A Prayer in Spring

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.


Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
To which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends he will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.


--Robert Frost (1874-1963),  American poet and four time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

After the Quarrel

So we, who’ve supped the self-same cup,
To-night must lay our friendship by;
Your wrath has burned your judgment up,
Hot breath has blown the ashes high.
You say that you are wronged— ah, well,
I count that friendship poor, at best
A bauble, a mere bagatelle,
That cannot stand so slight a test.

I fain would still have been your friend,
And talked and laughed and loved with you;
But since it must, why, let it end;
The false but dies, ‘t is not the true.
So we are favored, you and I,
Who only want the living truth.
It was not good to nurse the lie;
‘Tis well it died in harmless youth.

I go from you to-night to sleep.
Why, what’s the odds? why should I grieve?
I have no fund of tears to weep
For happenings that undeceive.
The days shall come, the days shall go
Just as they came and went before.
The sun shall shine, the streams shall flow
Though you and I are friends no more.

And in the volume of my years,
Where all my thoughts and acts shall be,
The page whereon your name appears
Shall be forever sealed to me.
Not that I hate you over-much,
‘Tis less of hate than love defied;
Howe’er, our hands no more shall touch,
We’ll go our ways, the world is wide.

-- Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872-1906), African American poet, novelist, and short-story writer.

Scripture reference: 1 Corinthians 3:1-9, Sixth Sunday after Epiphany A

Paul Robeson

That time

we all heard it,
cool and clear,
cutting across the hot grit of the day.
The major Voice.
The adult Voice
forgoing Rolling River,
forgoing tearful tale of bale and barge
and other symptoms of an old despond.
Warning, in music-words
devout and large,
that we are each other’s
harvest:
we are each other’s
business:
we are each other’s
magnitude and bond.

--Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), African American poet, feminist, and author, Nobel Prize winner in Literature, and first African American woman appointed Poet Laureate of the United States.

Scripture reference: Matthew 5:21-37, 6th Sunday after Epiphany A

In Church

Often I try

To analyze the quality
Of its silences. Is this where God hides
From my searching? I have stopped to listen,
After the few people have gone,
To the air recomposing itself
For vigil. It has waited like this
Since the stones grouped themselves about it.
These are the hard ribs
Of a body that our prayers have failed
To animate. Shadows advance
From their corners to take possession
Of places the light held
For an hour. The bats resume
Their business. The uneasiness of the pews
Ceases. There is no other sound
In the darkness but the sound of a man
Breathing, testing his faith
On emptiness, nailing his questions
One by one to an untenanted cross.


-- R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), Welsh poet, Anglican priest

Reconciliation

Some may have blamed you that you took away
The verses that could move them on the day
When, the ears being deafened, the sight of the eyes blind
With lightning, you went from me, and I could find
Nothing to make a song about but kings,
Helmets, and swords, and half-forgotten things
That were like memories of you—but now
We'll out, for the world lives as long ago;
And while we're in our laughing, weeping fit,
Hurl helmets, crowns, and swords into the pit.
But, dear, cling close to me; since you were gone,
My barren thoughts have chilled me to the bone.

-- William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Anglo-Irish poet, playwright, and mystic, widely considered one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.

Scripture reference: Matthew 5:21-37, 6th Sunday after Epiphany A

Ode to Salt

This salt
in the salt cellar
I once saw in the salt mines.
I know
you won't
believe me
but
it sings
salt sings, the skin
of the salt mines
sings
with a mouth smothered
by the earth.
I shivered in those
solitudes
when I heard
the voice
of
the salt
in the desert.
Near Antofagasta
the nitrous
pampa
resounds:
a
broken
v oice,
a mournful
song.

In its caves
the salt moans, mountain
of buried light,
translucent cathedral,
crystal of the sea, oblivion
of the waves.
And then on every table
in the world,
salt,
we see your piquant
powder
sprinkling
vital light
upon
our food.
Preserver
of the ancient
holds of ships,
discoverer
on
the high seas,
earliest
sailor
of the unknown, shifting
byways of the foam.
Dust of the sea, in you
the tongue receives a kiss
from ocean night:
taste imparts to every seasoned
dish your ocean essence;
the smallest,
miniature
wave from the saltcellar
reveals to us
more than domestic whiteness;
in it, we taste infinitude.

--Pablo Neruda (1914-1973), Chilean poet, politician, and diplomat, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.

Scripture reference: Matthew 5:13-20, 5th after Epiphany A

The Candlemas Procession

Lumen Ad revelationem gentium.
Look kindly, Jesus, where we come,
New Simeons, to kindle,
Each at Your infant sacrifice his own life’s candle.

And when Your flame turns into many tongues,
See how the One is multiplied, among us, hundreds!
And goes among the humble, and consoles our sinful kindred.

It is for this we come,
And, kneeling, each receive one flame:
Ad revelationem gentium.

Our lives, like candles, spell this simple symbol:

Weep like our bodily life, sweet work of bees,
Sweeten the world, with your slow sacrifice.
And this shall be our praise:
That by our glad expense, our Father’s will
Burned and consumed us for a parable.

Nor burn we now with brown and smoky flames, but bright
Until our sacrifice is done,
(By which not we, but You are known)
And then, returning to our Father, one by one,
Give back our lives like wise and waxen lights.


--Thomas Merton (1915-1968) American poet, memoirist, spiritual writer, and monastic

A Brigid's Girtle

Last time I wrote I wrote from a rustic table
Under magnolias in South Carolina
As blossoms fell on me, and a white gable
As clean-lined as the prow of a white liner

Bisected sunlight in the sunlit yard.
I was glad of the early heat and the first quiet
I'd had for weeks. I heard the mocking bird
And a delicious, articulate

Flight of small plinkings from a dulcimer
Like feminine rhymes migrating to the north
Where you faced the music and the ache of summer
And earth's foreknowledge gathered in the earth.

Now it's St Brigid's Day and the first snowdrop
In County Wicklow, and this a Brigid's Girdle
I'm plaiting for you, an airy fairy hoop
(Like one of those old crinolines they'd trindle),

Twisted straw that's lifted in a circle
To handsel and to heal, a rite of spring
As strange and lightsome and traditional
As the motions you go through going through the thing.

--Seamus Heaney (1939-2013 ) Irish poet, playwright, translator, and teacher, Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature, from The Spirit Level.

Today is the Feast of St. Brigid of Kildare.

Famous

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence, 

which knew it would inherit the earth 

before anybody said so. 

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds 

watching him from the birdhouse. 

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek. 

The idea you carry close to your bosom 

is famous to your bosom. 

The boot is famous to the earth, 

more famous than the dress shoe, 

which is famous only to floors. 

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it 

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured. 

I want to be famous to shuffling men 

who smile while crossing streets, 

sticky children in grocery lines, 

famous as the one who smiled back. 

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, 

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular, 

but because it never forgot what it could do.

--Naomi Shihab Nye (1952- ), Ferguson born Palestinian-Amercan poet and author.

We Shall Not Be Moved

We shall not, we shall not be moved
We shall not, we shall not be moved
Just like a tree that’s standing by the water
We shall not be moved

We shall not, we shall not be moved
We shall not, we shall not be moved
The union is behind us
We shall not be moved

We shall not, we shall not be moved
We shall not, we shall not be moved
We’re fighting for our freedom
We shall not be moved

We shall not, we shall not be moved
We shall not, we shall not be moved
We’re fighting for our children
We shall not be moved

We shall not, we shall not be moved
We shall not, we shall not be moved
We’ll building a mighty union
We shall not be moved

We shall not, we shall not be moved
We shall not, we shall not be moved
Black and white together
We shall not be moved

We shall not, we shall not be moved
We shall not, we shall not be moved
Young and old together
We shall not be moved

--Traditional African American spiritual and protest song

Scripture Reference: Psalm 112:1-9, (10), 5th Sunday after Epiphany A

The legendary Mavis Staples singing this song and telling how it plays a part in the Civil Rights Movement: