The Idea of Order at Key West

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean. 

The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard. 

For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.

If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea. 

                            It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour it solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker’s rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
in ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.


-- Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), American lawyer, businessman, and poet

Prayer of the Meadows

Lord of Life, 
all things are upheld by your tender hand; 
as the earth turns gratefully under your gaze, 
may our hearts revolve within your love. 

May we open our souls to receive your truth, 
and be molded by your generating Spirit
to care for this earth,
dappled and spangled with bud and bloom.
May we walk mindfully among the lustrous grasses
watching waves of light and shadow 
testify to the Wisdom You breathed into creation,
and dance to the tune of resurrection
that springs up from the waking ground.

May we praise You, O God, with joyful abandon,
joining the song of bluebirds, titmice, and wrens.
As the fields awaken gratefully
before the warming southern wind,
may we bow our heads in thankfulness
for all the You have done for us, O Holy One.

Center us, Good Lord,
within the greening boughs of your mercy and grace
and grant your sustaining help 
to all those whom we remember before You.

Amen.

Had I Not Been Awake

Had I not been awake I would have missed it, 
A wind that rose and whirled until the roof 
Pattered with quick leaves off the sycamore 

And got me up, the whole of me a-patter, 
Alive and ticking like an electric fence: 
Had I not been awake I would have missed it, 

It came and went so unexpectedly 
And almost it seemed dangerously, 
Returning like an animal to the house, 

A courier blast that there and then 
Lapsed ordinary. But not ever 
After. And not now. 

 --Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), Irish poet, translator, and playwright, from Human Chain: Poems, 2011

The Wind Will Show Its Kindness

A man

born blind can easily

deny the magnificence of a vast landscape.

He can easily deny all the wonders he cannot

smell, taste, or hear.

But one day the wind will show its kindness

and remove the tiny patches that

cover your eyes,

and you will see God more clearly

than you have ever seen

yourself.

Meister Eckhart (ca 1260-ca 1328) German mystic, poet, theologian, and philosopher, from Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from East and West, ed. by Daniel Ladinsky.

View across Yosemite Valley to Bridal Veil Falls, 2011.

Especially when the October wind

Especially when the October wind
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land,
By the sea’s side, hearing the noise of birds,
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,
My busy heart who shudders as she talks
Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.

Shut, too, in a tower of words, I mark
On the horizon walking like the trees
The wordy shapes of women, and the rows
Of the star-gestured children in the park.
Some let me make you of the vowelled beeches,
Some of the oaken voices, from the roots
Of many a thorny shire tell you notes,
Some let me make you of the water’s speeches.

Behind a pot of ferns the wagging clock
Tells me the hour’s word, the neural meaning
Flies on the shafted disk, declaims the morning
And tells the windy weather in the cock.
Some let me make you of the meadow’s signs;
The signal grass that tells me all I know
Breaks with the wormy winter through the eye.
Some let me tell you of the raven’s sins.

Especially when the October wind
(Some let me make you of autumnal spells,
The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales)
With fists of turnips punishes the land,
Some let me make you of the heartless words.
The heart is drained that, spelling in the scurry
Of chemic blood, warned of the coming fury.
By the sea’s side hear the dark-vowelled birds.

--Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), from 18 Poems, 1934