'As Imperceptibly as Grief'

 

 

 

Larry Welo

 

 As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away—
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy—
A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon—
The Dusk drew earlier in—
The Morning foreign shone—
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, that would be gone—
And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful. 

 

Emily Dickinson 

 

Dickinson has a way of putting everything in a poem

 without making it heavy.

A sadness without wallowing. A lightness without taking lightly.

And that "our Summer" - I see how one word changes everything.

Are the passing seasons of my life an "escape into the Beautiful"?

Or do I look back with regret at what is gone?

Into the Beautiful - !

That's where I want to go.

                                                          

 

 

 

Woods

 

 

 

Gina Signore

Woods

 

I part the out thrusting branches
and come in beneath
the blessed and the blessing trees.
Though I am silent
there is singing around me.
Though I am dark
there is vision around me.
Though I am heavy
there is flight around me. 

 

Wendell Berry 

Silence, darkness, heaviness.

Singing, vision, flight. 

There is an exchange here that is extraordinary.

 

How much does nature influence our being?

The movement and sound and light - these change us.

I don't know how, but they do.

The Promise and the Way He Kept It

 

Yongsung Kim

The Promise and the Way He Kept It

Isaiah 9:2-7

 

The people that walked in darkness

have seen a great light;

those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death,

upon them a light has shined.

 

You have multiplied the nation,

and increased it's joy;

they rejoice before you according to the joy of harvest,

as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.

 

For You have broken the yoke of his burden

and the staff of his shoulder,

the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian.

For every warrior's sandal from the noisy battle,

and garments rolled in blood

will be used for burning and fuel of fire.

For unto us a child is born,

unto us a Son is given;

and the government will be upon His shoulder.

And His name will be called

Wonderful,

Counselor,

the Mighty God,

Everlasting Father,

the Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end,

upon the throne of David and over His kingdom,

to order it and establish it with judgement and justice 

from that time forward, even forever.

the zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this.

 

*

 

 

Isaiah as a poet, well, if there ever were a Poet of Hope, he's It. No one stirs the heart and raises the courage like him. Every single line, one after the other, is as strong and true as it ever was - look how these words have weathered Time. 

If I was feeling worn down and discouraged by the state of the world, and someone were to say this poem aloud, it would stop me cold. Everything true and enduring and worthwhile would flood back into me in a transfusion of hope.

As the light breaks into the darkness, so the poem breaks into the despair.

The people living in oppression and suffering, the people battling and bleeding, the people struggling against insurmountable odds - are given a promise of freedom, and a kingdom of continuing and increasing justice. 

They will rejoice before God like people bringing in an overflowing harvest, like people dividing the spoil after winning a battle. And all the devastation of war, all the spilled blood and the implements of violence, will be used as fuel for fire. 

A new age will come. With the birth of a child. 

The Prince of Peace.

Emmanuel, God with us.

Jesus.

 

No poem more beautiful. 

 

 

 

 

 

Signs of Winter

 

                                                                            

Raymond Booth

Signs of Winter

 

The cat runs races with her tail. The dog
Leaps oer the orchard hedge and knarls the grass.
The swine run round and grunt and play with straw,
Snatching out hasty mouthfuls from the stack.
Sudden upon the elmtree tops the crow
Unceremonious visit pays and croaks,
Then swoops away. From mossy barn the owl
Bobs hasty out--wheels round and, scared as soon,
As hastily retires. The ducks grow wild
And from the muddy pond fly up and wheel
A circle round the village and soon, tired,
Plunge in the pond again. The maids in haste
Snatch from the orchard hedge the mizzled clothes
And laughing hurry in to keep them dry.

John Clare

An unusual restlessness, a nervous energy, a twitchy tic. Even the line "Sudden upon the elmtree tops the crow..." springs at you, jumps out of nowhere. Things are hectic, scattered. Change is imminent, and we all are unsettled - humans and animals both.

Autumn On the Land

 

Grigoriy Myasoyedov

 Autumn On the Land

 

A man, a field, silence—what is there to say?
He lives, he moves, and the October day
Burns slowly down.
                                 History is made
Elsewhere; the hours forfeit to time's blade
Don't matter here. The leaves large and small,
Shed by the branches, unlamented fall
About his shoulders. You may look in vain
Through the eyes' window; on his meagre hearth
The thin, shy soul has not begun its reign
Over the darkness. Beauty, love and mirth
And joy are strangers there.
                                             You must revise
Your bland philosophy of nature, earth
Has of itself no power to make men wise. 

 

R. S. Thomas 

I go over it - reading it again, hoping I will find a different conclusion. 

Something more hopeful.

The man, the field, and the silence.

That silence gapes. 

Meaningless! It's all empty. Even the beauty of Nature has no influence, no redeeming power.

But what is this - a sliver of hope? "The thin, shy soul has not begun its reign/Over the darkness."

How does one begin, then? Where?

 

 

Autumn

 

 

 

Heinrich Vogeler

Autumn

 

There is wind where the rose was;

Cold rain where the sweet grass was;

And clouds like sheep

 Stream o'er the steep

Grey skies where the lark was. 

 

Nought gold where your hair was;

Nought warm where your hand was;

But phantom, forlorn,

Beneath the thorn,

Your ghost where your face was.

 

Sad winds where your voice was;

Tears, tears where my heart was;

And ever with me,

Child, ever with me,

Silence where hope was.

 

Walter de la Mare 

 

 

 A painful anniversary. 

 

 

Prologue

Chris Neale

Prologue

This day winding down now
At God speeded summer's end
In the torrent salmon sun,
In my seashaken house
On a breakneck of rocks
Tangled with chirrup and fruit,
Froth, flute, fin, and quill
At a wood's dancing hoof,
By scummed, starfish sands
With their fishwife cross
Gulls, pipers, cockles, and snails,
Out there, crow black, men
Tackled with clouds, who kneel
To the sunset nets,
Geese nearly in heaven, boys
Stabbing, and herons, and shells
That speak seven seas,
Eternal waters away
From the cities of nine
Days' night whose towers will catch
In the religious wind
Like stalks of tall, dry straw,
At poor peace I sing
To you strangers (though song
Is a burning and crested act,
The fire of birds in
The world's turning wood,
For my swan, splay sounds),
Out of these seathumbed leaves
That will fly and fall
Like leaves of trees and as soon
Crumble and undie
Into the dogdayed night.
Seaward the salmon, sucked sun slips,
And the dumb swans drub blue
My dabbed bay's dusk, as I hack
This rumpus of shapes
For you to know
How I, a spinning man,
Glory also this star, bird
Roared, sea born, man torn, blood blest.
Hark: I trumpet the place,
From fish to jumping hill! Look:
I build my bellowing ark
To the best of my love
As the flood begins,
Out of the fountainhead
Of fear, rage red, manalive,
Molten and mountainous to stream
Over the wound asleep
Sheep white hollow farms


To Wales in my arms.
Hoo, there, in castle keep,
You king singsong owls, who moonbeam
The flickering runs and dive
The dingle furred deer dead!
Huloo, on plumbed bryns,
O my ruffled ring dove
in the hooting, nearly dark
With Welsh and reverent rook,
Coo rooing the woods' praise,
who moons her blue notes from her nest
Down to the curlew herd!
Ho, hullaballoing clan
Agape, with woe
In your beaks, on the gabbing capes!
Heigh, on horseback hill, jack
Whisking hare! who
Hears, there, this fox light, my flood ship's
Clangour as I hew and smite
(A clash of anvils for my
Hubbub and fiddle, this tune
On a tongued puffball)
But animals thick as thieves
On God's rough tumbling grounds
(Hail to His beasthood!).
Beasts who sleep good and thin,
Hist, in hogsback woods! The haystacked
Hollow farms in a throng
Of waters cluck and cling,
And barnroofs cockcrow war!
O kingdom of neighbors finned
Felled and quilled, flash to my patch
Work ark and the moonshine
Drinking Noah of the bay,
With pelt, and scale, and fleece:
Only the drowned deep bells
Of sheep and churches noise
Poor peace as the sun sets
And dark shoals every holy field.
We will ride out alone, and then,
Under the stars of Wales,
Cry, Multitudes of arks! Across
The water lidded lands,
Manned with their loves they'll move
Like wooden islands, hill to hill.
Huloo, my prowed dove with a flute!
Ahoy, old, sea-legged fox,
Tom tit and Dai mouse!
My ark sings in the sun
At God speeded summer's end
And the flood flowers now. 

Dylan Thomas 

Convoluted, roping, twisting words - 

Dylan, you draw us in.

Seashaken house, starfish sands, men tackled with clouds, cities of nine day's night. 

 You live in a myth-world, a deeper-than-surface, marrow-life.

You dip in and out of this place, showing us what is there, bringing as much of it back to us

as words will carry. 

Your net of words has caught for us flashes of otherwise unimagined beauty.

Is this true? Is this place really where we live?

Is the poem an Ark to carry us there?

Is it enough to envision it?

I want to walk in the holy fields.