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

The Second Jesus

O Lord, it’s me: blanked out in divine light
and become a horizon of rays flashing from the Essence.

My every atom yearned for vision
till I fell drunk on the manifestations of lordship.

Love polished the rust from my heart’s mirror
till I began to see the mysteries;

I emerged from the darkness of my existence
and became what I am (you know me) from the Light of Being:

blackened like charcoal dark soul’s smoke
but mixed with love fires and illumined.

Some say the path is difficult;
God forgive them! I went so easily:

The Holy Spirit breathes his every breath into Mo’in–
who knows? Maybe I’m the second Jesus.

--Gharib Nawaz (ca 1142- 1236), Persian Sufi poet and mystic, from The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry

Our Revels Now Are Ended

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

--William Shakespeare (1564-1616), from The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1

Epitaph on a Friend

An honest man here lies at rest,
The friend of man, the friend of truth,
The friend of age, the guide of youth;
Few hearts like his, with virtue warm’d,
Few heads with knowledge so inform’d;
If there’s another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this.

--Robert Burns (1759-1796)

I Am The One Who Will Remember Everything

Oh what have we here, he must be three or four,
Shaken out of a boot on its way back to war
And he’s not looking for a father or a mother,
Just a seven year old brother,
On this smudged line border camp of refugees,

I am the one who will remember everything.
I am the one who will remember everything.

So where are we now, he must be five or six,
Just running around, hungry kids, sharpened sticks.
And he will grow with pain and fear and jealousy,
Taken in by schools of zealotry,
Who train orphans to make orphans evermore.

I am the one who will remember everything.
I am the one who will remember everything.
I am the one who will remember everything.
I am the one who will remember everything.


You drink the smoke, you ride the noise
You drink the smoke, you ride the noise,
And you say it’s necessary,
And you forget the ordinary
But I say, on the wheel of time,
Scour the Earth and find the
Orphans of forgetting, all the orphans of forgetting,
Give them stars for math and praise for good play,
Here’s a Band-Aid, happy birthday,
Yes of course I did remember,
I remember everything.


Oh come over here, kid we’ve got all these books to read,
With the turtles and frogs, cats and dogs who civilize the centuries,
And in a world that’s angry, cruel and furious,
There’s this monkey who’s just curious,
Floating high above a park with bright balloons.
I am the one who will remember everything.
I am the one who will remember everything.
I am the one who will remember everything.
I am the one who will remember everything.
Everything… 

-- Dar Williams, In the Time of Gods,  2012

 

From the Intercession for the First Day

I commend to Thee, O Lord,

my soul, and my body,

my mind, and my thoughts,

my prayers, and my vows,

my senses, and my works,

my life, and my death;

my brothers, my sisters, and their children;

my friends, benefactors, and well-wishers,

those who have a claim on me,

my kindred, my neighbours,

my country, and all Christian people.

I commend to Thee, O Lord,

my impulses, and my occasions,

my resolves, and my attempts,

my going out, and my coming in,

my sitting down, and my rising up.

-- Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), from "First Day: Intercessions," in Devotions, p. 79

Christ's Nativity

Awake, glad heart! get up and sing!
It is the birth-day of thy King.
Awake! awake!
The Sun doth shake
Light from his locks, and all the way
Breathing perfumes, doth spice the day.

Awake, awake! hark how th’ wood rings;
Winds whisper, and the busy springs
A concert make;
Awake! awake!
Man is their high-priest, and should rise
To offer up the sacrifice.

I would I were some bird, or star,
Flutt’ring in woods, or lifted far
Above this inn
And road of sin!
Then either star or bird should be
Shining or singing still to thee.

 would I had in my best part
Fit rooms for thee!
or that my heart
Were so clean as Thy manger was!
But I am all filth, and obscene;
Yet, if thou wilt, thou canst make clean.

Sweet Jesu! will then. Let no more
This leper haunt and soil thy door!
Cure him, ease him,
O release him!
And let once more, by mystic birth,
The Lord of life be born in earth.

--Henry Vaughan, Silex Scintillans, 1655

Fragile

If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one
Drying in the colour of the evening sun
Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetime's argument
That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are
On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star, like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are, how fragile we are
On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star, like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are, how fragile we are
How fragile we are, how fragile we are.

--Gordon Sumner (Sting),  Nothing Like the Sun, 1987

New Year's Day

We are sitting at a table in a bar in Baltimore
It's the last night of December
And the room is nearly full
And the front door pulls a draft in every time it opens wide
And you are telling me a story
From another time and life

And the waitress brings our order
And we're tucked in mighty close
And I feel like we belong among
The living and these ghosts
And I know that I am dreaming
As I memorize each part
In the telling lies a reverie
In the details lie the heart

Like the folds of summer dresses
Like the scent upon my wrist
Like the way you played guitar
Like a boxer punches with his fist
And taken or just lost to me
It's better now to say
I dwell in possibility
On New Year's Day

There's a jukebox or a bandstand
And we're on another round
And the night's just getting started
Or the night's just winding down
And your stories are not clouded yet by the ale
Or by the gin
They just make me feel as if I've known you
All my life again

Like the folds of summer dresses
Like the scent upon my wrist
Like the way you played guitar
Like a boxer punches with his fist
And taken or just lost to me
It's better now to say
I dwell in possibility
On New Year's Day

And this is what it looked like
When we started walking home
The night sky bleached to silver
Against the city's bones
In dreams or in our waking
It's just enough to say
Love and grace and endless flowers
Be ours on New Year's Day

And the folds of summer dresses
And the bangles on my wrist
And the way you played guitar
Like a boxer punches with his fist
And taken or just lost to us
It's better now to say
We dwell in possibility
On New Year's Day

--Mary Chapin Carpenter, Ashes and Roses, 2012

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- ),