the strength
Of self-conceit be changed at length
          To meekness. 

Wounds of the soul, though healed, will ache;
The reddening scars remain, and make
          Confession;
Lost innocence returns no more;
We are not what we were before 
          Transgression.

But noble souls, through dust and heat,
Rise from disaster and defeat
          The stronger,
And conscious still of the divine 
Within them, lie on earth supine
          No longer.

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882

Scriptural reference: Luke 22:31-34

The Meaning of 'The Look'

I think that look of Christ might seem to say –
"Thou Peter! art thou then a common stone
Which I at last must break my heart upon
For all God’s charge to his high angels may
Guard my foot better? Did I yesterday
Wash thy feet, my beloved, that they should run
Quick to deny me ’neath the morning sun?
And do thy kisses, like the rest, betray?
The cock crows coldly. – GO, and manifest
A late contrition, but no bootless fear!
For when thy final need is dreariest,
Thou shalt not be denied, as I am here;
My voice to God and angels shall attest,
Because I KNOW this man, let him be clear.”

--Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), English poet and abolitionist

The Look

The Savior looked on Peter. Ay, no word,
No gesture of reproach! The heavens serene, 
hough heavy with armed justice, did not lean 
Their thunders that way! the forsaken Lord
Looked only on the traitor. None record
What that look was, none guess: for those who have seen
Wronged lovers loving through a death-pang ken,
Or pale-cheeked martyrs smiling to a sword,
Have missed Jehovah at the judgment –
‘I never knew this man’ – did quail and fall, call.
And Peter, from the height of blasphemy
As knowing straight THAT GOD – turned free
And went out speechless from the face of all,
And filled the silence, weeping bitterly.

--Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), English poet and abolitionist

Photo: Peter despairs after his betrayal of Jesus, on the Passion side of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona