All day long I dream of someday, dot, dot, dot, ever emphasizing the ellipses given me, taking their direction into the unknown evenings.
All week long I think of Friday with an exclamation point, our earliest emoticon, standing for a more powerful word with appropriate thanks to God.
All year long I juggle narratives: a poem deconstructed, seasonal tributes, a moleskin memoir, a sequence of dreams and that constant choral reminder that every day, every thought is a prayer.
And it is. I may not always rejoice or give thanks in every circumstance but there is prayer in my narratives and the juggle is a ceaseless communication. I may not always remember to address God or end each pause with a so be it, amen, but the conversation keeps going. Every dream, every emoticon, every part of the journal and the journey itself is a prayer.
And what a prayer it's been this year, what rich conversation we’ve had! It isn’t always easy, but I'm learning, trying to give thanks in every circumstance.
1
I am thankful, first of all, for the story of Josh, a story bigger than what the year brought but even in the course of this year, an appreciable story! I can only tell my part of it, my own prayer to add to the mix of others, but I am especially thankful for many things: Our final string of Saturday nights, TG plus a day. Our last half attended Scrabble games, diverted by higher priorities of beer and visiting. That quiet quinceaƱera for Andrea with a perfect Chicago view on a cloudless evening. That strange Columbus adventure five hours away, and every drive back and forth full of accommodating prayers. Those drives with Andrea and Tilo, going to see their dad. All the Ohio players: Doctors Prevedello and Findlay and Giglio, Pastor Braband, Lauren and her kids, the Jesus Loves Me nurse, the midnight prayer orderly, and in the final days those vigilant text reports of a mother and a sister: like watching a baby sleep, one of you said. Then, in Lombard, saying goodbye, and again I think of many people: Pastor Amy allowing tears to flow in her first funeral; Uncle Greg sharing profound emotions; the waitress at Chili's, serving up Josh’s favorite order; Paul and Lena singing the Parting Glass at Rounders; the quiet tributes of Josh's closet friends and family; and the shared speeches in the basement of the church. And to think, just two years before, Josh and I had contributed to a talent show in that basement: at my brother’s urging, I read a couple of my bird poems and Josh played Amazing Grace on the trumpet. Yes! What a story it was, Josh, what a story we'll keep telling, what a story it is still, and it keeps going...
2
I'm trying, and learning, to rejoice always, and sometimes God makes it easy. So it has been this year in the opening chapters of my life with Cara. We met seven years ago at church but we met more personally in the spring, just a few months after I had cancelled a trial run with a blind dating service. Each of those blind dates, stories unto themselves, ultimately underlined my emptiness. I longed for more than a name on the reservation sheet. I wanted someone to share dates two and three and more, someone to walk with me in faith, someone to share my prayer. And so it was at the end of my blind date trials, that Cara and I began walking and praying together. When did you know, she asked recently, and I immediately remembered the path we were on during an early walk through the streets of Libertyville. But every date with Cara has been awesome: The discovery of old movies, with Casablanca, Singin’ in the Rain, Fiddler on the Roof. Our first selfies on a walk along the beach in Lake Forest. And in Wauconda, Lindy's by the Lake. Watching Pretty in Pink and striking a promlike pose. Discovering favorite drinks at the Greentown Tavern. Playing Rumikub and dominoes with family. A Sunday barbecue with the kids. Learning to make Bahn Mi sandwiches. The Dan Ryan Rendezvous after a weekend apart. Kneeling in the aisles at Worship Night in America. Attending the BoDeans Rock for Peace. Running around Butler Lake. Building shelves for Erin. Going to a Marriot play, and getting season tickets for next year. So many dates intersected with other stories of the year, too: Seeing a Bob Dylan Ravinia concert on the date Joshua died, and feeling him smile over us. Remembering 1 Corinthians 13 at two different wedding. Celebrating the Cubs with John and Cathy. Watching the first Trump debate and skipping the rest. Walking into Glenbrook Hospital together. Participating in two Bible studies at church and getting to know our new pastor. And there was that date of all dates: New York City, where at the top of the Empire State Building I gave my dear Cara a ring of poetry with a proposal, and she said yes.
3
Dear God what prayers we've prayed this year. I feel sometimes like these prayers of mine are full of tangents and distractions, but overall, beyond the ellipses and random thoughts, it is a single prayer I am sending out, and I'm trying to make it as joyful and grateful and non-stop as I can. The narratives, the petitions have blended together to the point that I’m learning what it means to pray ceaselessly. In the middle of May, in between all those Columbus drives and before my dates with Cara, I discovered my own cancer in a tumor that would later prove to have advanced to stage three. The PSA markers showed up first, and a biopsy made it more imminent, but in between the discovery and the surgery my prayers on this topic have become a blur: how can I remember this particular story without thinking of Joshua's greater struggle or for that matter the parallel challenge of my mother with bladder cancer or the ongoing healing of Dick after his accident last fall? Or how can I tell this story without including that wonderful part Cara played in it, helping me accept what was, beyond all side effects, a victory? And yet this story, together with an impromptu gallbladder surgery I had in the spring, also replaced what had been my prevalent narrative just a year before: my long-distance running adventure. There was real remorse this November when I reached the one-year anniversary of my first marathon run, and I wonder now if it may have been my last. To be sure, I am a survivor, cancer-free and full of promise and hope, but I have not run more than a mile and a half since April.
4
Jesus taught us to pray in two ways: first, privately, in secret and without empty phrases; and second, almost in the same breath, in community to our father with words to be shared. So goes this prayer of mine, ceaselessly confiding and communicating with Immanuel and keeping it going in all circumstances. When I stop and start up with a dear God but also when my thoughts wander, I should never forget that God is there. He's there when I'm alone or in a crowd, when I have something to say or when I'm quiet, when I want that God connection and even when I rebel from it, God is still there, listening to my prayer.
This year one of the Bible studies we embarked on was called Faith Five, a concept devised by Rich Melheim in which families are encouraged to take five steps at the end of each day: share, read, talk, pray and bless. Step four's prayer is sometimes the hardest in our busy tired lives but it doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't even have to be a separate step if we start to appreciate how we had already started our conversation, or continued it, with step one. Share, by Dr. Melheim’s prescription, is the time we discuss the day's highs and lows. God is already there with us at that point even if we don't fully feel his presence, but we are reminded of this by step two, when we read a Bible verse together, and we recognize it and process it in step three when we talk and relate our highs and lows to the word of God. By step four when we are specifically called on to pray I'd like to think we're already well into the prayer. Finally with step five, the blessing, we say Amen and even that is not the end of it. We close our eyes and slip into restfulness, a beautiful prayer, and dreams, a mystic force. Every sleeping breath is a prayer that carries us to the morning.
It has been a crazy year, having three, four, five things up in the air at once, and often the juggling has taken every ounce of concentration. But God was in between the moving objects. God was in my hands and in the rhythm of their work; God was in my efforts and is at every turn with every object. God is my strength, my hope, my refuge. And this, all of this, is my prayer.
Dear God thank you for Joshua and the life he lived with us and the place he is now. Thank you for Cara and the blessings you have given us together and all the promise of what lies ahead. Thank you for the challenges along the way, for the cancers overcome, for the battles we’re still fighting, for the prayers we’re praying through and for the victories we can claim. Thank you for our families, our children, our parents, our siblings, our children again (!), and hear their constant prayers too. Thank you God for being Our Father all the time. Amen.
Saturday, December 31, 2016
Friday, December 30, 2016
Every Thought Is A Prayer!
Week 53: Auld Lang Syne
Approaching a new year, we look back on the old, and we think of how we might take the best of it with us. “Under the water, carry the water,” says David Byrne. “Remove the water at the bottom of the ocean! Same as it ever was.”
12/30:
The End Of A Year
A Reflection of 2013
It was a year of days,
of memories encapsuled
by the frames of wake
and fall asleep,
of moments made more precious
by their being relived;
it was a year of days
waiting to be told.
It was a year of stories
big and everyday:
stories of the bear
and of the fish,
days of paddling
on rivers and lakes;
it was a year of currents
and rolling waves.
It was a year of driving
and finding ways off the map,
past the Windmill and
up to the Iron Range,
across Indiana and
into Appalachia;
it was a year of returning
home again,
It was a year of running
through heat and cold,
on the treadmill
and on marked courses,
away from the pack
and alongside others;
it was a year of keeping
a steady pace.
It was a year of giving
unrecorded time
between rest and play:
evening shifts for charities,
Saturdays at Habitat,
workdays at the sanctuary;
we were a city of hands
doing the work of God.
It was a year of opportunity
to get up and speak,
or unabashed humility
to stand by, watch and listen,
with moments of tears
and calls for hugging,
it was a year of chances
for smiles, a few of loneliness;
It was a year of weekends,
beer and Scrabble times,
the day I fixed a fence gate,
the week I finished a floor,
the chance to cook at home,
or find new restaurants;
it was a year of poetry
and Ravinia,
It was a year of time
for my daughter,
and time for my son,
days in airports and hotels,
weekends reserved for family,
seasons to stay at home;
it was a year of communion
in North Dakota and Wisconsin,
Minnesota and Illinois.
It was a year of news cycles
and breaking news,
reports of distant tragedies
and fallen heroes,
cause for reaction
and the plea for pause;
it was a year of watching
and turning channels.
It was a year to cheer
from the grandstands,
to witness Blackhawk wins
and basketball games,
to visit PNC Park
and Busch Stadium;
it was a year of the world
spinning around me.
It was a year of meetings
and tournaments
and talent shows,
of homework days
and deadline days,
overtimes and days off;
it was a year of events
and eventualities.
It was a year of living together
more than needing to be apart,
of looking into the future
and moving on from the past,
appreciating the present
but letting go;
it was a year of growing
and finding room to grow.
It was a year of life
and a life of days,
with days marked
by anniversaries
and calendars
full of X’s in squares;
it was the year of now
with the mark of days
It was the year of often
and always, a time to pray,
every day its own
celebration, every joy
an urgency to give thanks,
every gratitude a promise;
it was a year of promises
at every wake and call.
12/31:
Retrospect
...There will be great poetry in this
after a while,
However long it takes to figure out
What happened, but not long enough to let
It be forgotten. Maybe time will heal
Our wounds before we find the words to say
But the words will be there, waiting
to be spoken,
Hidden behind whatever scars remain,
Forming themselves within our shaken souls
Like a slow forgiveness.
Week 53: Auld Lang Syne
Approaching a new year, we look back on the old, and we think of how we might take the best of it with us. “Under the water, carry the water,” says David Byrne. “Remove the water at the bottom of the ocean! Same as it ever was.”
12/30:
The End Of A Year
A Reflection of 2013
It was a year of days,
of memories encapsuled
by the frames of wake
and fall asleep,
of moments made more precious
by their being relived;
it was a year of days
waiting to be told.
It was a year of stories
big and everyday:
stories of the bear
and of the fish,
days of paddling
on rivers and lakes;
it was a year of currents
and rolling waves.
It was a year of driving
and finding ways off the map,
past the Windmill and
up to the Iron Range,
across Indiana and
into Appalachia;
it was a year of returning
home again,
It was a year of running
through heat and cold,
on the treadmill
and on marked courses,
away from the pack
and alongside others;
it was a year of keeping
a steady pace.
It was a year of giving
unrecorded time
between rest and play:
evening shifts for charities,
Saturdays at Habitat,
workdays at the sanctuary;
we were a city of hands
doing the work of God.
It was a year of opportunity
to get up and speak,
or unabashed humility
to stand by, watch and listen,
with moments of tears
and calls for hugging,
it was a year of chances
for smiles, a few of loneliness;
It was a year of weekends,
beer and Scrabble times,
the day I fixed a fence gate,
the week I finished a floor,
the chance to cook at home,
or find new restaurants;
it was a year of poetry
and Ravinia,
It was a year of time
for my daughter,
and time for my son,
days in airports and hotels,
weekends reserved for family,
seasons to stay at home;
it was a year of communion
in North Dakota and Wisconsin,
Minnesota and Illinois.
It was a year of news cycles
and breaking news,
reports of distant tragedies
and fallen heroes,
cause for reaction
and the plea for pause;
it was a year of watching
and turning channels.
It was a year to cheer
from the grandstands,
to witness Blackhawk wins
and basketball games,
to visit PNC Park
and Busch Stadium;
it was a year of the world
spinning around me.
It was a year of meetings
and tournaments
and talent shows,
of homework days
and deadline days,
overtimes and days off;
it was a year of events
and eventualities.
It was a year of living together
more than needing to be apart,
of looking into the future
and moving on from the past,
appreciating the present
but letting go;
it was a year of growing
and finding room to grow.
It was a year of life
and a life of days,
with days marked
by anniversaries
and calendars
full of X’s in squares;
it was the year of now
with the mark of days
It was the year of often
and always, a time to pray,
every day its own
celebration, every joy
an urgency to give thanks,
every gratitude a promise;
it was a year of promises
at every wake and call.
12/31:
Retrospect
...There will be great poetry in this
after a while,
However long it takes to figure out
What happened, but not long enough to let
It be forgotten. Maybe time will heal
Our wounds before we find the words to say
But the words will be there, waiting
to be spoken,
Hidden behind whatever scars remain,
Forming themselves within our shaken souls
Like a slow forgiveness.
Friday, December 23, 2016
Every Thought...
Week 52: Christmas
How awesome it is to culminate this year, and every year, in the story of a beginning. And not a boisterous beginning with a big bang of light, but a quiet, predawn, pre-creed beginning in a shed in the back. Yet from here...
12/23:
Postscript: A Note to the Symposia
The first draft of my Waste Land annotation project was presented in five installments on Stillwater Symposia, a family-run blog. I waited until after the fifth installment to explain myself:
There! I have resisted saying anything to you, my family of readers, until after I could give you the whole effort, but now that it is done you deserve a personal explanation.
This has been an immersion into education, tuition free and at my own pace, and I recommend student mode revivals to everyone. What started as an easy end of day pasttime, keeping me away from online Scrabble and television shows, has become a passion, bringing me to dust off old books on the shelves in my home (Hamlet! The Inferno! Ecclesiastes and Isaiah! And, incidentally, a completely new reading of Nemerov’s Blue Swallows!) and then exploring the greater library of the internet. Without spending a dime, I read all of Plato’s Phlebas and Weston’s From Ritual to Romance and Hesse’s review of the Brother’s Karamazov. I have not read the whole of Ovid’s Metamorphoses or seen any of Wagner’s Ring cycle, but I certainly delved into these works more than ever before. And I have a whole new reading list for the future: Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, for instance, or Mallory’s King Arthur. I was reminded, too, of what Professor Kogan told my English lit class 25 year ago, to go back and read Heart of Darkness at least once every five years or so.
Meanwhile, I have journeyed through the elements and discovered what the thunder said and traveled the April road from Gethsemane to Emmaus.
Before this I had kept a deliberate distance from Eliot’s The Waste Land, thinking it too dark and grim, but I have now discovered how unexpectedly positive this poem really is, full of the audacity of hope, if you will, and drawn by the pull towards an incomprehensible peace. In fact, it is the arrival at that peace in one of Eliot’s later poems, Little Gidding, that first led me back to this one. From that 1943 poem, which is about an allegorical English chapel:
...If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying...
It is, sometimes, in the simple word The Waste Land ends with:
Peace.
12/24:
Christmas Eve
It’s cold outside (sometimes)
and it might snow (sometimes)
I feel the wind (sometimes)
but Sunday’s coming.
As we grow old (sometimes)
we drift apart (sometimes)
a thousand miles (sometimes),
but Sunday’s coming.
Memories stir. I hear a song
that makes me smile, and I start singing.
I don’t know where these winds will blow
but I believe that Sunday’s coming.
—
They count on us (sometimes)
though we are strangers (sometimes)
far from home (sometimes)
but Sunday’s coming.
And travel’s tough (sometimes)
and there’s no room (sometimes),
we’re all alone (sometimes)
but Sunday’s coming.
And we take comfort where we can,
and when it comes it ends up being
all we need. Sometimes a few warm words
are all it takes. Sunday’s coming.
—
Lately I feel (sometimes)
I've worked so hard (sometimes)
the whole night through (sometimes),
but Sunday’s coming,
Out in the fields (sometimes),
out in the dirt (sometimes),
out with the beasts (sometimes),
but Sunday’s coming.
I want to hear what shepherds hear,
and see the things that they’ve been seeing.
I want to stand next to the choir
and hear the song of Sunday's coming.
—
We've come this far (sometimes)
from distant lands (sometimes)
to see a child's eyes.
Sunday's coming.
And we've brought gifts (sometimes)
fit for a king (sometimes)
into this country barn.
Sunday's coming.
I want to see what wise men see.
I want to go where they are going.
I want to know the light that leads
to Christmas time and Sundays coming.
12/25:
Festivus, Revisited
Four days past the winter solstice, when
the sunlight hours are at their shortest and
the drive home's darker than it's ever been,
it's good to know that Christ is born, again,
and if that's more than you can comprehend,
imagine those first Christmas moments when
the angels broke the shepherds' darkness and
declared the day and what it meant to them.
God meets us in our fields of fear and sin
and brings joy to the world we're living in
and gives us peace, such peace that even when
the nights seem endless we're assured again
of good news worth repeating now and then:
to us, this day, the son is born, again.
12/26:
Silent Night
This is my wreath: my evergreen circle
hung on a nail on my front door, closed
to the world cold, to winds uncertain;
this is my home, my dependable storm.
Behind this door I live life daily,
ready to open when friends stop by
but happy to stay this side of winter
showing my wreath to the world outside.
This is my tree: my forest aroma
cut from its roots, brought in from the cold
to where it’s warm and dry, my summer
green as the grass beneath the snow.
This is tradition marked with tinsel,
silver and gold reflecting fire.
I like my tree real, my ice artificial,
the smell of pine with a touch of stars.
These are my lights: blinking and flashing
my Christmas spirit without a sound
but every note is filled with passion,
every word completes my song
and takes the message out of storage.
After long nights of singing blind
on lonely streets I am determined
to light these candles for the world outside.
This is my card: my Christmas greeting
telling you how I bid you well
and think of you in this wishful season
of shepherd’s wake and wisdom’s call,
of peace on earth, forever hoping
in God come down on a silent night.
I’ve been a stranger. You barely know me,
but this is my chance to make things right.
12/27:
Christmas Vacation
O boatswain, let this be a lesson
For your children lived and learned
Of hope stirred out of cynicism,
Grace unsought and love unearned,
That even as the inquisition
Mocks the shepherd just returned
Or marks the missionary vision
With a basic truth discerned
Before the mission ever started,
Far beyond the pasture’s hold,
So too the message angels uttered
In a field to shepherds told,
And so the glory first imparted
In a trough, uncounted, cold
And barely noticed, always mattered
More than Christmas green and gold.
No doubt we need to feel the fire,
Watch the stars and keep the day
As holy as the world desires,
Festive, bold and on display,
And certainly we should aspire
To give gifts as the wise men gave
And to receive from one another
More than the receipts we save,
But let there be a better lesson
After all the songs have died
To outlast every brief vacation,
Make each day we set aside
Endure, let every contradiction
Stir what’s beating deep inside
And let the challenge of the mission
Move us, ne'er to be denied.
12/28:
Back To The Beginning
The voice of the Lord is over the waters
— Psalm 29:3
Water without bottom,
Ocean without surface,
Creation without distinction:
Poetry without an audience,
Night and day without distinction,
Heaven and earth without separation,
Expanse without wind:
A breath waiting to be breathed,
Volume before substance,
Substance before form,
Form before vision:
Goodness undeclared,
Beginning before beginning,
Theory, Theos, God before the bang.
12/29:
My Doxology
Yes, I will praise God from whom all blessings flow
and by whose strength my every song is sung.
And yes, I think there’s nothing wrong
with letting my convictions show
or testifying to the things I know.
And yes, I’ll sing, and though I’ve learned
the lesson long ago that God is (always) singing
greater songs than I will ever sing,
I will no less keep singing
to the music God has given me
and by the truest notes I know,
and with a voice as providence bestows
I’ll raise my earthly spirit up to heaven
as loudly as the wind allows,
And yes, I will praise God from whom all blessings flow!
Week 52: Christmas
How awesome it is to culminate this year, and every year, in the story of a beginning. And not a boisterous beginning with a big bang of light, but a quiet, predawn, pre-creed beginning in a shed in the back. Yet from here...
12/23:
Postscript: A Note to the Symposia
The first draft of my Waste Land annotation project was presented in five installments on Stillwater Symposia, a family-run blog. I waited until after the fifth installment to explain myself:
There! I have resisted saying anything to you, my family of readers, until after I could give you the whole effort, but now that it is done you deserve a personal explanation.
This has been an immersion into education, tuition free and at my own pace, and I recommend student mode revivals to everyone. What started as an easy end of day pasttime, keeping me away from online Scrabble and television shows, has become a passion, bringing me to dust off old books on the shelves in my home (Hamlet! The Inferno! Ecclesiastes and Isaiah! And, incidentally, a completely new reading of Nemerov’s Blue Swallows!) and then exploring the greater library of the internet. Without spending a dime, I read all of Plato’s Phlebas and Weston’s From Ritual to Romance and Hesse’s review of the Brother’s Karamazov. I have not read the whole of Ovid’s Metamorphoses or seen any of Wagner’s Ring cycle, but I certainly delved into these works more than ever before. And I have a whole new reading list for the future: Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, for instance, or Mallory’s King Arthur. I was reminded, too, of what Professor Kogan told my English lit class 25 year ago, to go back and read Heart of Darkness at least once every five years or so.
Meanwhile, I have journeyed through the elements and discovered what the thunder said and traveled the April road from Gethsemane to Emmaus.
Before this I had kept a deliberate distance from Eliot’s The Waste Land, thinking it too dark and grim, but I have now discovered how unexpectedly positive this poem really is, full of the audacity of hope, if you will, and drawn by the pull towards an incomprehensible peace. In fact, it is the arrival at that peace in one of Eliot’s later poems, Little Gidding, that first led me back to this one. From that 1943 poem, which is about an allegorical English chapel:
...If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying...
It is, sometimes, in the simple word The Waste Land ends with:
Peace.
12/24:
Christmas Eve
It’s cold outside (sometimes)
and it might snow (sometimes)
I feel the wind (sometimes)
but Sunday’s coming.
As we grow old (sometimes)
we drift apart (sometimes)
a thousand miles (sometimes),
but Sunday’s coming.
Memories stir. I hear a song
that makes me smile, and I start singing.
I don’t know where these winds will blow
but I believe that Sunday’s coming.
—
They count on us (sometimes)
though we are strangers (sometimes)
far from home (sometimes)
but Sunday’s coming.
And travel’s tough (sometimes)
and there’s no room (sometimes),
we’re all alone (sometimes)
but Sunday’s coming.
And we take comfort where we can,
and when it comes it ends up being
all we need. Sometimes a few warm words
are all it takes. Sunday’s coming.
—
Lately I feel (sometimes)
I've worked so hard (sometimes)
the whole night through (sometimes),
but Sunday’s coming,
Out in the fields (sometimes),
out in the dirt (sometimes),
out with the beasts (sometimes),
but Sunday’s coming.
I want to hear what shepherds hear,
and see the things that they’ve been seeing.
I want to stand next to the choir
and hear the song of Sunday's coming.
—
We've come this far (sometimes)
from distant lands (sometimes)
to see a child's eyes.
Sunday's coming.
And we've brought gifts (sometimes)
fit for a king (sometimes)
into this country barn.
Sunday's coming.
I want to see what wise men see.
I want to go where they are going.
I want to know the light that leads
to Christmas time and Sundays coming.
12/25:
Festivus, Revisited
Four days past the winter solstice, when
the sunlight hours are at their shortest and
the drive home's darker than it's ever been,
it's good to know that Christ is born, again,
and if that's more than you can comprehend,
imagine those first Christmas moments when
the angels broke the shepherds' darkness and
declared the day and what it meant to them.
God meets us in our fields of fear and sin
and brings joy to the world we're living in
and gives us peace, such peace that even when
the nights seem endless we're assured again
of good news worth repeating now and then:
to us, this day, the son is born, again.
12/26:
Silent Night
This is my wreath: my evergreen circle
hung on a nail on my front door, closed
to the world cold, to winds uncertain;
this is my home, my dependable storm.
Behind this door I live life daily,
ready to open when friends stop by
but happy to stay this side of winter
showing my wreath to the world outside.
This is my tree: my forest aroma
cut from its roots, brought in from the cold
to where it’s warm and dry, my summer
green as the grass beneath the snow.
This is tradition marked with tinsel,
silver and gold reflecting fire.
I like my tree real, my ice artificial,
the smell of pine with a touch of stars.
These are my lights: blinking and flashing
my Christmas spirit without a sound
but every note is filled with passion,
every word completes my song
and takes the message out of storage.
After long nights of singing blind
on lonely streets I am determined
to light these candles for the world outside.
This is my card: my Christmas greeting
telling you how I bid you well
and think of you in this wishful season
of shepherd’s wake and wisdom’s call,
of peace on earth, forever hoping
in God come down on a silent night.
I’ve been a stranger. You barely know me,
but this is my chance to make things right.
12/27:
Christmas Vacation
O boatswain, let this be a lesson
For your children lived and learned
Of hope stirred out of cynicism,
Grace unsought and love unearned,
That even as the inquisition
Mocks the shepherd just returned
Or marks the missionary vision
With a basic truth discerned
Before the mission ever started,
Far beyond the pasture’s hold,
So too the message angels uttered
In a field to shepherds told,
And so the glory first imparted
In a trough, uncounted, cold
And barely noticed, always mattered
More than Christmas green and gold.
No doubt we need to feel the fire,
Watch the stars and keep the day
As holy as the world desires,
Festive, bold and on display,
And certainly we should aspire
To give gifts as the wise men gave
And to receive from one another
More than the receipts we save,
But let there be a better lesson
After all the songs have died
To outlast every brief vacation,
Make each day we set aside
Endure, let every contradiction
Stir what’s beating deep inside
And let the challenge of the mission
Move us, ne'er to be denied.
12/28:
Back To The Beginning
The voice of the Lord is over the waters
— Psalm 29:3
Water without bottom,
Ocean without surface,
Creation without distinction:
Poetry without an audience,
Night and day without distinction,
Heaven and earth without separation,
Expanse without wind:
A breath waiting to be breathed,
Volume before substance,
Substance before form,
Form before vision:
Goodness undeclared,
Beginning before beginning,
Theory, Theos, God before the bang.
12/29:
My Doxology
Yes, I will praise God from whom all blessings flow
and by whose strength my every song is sung.
And yes, I think there’s nothing wrong
with letting my convictions show
or testifying to the things I know.
And yes, I’ll sing, and though I’ve learned
the lesson long ago that God is (always) singing
greater songs than I will ever sing,
I will no less keep singing
to the music God has given me
and by the truest notes I know,
and with a voice as providence bestows
I’ll raise my earthly spirit up to heaven
as loudly as the wind allows,
And yes, I will praise God from whom all blessings flow!
Friday, December 16, 2016
More grant than I may ever grasp. And yet...
Every Thought...
Week 51: Winter Solstice
Sonnets of the Spirit: A Song, a Creed, a Toast and a Dance.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. By the spirit within me I sing, I believe,
I feel and I live. Peace Peace Peace
12/16:
TWL, Lines 433-434: The Peace Mantra
433 Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
434 Shantih shantih shantih
433. MADNESS: See Brooks (note 330): The mad prince may be ”mad for a purpose.” See also Shakespeare, Hamlet 2.2. 202-203: “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.” What first appears as gibberish (see Dadaism, note 419) on a closer look reveals a deeper design.
434. PEACE: Eliot: “Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an Upanishad. 'The Peace which passeth understanding' is a feeble translation of the conduct of this word.”
This is a peace mantra, uttered conclusively even as it is not fully understood. Many of the Upanishad passages have an “Om Shanti Shanti Shanti” ending, a basic mantra that might loosely translate as “Let there be peace, peace, peace.” See Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.3.28 (note 400), which often includes the same “shanti” ending (although Hume’s 1921 translation regularly left it out): “From the unreal lead me to the real! From darkness lead me to light! From death lead me to immortality! [Let there be peace, peace, peace.]”
This is also the third instance in the poem that Eliot employs a repetitive one word mantra, each time in relation to eastern allusions; see also burning burning burning (line 308) and da da da (note 400). See also the three uses of “after” at lines 322-324.
Compare this to the threefold observations noting those “departed,” next to the threefold pleas calling out to “sweet Thames,” at lines 175-184. The song, once painfully complex, has evolved and simplified to its final one word mantra.
Eliot’s translation of Shantih is taken from Philippians 4:7:
“And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
Eliot confessed to a feeble understanding of that peace which all would-be believers seek, but this, in time, would change for him (see The Four Quartets†, note 306); indeed, after this later work he would direct that his epitaph be etched with words from East Coker (see note 306):
“In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning.”
Eventually. But for now it is the poet’s words in this final note, so easy to overlook, that have intrigued my own understanding and encouraged these annotations.
12/17:
Sabbath
December is the Sabbath of the year,
Or should be so: We need a month of rest
After eleven months of business,
Before the year ahead of us no less
And more: we need this restful moment here
To bless the coming year.
I wonder if it wasn’t by design,
If God’s own resting was a matter more
Of looking forward, getting ready for
The days to come, the challenges in store
And less of looking backwards and behind,
No matter how divine.
Thus, when in God’s own image we look back
We ought to simply say how good it was
And turn toward tomorrow —with a pause,
Of course, for all it’s worth and what it does:
This holi-month allows us to reflect,
Compels us to project.
As every end ignites a new beginning,
As every prayer concerns continuation,
As silent nights turn into celebration,
As cheers turn into wishes, as ovations
Build to the encore, as the show is ending
The Sabbath world keeps spinning.
12/18:
Sonnet of the Wind
The gift of breathe:
The air supply made of green leaves,
The chemistry of oxygen
the lungs receive,
The circulatory cells they feed,
The appetite and hunger’s power
of needing more,
The muscles that refuse to sleep,
The will to keep
the moments of a given day,
The way we live in increments,
The breath we give back to the green,
The whole routine
Beyond belief or comprehension,
Uncontrolled, unspecified,
The spirit of the simplest soul:
The gift of breathe.
12/19:
Sonnet of Earth and Essence
I am earth,
my God is essence
and in between
The wind blows,
the water flows,
the fire burns.
All that is made
my God creates;
I am created
With heart and lungs,
with sweat and tears,
with want and will,
And without these
my God is absent
and I am only earth.
12/20:
Sonnet of the Water
The gift of quench, the grace of flow,
The stir of raindrops on the soil,
The tears we cry, the salt we show.
The way we wash away our toil.
A soak to soothe, a drip to feed,
The air that we’re conditioned to,
The life we’re given and all we need,
Our vehicle and avenue,
The force that cuts from source to sea,
Before we’re born, after we die,
The waves of time and destiny,
Our means to cleanse and purify,
The drink we drink, to all things new
and from all that we should let go:
I fill my glass and lift it to
the gift of quench, the grace of flow.
12/21:
Sonnet of the Fire
The gift of spirit,
The dance within,
The forge that makes me
more than clay.
The wheel that turns,
The heat that burns,
The fire’s fingers
forming me.
The fragile flame,
The sparks of time,
The fickle flicker
of the glaze:
The soul for 30,000 days,
each longing for eternity.
12/22:
Moleskin 6.2: Serenity
Carter’s professed respect was towards what Niebuhr perceived as a theological duty in the realm of politics, to try to do justice in a sinful world —maybe, as it would turn out, more than a peanut farmer could handle, although Carter would maintain a dedication to this duty beyond his political presidency. But Niebuhr is also known, and perhaps better known, as the author of a bit of wisdom that may seem to fit less into politics, or rather shows the higher nobility of theology over our more human policies: it is the wisdom of a prayer, one that prays for wisdom itself, as well as courage , each in their proper place. First, though, the prayer is for serenity: “God grant me the serenity to accept...” More grant than a twelve year old can possibly be expected to grasp. And yet, on the riverbanks of youth, without any knowledge of Niebuhr’s wisdom, the thoughts, the prayers were forming.
Week 51: Winter Solstice
Sonnets of the Spirit: A Song, a Creed, a Toast and a Dance.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. By the spirit within me I sing, I believe,
I feel and I live. Peace Peace Peace
12/16:
TWL, Lines 433-434: The Peace Mantra
433 Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
434 Shantih shantih shantih
433. MADNESS: See Brooks (note 330): The mad prince may be ”mad for a purpose.” See also Shakespeare, Hamlet 2.2. 202-203: “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.” What first appears as gibberish (see Dadaism, note 419) on a closer look reveals a deeper design.
434. PEACE: Eliot: “Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an Upanishad. 'The Peace which passeth understanding' is a feeble translation of the conduct of this word.”
This is a peace mantra, uttered conclusively even as it is not fully understood. Many of the Upanishad passages have an “Om Shanti Shanti Shanti” ending, a basic mantra that might loosely translate as “Let there be peace, peace, peace.” See Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.3.28 (note 400), which often includes the same “shanti” ending (although Hume’s 1921 translation regularly left it out): “From the unreal lead me to the real! From darkness lead me to light! From death lead me to immortality! [Let there be peace, peace, peace.]”
This is also the third instance in the poem that Eliot employs a repetitive one word mantra, each time in relation to eastern allusions; see also burning burning burning (line 308) and da da da (note 400). See also the three uses of “after” at lines 322-324.
Compare this to the threefold observations noting those “departed,” next to the threefold pleas calling out to “sweet Thames,” at lines 175-184. The song, once painfully complex, has evolved and simplified to its final one word mantra.
Eliot’s translation of Shantih is taken from Philippians 4:7:
“And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
Eliot confessed to a feeble understanding of that peace which all would-be believers seek, but this, in time, would change for him (see The Four Quartets†, note 306); indeed, after this later work he would direct that his epitaph be etched with words from East Coker (see note 306):
“In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning.”
Eventually. But for now it is the poet’s words in this final note, so easy to overlook, that have intrigued my own understanding and encouraged these annotations.
12/17:
Sabbath
December is the Sabbath of the year,
Or should be so: We need a month of rest
After eleven months of business,
Before the year ahead of us no less
And more: we need this restful moment here
To bless the coming year.
I wonder if it wasn’t by design,
If God’s own resting was a matter more
Of looking forward, getting ready for
The days to come, the challenges in store
And less of looking backwards and behind,
No matter how divine.
Thus, when in God’s own image we look back
We ought to simply say how good it was
And turn toward tomorrow —with a pause,
Of course, for all it’s worth and what it does:
This holi-month allows us to reflect,
Compels us to project.
As every end ignites a new beginning,
As every prayer concerns continuation,
As silent nights turn into celebration,
As cheers turn into wishes, as ovations
Build to the encore, as the show is ending
The Sabbath world keeps spinning.
12/18:
Sonnet of the Wind
The gift of breathe:
The air supply made of green leaves,
The chemistry of oxygen
the lungs receive,
The circulatory cells they feed,
The appetite and hunger’s power
of needing more,
The muscles that refuse to sleep,
The will to keep
the moments of a given day,
The way we live in increments,
The breath we give back to the green,
The whole routine
Beyond belief or comprehension,
Uncontrolled, unspecified,
The spirit of the simplest soul:
The gift of breathe.
12/19:
Sonnet of Earth and Essence
I am earth,
my God is essence
and in between
The wind blows,
the water flows,
the fire burns.
All that is made
my God creates;
I am created
With heart and lungs,
with sweat and tears,
with want and will,
And without these
my God is absent
and I am only earth.
12/20:
Sonnet of the Water
The gift of quench, the grace of flow,
The stir of raindrops on the soil,
The tears we cry, the salt we show.
The way we wash away our toil.
A soak to soothe, a drip to feed,
The air that we’re conditioned to,
The life we’re given and all we need,
Our vehicle and avenue,
The force that cuts from source to sea,
Before we’re born, after we die,
The waves of time and destiny,
Our means to cleanse and purify,
The drink we drink, to all things new
and from all that we should let go:
I fill my glass and lift it to
the gift of quench, the grace of flow.
12/21:
Sonnet of the Fire
The gift of spirit,
The dance within,
The forge that makes me
more than clay.
The wheel that turns,
The heat that burns,
The fire’s fingers
forming me.
The fragile flame,
The sparks of time,
The fickle flicker
of the glaze:
The soul for 30,000 days,
each longing for eternity.
12/22:
Moleskin 6.2: Serenity
Carter’s professed respect was towards what Niebuhr perceived as a theological duty in the realm of politics, to try to do justice in a sinful world —maybe, as it would turn out, more than a peanut farmer could handle, although Carter would maintain a dedication to this duty beyond his political presidency. But Niebuhr is also known, and perhaps better known, as the author of a bit of wisdom that may seem to fit less into politics, or rather shows the higher nobility of theology over our more human policies: it is the wisdom of a prayer, one that prays for wisdom itself, as well as courage , each in their proper place. First, though, the prayer is for serenity: “God grant me the serenity to accept...” More grant than a twelve year old can possibly be expected to grasp. And yet, on the riverbanks of youth, without any knowledge of Niebuhr’s wisdom, the thoughts, the prayers were forming.
Saturday, December 10, 2016
"what dreams may come"
My 11th graders are studying Hamlet and must recite the 33 lines of the "To be or not to be" monologue, including "what dreams may come / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil / Must give us pause"...
The other day I woke to a wonderful dream--not at all the kind that Hamlet dreads--and the first in my consciousness that involved Josh since his funeral. I've dreamt of Dad several times a year since 1989, and these have been angelic visits. So now with Josh.
(would love a more telling photo, btw! Dan)
The other day I woke to a wonderful dream--not at all the kind that Hamlet dreads--and the first in my consciousness that involved Josh since his funeral. I've dreamt of Dad several times a year since 1989, and these have been angelic visits. So now with Josh.
Hypnogogia
The room was sprung from cedar, long and off
the starboard slope of what we’d make our home:
Mantrap Lake, erstwhile host of younger Volds
whose journeys had advanced but not outgrown.
‘When was it, Joe, you spoke the
sermon here?’
Dad pursed a smile at Uncle Dave
and guessed:
‘Seventy-four’—when things were
rearranged
and walleyes in our nets would be
most blessed.
Joshua, from the shadows of the room, joined
the thought as one who’d pastored Sugar Lake:
‘Scrabble?’ came the query, and Jon remarked
that we four haven’t played, for heaven’s sake!
I thought of Eunice, Hemchand,
Anne and all
who made their words to match the
memory:
it’s true, the games of two
outscore the rest,
yet quartets square the streams
of reverie…
And looking last at Dad, who
kept his smile
for having had the chance to
glow again,
I woke up from this dream, a
show-and-tell
to share with fellow scrabblers
now and then.
(would love a more telling photo, btw! Dan)
Friday, December 9, 2016
Life Out Of The Void
Every Thought...
Week 50: Shored Against My Ruins
In a year of juggled realities, this offer, or keeping, of fragments of the past — a poem deconstructed, seasonal tributes, a moleskin memoir, a sequence of dreams and scribbles from 10, 20, 30 years ago — is a purposeful prayer against the ruins, for serenity.
12/09:
TWL, Lines 427-432: Shored Against My Ruins
427 London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
428 Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
429 Quando fiam ceu chelidon — O swallow swallow
430 Le Prince d'Aquitaine Ć la tour abolie
431 These fragments I have shored against my ruins
432 Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
427. LONDON BRIDGE IS FALLING DOWN is the opening of a nursery rhyme first referenced in The London Chaunticleres (1657, Anon.). It also alludes back to line 22 (a heap of broken images), 62 (crowd flowing over the bridge), 173 (the river’s tent is broken) and 374 (falling towers). See also John Henry Mackay, Anarchy (1888), for a similarly toned answer to the question just posed in line 426, “Shall I at least set my lands in order?”:
“‘Wreck of all order,’ cry the multitude,
‘Art thou, & war & murder’s endless rage.’
O, let them cry. To them that ne'er have striven
The truth that lies behind a word to find,
To them the word's right meaning was not given.
They shall continue blind among the blind.
But thou, O word, so clear, so strong, so true,
Thou sayest all for which I for goal have taken.
I give thee to the future! Thine secure
When each at least unto himself shall waken.”
428. ARNAUT DANIEL: Eliot: “V. Purgatorio, XXVI, 148.
'Ara vos prec per aquella valor
'que vos guida al som de l'escalina,
'sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor.'
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina.”
See Dante, Purgatorio 26.145-148:
“Therefore do I implore you, by that power
Which guides you to the summit of the stairs,
Be mindful to assuage my suffering!’
Then hid him in the fire that purifies them.”
Dante attributed the first three lies of this passage, written in Old Occitan, to Provencal poet Arnaut Daniel, whom Dante called the “better craftsman,” as Eliot would in turn call Ezra Pound (see note 0.2).Daniel says this as he follows Italian poet Guido Guinizelli, who had “vanished in the fire.” (26.134). See Dante, Purgatorio 26:115-148:
"O brother," said he, "he whom I point out,"
And here he pointed at a spirit in front,
"Was of the mother tongue a better smith.
Verses of love and proses of romance,
He mastered all; and let the idiots talk,
Who think the Lemosin surpasses him.
To clamour more than truth they turn their faces,
And in this way establish their opinion,
Ere art or reason has by them been heard.
Thus many ancients with Guittone did,
From cry to cry still giving him applause,
Until the truth has conquered with most persons.
Now, if thou hast such ample privilege
'Tis granted thee to go unto the cloister
Wherein is Christ the abbot of the college,
To him repeat for me a Paternoster,
So far as needful to us of this world,
Where power of sinning is no longer ours."
Then, to give place perchance to one behind,
Whom he had near, he vanished in the fire
As fish in water going to the bottom.
I moved a little tow'rds him pointed out,
And said that to his name my own desire
An honourable place was making ready.
He of his own free will began to say:
'Tan m' abellis vostre cortes deman,
Que jeu nom' puesc ni vueill a vos cobrire;
Jeu sui Arnaut, que plor e vai chantan;
Consiros vei la passada folor,
E vei jauzen lo jorn qu' esper denan.
Ara vus prec per aquella valor,
Que vus condus al som de la scalina,
Sovenga vus a temprar ma dolor.' ◦
Then hid him in the fire that purifies them.
◦ So pleases me your courteous demand,
I cannot and I will not hide me from you.
I am Arnaut, who weep and singing go;
Contrite I see the folly of the past,
And joyous see the hoped-for day before me.
Therefore do I implore you, by that power
Which guides you to the summit of the stairs,
Be mindful to assuage my suffering!
429. SWALLOW SWALLOW: Eliot: “V. Pervigilium Veneris. Cf. Philomela in Parts II and III.
See Tiberianus, The Vigil of Venus 88-93 (400 BC, tr. Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch 1912):
“Ah, loitering Summer! Say when For me shall be broken the charm, that I chirp with the swallow again? I am old; I am dumb; I have waited to sing till Apollo withdrew—So Amyclae a moment was mute, and for ever a wilderness grew. Now learn ye to love who loved never—-now ye who have loved, love anew, To-morrow!—-to-morrow!”
Amyclae was the ancient Spartan home of the Sanctuary of Apollo and the grave of Hyacinth. An annual festival, the Hyacinthia, celebrated Hyacinth’s death and rebirth. See note 36 for the legend of Hyacinth.
“Say when... that I chirp with the swallow again?” is the passage cited from Tiberianus’s poem, and Eliot also ties this to the post-rape transformation of Philomela and her sister into a nightingale and a swallow(see note 99).
See also Algernon Charles Swinburne, Itylus (1864): “Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow.” Swinburne’s poem combines the story of Philomela with the story of Itylus referred to in Homer, Odyssey 19: 524-534, in which Aedon is turned into a nightingale after accidentally killing her son Itylus. See also Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Princess; A Melody (1884): “O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying south,” and compare this with Countess Marie going south for the winter (line 18).
430. MAN OF SHADOWS. Eliot: “V. Gerard de Nerval, Sonnet El Desdichado.”
See El Desdichado (1853; tr. J. Vold): “Once Prince of Aquitaine, my tower undone...” My full translation of The Loser:
“I’m a man of shadows, widowed, unconsoled,
Once Prince of Aquitaine, my tower undone,
My star departed; even my stellar strings
Are strummed with Melancholy’s blackened sun.
From this grave darkness, you who once consoled me
Bring me back to the mountains by the sea,
Return the flower of pleasure to my heart,
The grapevine and the rose of Italy.
Once Love and once Apollo, king and rogue,
My forehead wears the lipstick of the Queen,
My dreams have tarried where the Siren sings.
I’ve conquered Acheron to hell and back again;
I’ve resonated on these Orphean strings
From saintly sighs to pixilated cries.”
Secondary allusions abound here, to the hyancinth flower (line 36), Jean Verdenal’s death in Italy (note 42), the siren songs of Ariel and the River nymphs (note 266), the woman fiddling on her hair (note 378), the journey across Acheron (see Dante*,Inferno 3.76-78) and, in the cited line, the tower undone (note 374). De Nerval, a close friend of Charles Baudelaire (see note 76), was also known to have fits of madness; see line 432, and see Arthur Symons, The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899):
“...with GĆ©rard there was no pose; and when, one day, he was found in the Palais-Royal, leading a lobster at the end of a blue ribbon (because, he said, it does not bark, and knows the secrets of the sea), the visionary had simply lost control of his visions, and had to be sent to Dr. Blanche's asylum at Montmartre.”
432. HAMLET AND HIERONYMO: Eliot*: “V. Kyd's Spanish Tragedy.” See Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronymo’s Mad Again (1592), 4.1-5, where Hieronymo speaks:
“Why then, I'll fit you; say no more.
When I was young, I gave my mind
And plied myself to fruitless poetry;
Which though it profit the professor naught,
Yet is it passing pleasing to the world.”
See Eliot, Hamlet and His Problems (note 417), citing Kyd’s play as a source for Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In trying to interpret and understand the present poem, one might transpose what Eliot wrote about Shakespeare and Hamlet. On interpretation: “Qua work of art, the work of art cannot be interpreted; there is nothing to interpret... for “interpretation” the chief task is the presentation of relevant historical facts which the reader is not presumed to know.”
And on understanding: “We must simply admit that here Shakespeare tackled a problem which proved too much for him. ...We should have to understand things that Shakespeare did not understand himself.”
Yet even in a lack of understanding there can be appreciation, and Eliot, in ceding to “the peace that passeth understanding” admits as much (see note 434). Even his final “shantih” comment, he says, is a “feeble translation” of the concept; and yet, incomprehensible as it may be, it is still something for this poet, and every poet and reader, to strive for.
12/10:
Reflective Study of Wallace Stevens' Man and Bottle
The mind is the great poem of winter, the man
The heart is the rose and ice of spring, the child
Who, to find what will suffice,
Who, accepting everything,
Destroys romantic tenements
Creates the real poetry
Of rose and ice
Of life
In the land of war. More than the man, it is
In a state of grace. More than a child, it is
A man with the fury of the race of men,
A child full of the innocence of youth,
A light at the centre of many lights
A rising sun, a breaking light,
A man at the centre of men.
A child at the edge of truth.
It has to content the reason concerning war,
It never questions the cause or concern of grace,
It has to persuade that war is a part of itself,
It never argues that grace is out of place, it is
A manner of thinking, a mode
A matter of feeling, the core
Of destroying, as the mind destroys,
Of creating, so the heart creates
An aversion, as the world is averted
A convergence, as the dawn converges
From an old delusion, an old affair with the sun,
To a new awareness, a new affair with the sun,
An impossible aberration with the moon,
The inevitable deviation from the moon,
A grossness of peace.
The end of night.
It is not the snow that is the quill, the page.
It is not the rose that is the dawn, the spring.
The poem lashes more fiercely than the wind,
The ice breaks, the winter melts away
As the mind, to find what will suffice, destroys
As the heart, accepting everything, creates
Romantic tenements of rose and ice.
The real poetry of life.
12/11:
The Source
from Walled Gardens
God takes earth and forms our body,
takes wind and forms our speech
gives reason to our minds,
inspiration to our hearts,
invitation to our souls,
cause to our creation.
God gives theme to every generation
and truth to every corruption;
God is the source from which everything comes,
the place to which everything returns:
Good proceeds from God and evil departs from God,
as God created the spirit of each,
good and evil in every soul,
as God authors the soul,
originates the mind,
makes each of us something out of nothing
and exalts us, gives us life out of the void.
12/12:
Profile
Don’t be a cipher, someone said.
Show us the face that hides behind
The poems you have let us read,
Give us a glimpse beyond the mind
Of the poet who has edited
His life down into metered lines,
Whose given his blog a leveled screed
But nothing past the words he’s signed.
Here, then, you have my picture: See
The aging and the fattening
Of fifty years, the lazy eye
That looks like it is focusing
On things in the periphery;
See what’s in need of ironing,
The fashions that have passed me by,
The cry for different coloring,
And there is more, of course. I could
Divulge my sordid history
Of marriage leading to divorce,
Of education forcing me
To compromises, of a good
Career besmirched with obloquy.
But there is always more, of course,
Than who I would pretend to be.
With marriage, I have progeny
With stories of their own to tell;
With education, I have learned
The fathoms of my earthly well
Of ignorance; and should you see
The merchandise I try to sell,
For every dollar fairly earned,
My reputation’s mostly held.
But turn away from all of this.
What should it matter what I wear
Or how I always seem to look
Or just how well I comb my hair,
If I’m a father with no wife,
More lawyer than you’d have me be
Or lead an unenlightened life?
For now, you have my poetry.
12/13:
Mots du Jour
This is my way of calling it a day,
Of sorting through immediate memories
To find what's worth repeating, and by these,
My random stops and starts along the way,
Remembering the journey. Every day
Its own adventure, every moment seized
A glimpse of further possibilities,
Each orbit spinning something more to say.
So here's my say, my call, my mots du jour,
My journal written of its own accord,
My record entered into history,
The story of my life, my private tour,
My positure, my confluence ---each word,
Like time itself, as it occurs to me.
12/14:
Devotions
But he answered and said to them,
“You give them something to eat.”
— Mark 6:37 (NKJV)
1
You, one and all of you,
nameless counselors,
collective observers
adding little to the sentence,
barely part of the plot,
yet there you are, pronounced
in every translation,
prompting response and
preceding the action.
Feed my sheep;
as the day begins to wear,
give them something to eat.
2
You, second person,
the emphasized imperative,
God’s audience specifically
commissioned and directed
to a singular assignment:
having first observed,
be ready to serve;
as the Lord has called you,
hear that holy word:
feed my sheep;
they do not need to go away,
give them something to eat.
3
You, Christ companion,
one of the twelve
on a failed retreat
and a broken rest,
your Sabbath overtaken
by a hungry crowd:
having seen the need
but unsure of the logistics,
you’ve been firmly turned
around to see the deed:
feed my sheep;
all these sheep without a shepherd,
give them something to eat.
4
You, fellow traveler,
being stirred one morning to the life of follow,
pulled by a pulse to leave hearth and hold,
drawn to the shepherd’s call and still
at the shepherd’s feet as the day grows old:
here in the hungry gather,
observing the surround,
with an echo in your stomach
and the journey on your shoulders,
feed my sheep;
lie them down in these green pastures,
give them something to eat.
5
You, faithful follower,
making your way from practical to miracle,
turning attention from mortal to divine,
being taught to pray, to teach, to heal,
now learn your greater discipline:
take these five loaves, these couple of fish
let them first be blessed and broken, then
give thanks for what you’re given
and let the people have their fill:
feed my sheep;
with all of your devotion,
give them something to eat.
6
You, just as you are,
one of the sheep
having come this far,
knowing the hunger
and needing the rest,
you give it all to Jesus
and Jesus answers
with a bit of a challenge,
a bit of a test
putting you front and center
to be God’s hands,
to show God’s love,
to prepare the feast:
feed my sheep;
for the love of God, they’re hungry,
give them something to eat.
12/15:
Moleskin 6.1: Prayer
In 1974 a football player took the place of Tricky Dick, and in 1975 a peanut farmer announced that he wanted the job. Jimmy Carter had a brother, Billy, whose own inspirations didn’t get much farther than a beer can, but Jimmy, the governor of Georgia now, was more driven. The football player, meanwhile, seemed bumbling, and not just physically, as Saturday Night Live had fun pointing out, but also inspirationally: on the campaign trail his most prominent position seemed to be to get people to wear a button that said, almost unimaginatively, “WIN.” Whip Inflation Now, it meant, although it never really explained how. All of this was in the papers I was delivering and starting to read more in my twelfth and thirteenth years, but it would be much later that I gave more than a passing notice to one of Carter’s more interesting side comments on the campaign trail, a nod of great respect to a theologian, Reinhold Niebhur.
Week 50: Shored Against My Ruins
In a year of juggled realities, this offer, or keeping, of fragments of the past — a poem deconstructed, seasonal tributes, a moleskin memoir, a sequence of dreams and scribbles from 10, 20, 30 years ago — is a purposeful prayer against the ruins, for serenity.
12/09:
TWL, Lines 427-432: Shored Against My Ruins
427 London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
428 Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
429 Quando fiam ceu chelidon — O swallow swallow
430 Le Prince d'Aquitaine Ć la tour abolie
431 These fragments I have shored against my ruins
432 Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
427. LONDON BRIDGE IS FALLING DOWN is the opening of a nursery rhyme first referenced in The London Chaunticleres (1657, Anon.). It also alludes back to line 22 (a heap of broken images), 62 (crowd flowing over the bridge), 173 (the river’s tent is broken) and 374 (falling towers). See also John Henry Mackay, Anarchy (1888), for a similarly toned answer to the question just posed in line 426, “Shall I at least set my lands in order?”:
“‘Wreck of all order,’ cry the multitude,
‘Art thou, & war & murder’s endless rage.’
O, let them cry. To them that ne'er have striven
The truth that lies behind a word to find,
To them the word's right meaning was not given.
They shall continue blind among the blind.
But thou, O word, so clear, so strong, so true,
Thou sayest all for which I for goal have taken.
I give thee to the future! Thine secure
When each at least unto himself shall waken.”
428. ARNAUT DANIEL: Eliot: “V. Purgatorio, XXVI, 148.
'Ara vos prec per aquella valor
'que vos guida al som de l'escalina,
'sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor.'
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina.”
See Dante, Purgatorio 26.145-148:
“Therefore do I implore you, by that power
Which guides you to the summit of the stairs,
Be mindful to assuage my suffering!’
Then hid him in the fire that purifies them.”
Dante attributed the first three lies of this passage, written in Old Occitan, to Provencal poet Arnaut Daniel, whom Dante called the “better craftsman,” as Eliot would in turn call Ezra Pound (see note 0.2).Daniel says this as he follows Italian poet Guido Guinizelli, who had “vanished in the fire.” (26.134). See Dante, Purgatorio 26:115-148:
"O brother," said he, "he whom I point out,"
And here he pointed at a spirit in front,
"Was of the mother tongue a better smith.
Verses of love and proses of romance,
He mastered all; and let the idiots talk,
Who think the Lemosin surpasses him.
To clamour more than truth they turn their faces,
And in this way establish their opinion,
Ere art or reason has by them been heard.
Thus many ancients with Guittone did,
From cry to cry still giving him applause,
Until the truth has conquered with most persons.
Now, if thou hast such ample privilege
'Tis granted thee to go unto the cloister
Wherein is Christ the abbot of the college,
To him repeat for me a Paternoster,
So far as needful to us of this world,
Where power of sinning is no longer ours."
Then, to give place perchance to one behind,
Whom he had near, he vanished in the fire
As fish in water going to the bottom.
I moved a little tow'rds him pointed out,
And said that to his name my own desire
An honourable place was making ready.
He of his own free will began to say:
'Tan m' abellis vostre cortes deman,
Que jeu nom' puesc ni vueill a vos cobrire;
Jeu sui Arnaut, que plor e vai chantan;
Consiros vei la passada folor,
E vei jauzen lo jorn qu' esper denan.
Ara vus prec per aquella valor,
Que vus condus al som de la scalina,
Sovenga vus a temprar ma dolor.' ◦
Then hid him in the fire that purifies them.
◦ So pleases me your courteous demand,
I cannot and I will not hide me from you.
I am Arnaut, who weep and singing go;
Contrite I see the folly of the past,
And joyous see the hoped-for day before me.
Therefore do I implore you, by that power
Which guides you to the summit of the stairs,
Be mindful to assuage my suffering!
429. SWALLOW SWALLOW: Eliot: “V. Pervigilium Veneris. Cf. Philomela in Parts II and III.
See Tiberianus, The Vigil of Venus 88-93 (400 BC, tr. Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch 1912):
“Ah, loitering Summer! Say when For me shall be broken the charm, that I chirp with the swallow again? I am old; I am dumb; I have waited to sing till Apollo withdrew—So Amyclae a moment was mute, and for ever a wilderness grew. Now learn ye to love who loved never—-now ye who have loved, love anew, To-morrow!—-to-morrow!”
Amyclae was the ancient Spartan home of the Sanctuary of Apollo and the grave of Hyacinth. An annual festival, the Hyacinthia, celebrated Hyacinth’s death and rebirth. See note 36 for the legend of Hyacinth.
“Say when... that I chirp with the swallow again?” is the passage cited from Tiberianus’s poem, and Eliot also ties this to the post-rape transformation of Philomela and her sister into a nightingale and a swallow(see note 99).
See also Algernon Charles Swinburne, Itylus (1864): “Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow.” Swinburne’s poem combines the story of Philomela with the story of Itylus referred to in Homer, Odyssey 19: 524-534, in which Aedon is turned into a nightingale after accidentally killing her son Itylus. See also Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Princess; A Melody (1884): “O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying south,” and compare this with Countess Marie going south for the winter (line 18).
430. MAN OF SHADOWS. Eliot: “V. Gerard de Nerval, Sonnet El Desdichado.”
See El Desdichado (1853; tr. J. Vold): “Once Prince of Aquitaine, my tower undone...” My full translation of The Loser:
“I’m a man of shadows, widowed, unconsoled,
Once Prince of Aquitaine, my tower undone,
My star departed; even my stellar strings
Are strummed with Melancholy’s blackened sun.
From this grave darkness, you who once consoled me
Bring me back to the mountains by the sea,
Return the flower of pleasure to my heart,
The grapevine and the rose of Italy.
Once Love and once Apollo, king and rogue,
My forehead wears the lipstick of the Queen,
My dreams have tarried where the Siren sings.
I’ve conquered Acheron to hell and back again;
I’ve resonated on these Orphean strings
From saintly sighs to pixilated cries.”
Secondary allusions abound here, to the hyancinth flower (line 36), Jean Verdenal’s death in Italy (note 42), the siren songs of Ariel and the River nymphs (note 266), the woman fiddling on her hair (note 378), the journey across Acheron (see Dante*,Inferno 3.76-78) and, in the cited line, the tower undone (note 374). De Nerval, a close friend of Charles Baudelaire (see note 76), was also known to have fits of madness; see line 432, and see Arthur Symons, The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899):
“...with GĆ©rard there was no pose; and when, one day, he was found in the Palais-Royal, leading a lobster at the end of a blue ribbon (because, he said, it does not bark, and knows the secrets of the sea), the visionary had simply lost control of his visions, and had to be sent to Dr. Blanche's asylum at Montmartre.”
432. HAMLET AND HIERONYMO: Eliot*: “V. Kyd's Spanish Tragedy.” See Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronymo’s Mad Again (1592), 4.1-5, where Hieronymo speaks:
“Why then, I'll fit you; say no more.
When I was young, I gave my mind
And plied myself to fruitless poetry;
Which though it profit the professor naught,
Yet is it passing pleasing to the world.”
See Eliot, Hamlet and His Problems (note 417), citing Kyd’s play as a source for Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In trying to interpret and understand the present poem, one might transpose what Eliot wrote about Shakespeare and Hamlet. On interpretation: “Qua work of art, the work of art cannot be interpreted; there is nothing to interpret... for “interpretation” the chief task is the presentation of relevant historical facts which the reader is not presumed to know.”
And on understanding: “We must simply admit that here Shakespeare tackled a problem which proved too much for him. ...We should have to understand things that Shakespeare did not understand himself.”
Yet even in a lack of understanding there can be appreciation, and Eliot, in ceding to “the peace that passeth understanding” admits as much (see note 434). Even his final “shantih” comment, he says, is a “feeble translation” of the concept; and yet, incomprehensible as it may be, it is still something for this poet, and every poet and reader, to strive for.
12/10:
Reflective Study of Wallace Stevens' Man and Bottle
The mind is the great poem of winter, the man
The heart is the rose and ice of spring, the child
Who, to find what will suffice,
Who, accepting everything,
Destroys romantic tenements
Creates the real poetry
Of rose and ice
Of life
In the land of war. More than the man, it is
In a state of grace. More than a child, it is
A man with the fury of the race of men,
A child full of the innocence of youth,
A light at the centre of many lights
A rising sun, a breaking light,
A man at the centre of men.
A child at the edge of truth.
It has to content the reason concerning war,
It never questions the cause or concern of grace,
It has to persuade that war is a part of itself,
It never argues that grace is out of place, it is
A manner of thinking, a mode
A matter of feeling, the core
Of destroying, as the mind destroys,
Of creating, so the heart creates
An aversion, as the world is averted
A convergence, as the dawn converges
From an old delusion, an old affair with the sun,
To a new awareness, a new affair with the sun,
An impossible aberration with the moon,
The inevitable deviation from the moon,
A grossness of peace.
The end of night.
It is not the snow that is the quill, the page.
It is not the rose that is the dawn, the spring.
The poem lashes more fiercely than the wind,
The ice breaks, the winter melts away
As the mind, to find what will suffice, destroys
As the heart, accepting everything, creates
Romantic tenements of rose and ice.
The real poetry of life.
12/11:
The Source
from Walled Gardens
God takes earth and forms our body,
takes wind and forms our speech
gives reason to our minds,
inspiration to our hearts,
invitation to our souls,
cause to our creation.
God gives theme to every generation
and truth to every corruption;
God is the source from which everything comes,
the place to which everything returns:
Good proceeds from God and evil departs from God,
as God created the spirit of each,
good and evil in every soul,
as God authors the soul,
originates the mind,
makes each of us something out of nothing
and exalts us, gives us life out of the void.
12/12:
Profile
Don’t be a cipher, someone said.
Show us the face that hides behind
The poems you have let us read,
Give us a glimpse beyond the mind
Of the poet who has edited
His life down into metered lines,
Whose given his blog a leveled screed
But nothing past the words he’s signed.
Here, then, you have my picture: See
The aging and the fattening
Of fifty years, the lazy eye
That looks like it is focusing
On things in the periphery;
See what’s in need of ironing,
The fashions that have passed me by,
The cry for different coloring,
And there is more, of course. I could
Divulge my sordid history
Of marriage leading to divorce,
Of education forcing me
To compromises, of a good
Career besmirched with obloquy.
But there is always more, of course,
Than who I would pretend to be.
With marriage, I have progeny
With stories of their own to tell;
With education, I have learned
The fathoms of my earthly well
Of ignorance; and should you see
The merchandise I try to sell,
For every dollar fairly earned,
My reputation’s mostly held.
But turn away from all of this.
What should it matter what I wear
Or how I always seem to look
Or just how well I comb my hair,
If I’m a father with no wife,
More lawyer than you’d have me be
Or lead an unenlightened life?
For now, you have my poetry.
12/13:
Mots du Jour
This is my way of calling it a day,
Of sorting through immediate memories
To find what's worth repeating, and by these,
My random stops and starts along the way,
Remembering the journey. Every day
Its own adventure, every moment seized
A glimpse of further possibilities,
Each orbit spinning something more to say.
So here's my say, my call, my mots du jour,
My journal written of its own accord,
My record entered into history,
The story of my life, my private tour,
My positure, my confluence ---each word,
Like time itself, as it occurs to me.
12/14:
Devotions
But he answered and said to them,
“You give them something to eat.”
— Mark 6:37 (NKJV)
1
You, one and all of you,
nameless counselors,
collective observers
adding little to the sentence,
barely part of the plot,
yet there you are, pronounced
in every translation,
prompting response and
preceding the action.
Feed my sheep;
as the day begins to wear,
give them something to eat.
2
You, second person,
the emphasized imperative,
God’s audience specifically
commissioned and directed
to a singular assignment:
having first observed,
be ready to serve;
as the Lord has called you,
hear that holy word:
feed my sheep;
they do not need to go away,
give them something to eat.
3
You, Christ companion,
one of the twelve
on a failed retreat
and a broken rest,
your Sabbath overtaken
by a hungry crowd:
having seen the need
but unsure of the logistics,
you’ve been firmly turned
around to see the deed:
feed my sheep;
all these sheep without a shepherd,
give them something to eat.
4
You, fellow traveler,
being stirred one morning to the life of follow,
pulled by a pulse to leave hearth and hold,
drawn to the shepherd’s call and still
at the shepherd’s feet as the day grows old:
here in the hungry gather,
observing the surround,
with an echo in your stomach
and the journey on your shoulders,
feed my sheep;
lie them down in these green pastures,
give them something to eat.
5
You, faithful follower,
making your way from practical to miracle,
turning attention from mortal to divine,
being taught to pray, to teach, to heal,
now learn your greater discipline:
take these five loaves, these couple of fish
let them first be blessed and broken, then
give thanks for what you’re given
and let the people have their fill:
feed my sheep;
with all of your devotion,
give them something to eat.
6
You, just as you are,
one of the sheep
having come this far,
knowing the hunger
and needing the rest,
you give it all to Jesus
and Jesus answers
with a bit of a challenge,
a bit of a test
putting you front and center
to be God’s hands,
to show God’s love,
to prepare the feast:
feed my sheep;
for the love of God, they’re hungry,
give them something to eat.
12/15:
Moleskin 6.1: Prayer
In 1974 a football player took the place of Tricky Dick, and in 1975 a peanut farmer announced that he wanted the job. Jimmy Carter had a brother, Billy, whose own inspirations didn’t get much farther than a beer can, but Jimmy, the governor of Georgia now, was more driven. The football player, meanwhile, seemed bumbling, and not just physically, as Saturday Night Live had fun pointing out, but also inspirationally: on the campaign trail his most prominent position seemed to be to get people to wear a button that said, almost unimaginatively, “WIN.” Whip Inflation Now, it meant, although it never really explained how. All of this was in the papers I was delivering and starting to read more in my twelfth and thirteenth years, but it would be much later that I gave more than a passing notice to one of Carter’s more interesting side comments on the campaign trail, a nod of great respect to a theologian, Reinhold Niebhur.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)