Delerium

angeloangelo

Delerium

Such green, such green,

this apple-, pea- and celadon,

this emerald and pine and lime

unsheathed to make

a miser weep, to make his puny

bunions shrink; these seas

and seas of peony, these showy

tons of rose

to urge a musted monk disrobe,

an eremitic nun unfold;

such breathy, breathy moth

and wasp, such gleeful,

greedy bee to bid

the bully hearts of cops

and bosses sob,

to tell a stubby root unstub, a rusted

hinge unrust, the slug unsalt;

to stir the fusted

lungs to brim, the skin to sting,

the dormant,

tinning tongue to singe and hymn.

Hailey Leithauser

The strange yellow-green of spring is everywhere. "Such green, such green." This poem makes me smile. The extravagances of colour that catapult into effusions of musical language  - it's like a word-dance. Run to the dictionary quick! Musted? Eremetic? Fusted? Get your mind and mouth around those! This is wordplay, Leithauser loves words. Sheer delight, if you ask me.

A Prayer in Spring

Nikolai Astrup, "Apple Trees in Bloom"

A Prayer in Spring

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;

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,

The which it is reserved for God above

To sanctify to what far ends He will,

But which it only needs that we fulfil.

Robert Frost

There are too many worries crowding in. What's going to happen? What can I do about this problem? And what if  that happens? My head is spinning. And yet there's nothing I can do. I can't make anything better by worrying. All I can do is surrender it up, and pray, and move forward into the day and the things and events and people in it. In fact, I might as well enjoy what there is to enjoy right here in front of me. "Keep us here." Yes, please, here, where the leaves are greening, the garden is filling in, here, now. 

The Forge

Stanhope Alexander Forbes, "Forging the Anchor"

The Forge

All I know is a door into the dark.

Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting;

Inside, the hammered anvil’s short-pitched ring,

The unpredictable fantail of sparks

Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.

The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,

Horned as a unicorn, at one end and square,

Set there immoveable: an altar

Where he expends himself in shape and music.

Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,

He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter

Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows;

Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and flick

To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.

Seamus Heaney

One of the most arresting first lines. It has dug its way into my head. This is another poem that is a kind of self-portrait - this time of a poet and his work. That "All I know is a door into the dark." so perfectly describes the step of faith a writer takes when he picks up a pen. The tools of the blacksmith's trade, the hammer and anvil "an altar/Where he expends himself in shape and music", is so much what he does, hammering out the thoughts on the page till they have a form and a rhythm. I love how Heaney sees writing as physical, gritty hard labour. His poem about digging is similar. For him, poetry is not a higher plane, it's a getting down to earth, an elemental, age-old craft that is useful and necessary to everyday life. Writing is "To beat real iron out, to work the bellows." I love this poem, both sides of it - the description of the blacksmith at work in his forge, a dying art, and the inner poem that shows the drive and commitment to creation that a poet must sweat and hammer out in words.

 

To the Dandelion

Joke Frima

To the Dandelion

Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,
Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold,
High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they
An Eldorado in the grass have found,
Which not the rich earth's ample round
May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me
Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be.

Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish prow
Through the primeval hush of Indian seas,
Nor wrinkled the lean brow
Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease;
'Tis the Spring's largess, which she scatters now
To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand,
Though most hearts never understand
To take it at God's value, but pass by
The offered wealth with unrewarded eye.

Thou art my tropics and mine Italy;
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime;
The eyes thou givest me
Are in the heart, and heed not space or time:
Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee
Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment
In the white lily's breezy tent,
His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first
From the dark green thy yellow circles burst.

Then think I of deep shadows on the grass,
Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze,
Where, as the breezes pass,
The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways,
Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass,
Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue
That from the distance sparkle through
Some woodland gap, and of a sky above,
Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move.

My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with thee;
The sight of thee calls back the robin's song,
Who, from the dark old tree
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long,
And I, secure in childish piety,
Listened as if I heard an angel sing
With news from heaven, which he could bring
Fresh every day to my untainted ears
When birds and flowers and I were happy peers.

How like a prodigal doth nature seem,
When thou, for all thy gold, so common art!
Thou teachest me to deem
More sacredly of every human heart,
Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam
Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show,
Did we but pay the love we owe,
And with a child's undoubting wisdom look
On all these living pages of God's book.

James Russell Lowell 

We've such a late spring that I have looked for each progressive sign of it - there is an order of appearance that the flowers follow and I don't know that I have ever waited so long for the dandelions or been so happy to see them. A friend and I were recently talking about plants that we remember from childhood, and it made me realize that there are some plants that it could be said we have relationships with. Houseplants of course (some people name them and talk to them, and have them for years and years), but also the plants of the lawn and field and roadside: clover, vetch, daisies, bluebells, fireweed, buttercups, and above all, the dandelion. The dandelion is King - abundant, vivid, persistent, a living sunshine. 

Love is Come Again

Benoît Trimborn

Love is Come Again

Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain,
Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain;
love lives again, that with the dead has been:
love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

In the grave they laid him, love whom men had slain,
thinking that never he would wake again,
laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
love is come again like wheat that springeth green.

Forth he came at Easter, like the risen grain,
he that for three days in the grave had lain,
quick from the dead my risen Lord is seen:
love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

When our hearts are wintry, grieving in pain,
thy touch can call us back to life again,
fields of hearts that dead and bare have been:
love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

J.M.C. Crum

He is risen! Happy Easter!

A Quiet Roar

J Kirk Richards, "Though He Were Dead, Yet Shall He Live"

A Quiet Roar

one

he lays his left hand along the beam

hand that moulded clay into fluttering birds

hand that cupped wild flowers to learn their peace

hand that stroked the bee’s soft back and touched death’s sting

two

he stretches his right hand across the grain

hand that blessed a dead corpse quick

hand that smeared blind spittle into sight

hand that burgeoned bread, smoothed down the rumpled sea

three
 

he stands laborious

sagging, split, homo erectus, poor bare forked thing

hung on nails like a picture

he is not beautiful

blood sweats from him in rain

far off where we are lost, desert dry

thunder begins its quiet roar

the first drops startle us alive

the cloud no bigger

than a man’s hand

Veronica Zundel 

We know this story so well. Jesus, God's son, dies on the cross. We know it was for love of us. For love of the whole world. Did nature, did the animals know their Creator walked the earth? Did they recognize him? The winds and waves did. And when he was crucified, the sun darkened, there were earthquakes, rocks split apart, and the curtain in the temple was torn in two. And yet somehow, Jesus' death in the midst of all this, was easily overlooked by humans. 


  

i am a little church

Charles White, ""Move On Up a Little Higher"

i am a little church

i am a little church (no great cathedral)
far from the splendour and squalor of hurrying cities
--i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are the prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying) children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope, and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church (far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
--i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring, i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

e.e. cummings

Now here is a poem I hold in my heart. So cup-overflowing with joy, so drenched in gratitude and shining with praise. "My prayers are the prayers of earth's own clumsily striving...children" - so true, clumsily striving children - I am definitely one of those. I can hardly call this a poem - it seems to come more and more alive, until it sings - it actually sings in me. I can't even think about how it was written, it's so loud. It says so much that (for me) it drowns out the author. Like one of those rare moments when the writer becomes an open channel for beauty. "Around me surges a miracle of unceasing birth and glory and death and resurrection" - beautiful. And most beautiful of all - "i lift my diminutive spire to merciful Him Whose only now is forever: standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence" - I've mentioned before how cumming's God is the power of "Yes", and "Now". Well, Yes! and Now! and Amen, Amen, Amen. May this be the truth I stand in always.








 

Requiem

Josef Lauer Waldbodenstück

REQUIEM

for Judy

It is early March, each day a little bit greener,

crocus and snowdrops already in bloom, daffodils

sending up the tips of their spears.

When summer comes, we will take you to the river,

trickle your ashes through our fingers.

You will return to us in rain and snow,

season after season, roses, daisies, asters,

chrysanthemums. Wait for us on the other side.

The maple trees let go their red-gold leaves in fall;

in spring, apple blossoms blow to the ground

in the slightest breeze, a dusting of snow.

Let our prayers lift you, small and fine as they are,

like the breath of a sleeping baby. There is never

enough time. It runs through our fingers like water

in a stream. How many springs are enough,

peepers calling in the swamps? How many firefly-spangled

summers? Your father is waiting on the river bank,

he has two fishing poles and is baiting your hook.

Cross over, fish are rising to the surface,

a great blue heron stalks in the cattails,

the morning mist is rising, and the sun is breaking

through. Go, and let our hearts be broken.

We will not forget you.

Barbara Crooker

I know, it's April, not March. That last line is what matters to me today. And yes, "How many springs are enough?". A question I can't answer.

 

Palm Sunday

Minerva Teichert, "Christ's Entry Into Jerusalem"

        Palm Sunday
 

        Astride the colt and claimed as King
        that Sunday morning in the spring,
        he passed a thorn bush flowering red
        that one would plait to crown his head.

        He passed a vineyard where the wine
        was grown for men of royal line
        and where the dregs were also brewed
        into a gall for Calvary’s rood.

        A purple robe was cast his way,
        then caught and kept until that day
        when, with its use, a trial would be
        profaned into a mockery.

        His entourage was forced to wait
        to let a timber through the gate,
        a shaft that all there might have known
        would be an altar and a throne.

        Marie J. Post

Diving into the Wreck

Anatoly Beloshchin

Diving into the Wreck

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

Adrienne Rich 

Oh I love this poem. Everything about it speaks to me. As a metaphor for introspection, it's 

unrivaled. "I go down...I have to learn alone...I came to explore the wreck...I came to see

the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail." "We are the half-destroyed instruments that

once held to a course..."  And that, "worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty", such an exquisite

combination of loss and hope.   

Therefore Am I Still

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Therefore am I still 

A lover of the meadows and the woods 

And mountains; and of all that we behold 

From this green earth; of all the mighty world 

Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create, 

And what perceive; well pleased to recognise 

In nature and the language of the sense 

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, 

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 

Of all my moral being. 

Wordsworth

Wordsworth's love for nature is moving. I don't know if any other poet conveys that sense of peace and 
rootedness the way he does. I can almost feel the man behind this poem - see him walking the trails, tramping over moors, through woods, observing and taking in the landscapes, the fresh air filling him and strengthening him, lifting him out of himself. I can relate. I wouldn't go so far as to say nature is the "soul of all my moral being", but the beauty of wild places and things is a necessity to my health - and I think that's true of all of us, whether we recognize it or not.

 

 

Fairy Tale

Steven Outram, "Unseen"

Fairy Tale

He built himself a house
              his foundations,
              his stones,
              his walls,
              his roof overhead,
              his chimney and smoke,
              his view from the window.

He made himself a garden,
                his fence,
                his thyme,
                his earthworm,
                his evening dew.

He cut out his bit of sky above.

And he wrapped the garden in the sky
and the house in the garden
and packed the lot in a handkerchief
and went off
lone as an arctic fox
through the cold
unending
rain
into the world.

Miroslav Holub (trans George Theiner)

I love this idea, that you can just wrap up all your best-beloved things and memories and dreams and take them with you wherever you go. Not merely that you don't have to abandon them, but also that they are a source of warmth and companionship in a world that is not so friendly. And though it seems fairy-tale-like, it isn't really. The things you believe in, the good you've experienced, the hopes you treasure - these are most definitely companions to us wherever we go and whatever places we leave behind.