All You Can See or Imagine

"Summer Night", AkagenoSaru

All You Can See or Imagine

Who has scooped up the ocean

in his two hands,

or measured the sky between his thumb and little finger,

who has put all the earth's dirt in one of his baskets,

weighed each mountain and hill?

Who could ever have told God what to do

or taught him his business?

What expert would he have gone to for advice,

what school would he attend to learn justice?

...

"So - who is like me?

Who holds a candle to me?" says The Holy.

Look at the night skies:

Who do you think made all this?

Who marches this army of stars out each night,

counts them off, calls each by name,

- so magnificent! so powerful! - 

and never overlooks a single one!

Why would you ever complain, O Jacob,

or whine, Israel, saying,

"God has lost track of me,

He doesn't care what happens to me'?

Don't you know anything? Haven't you been listening?

God doesn't come and go. God lasts.

He doesn't get tired out, doesn't pause to catch his breath.

And he knows everything, inside and out.

He energizes those who get tired,

gives fresh strength to dropouts.

For even young people tire and drop out,

young folk in their prime stumble and fall.

But those who wait upon God get fresh strength.

They spread their wings and soar like eagles,

They run and don't get tired,

they walk and don't lag behind.

Isaiah 40:12-14, 25-31

fr. The Message

Some prefer the more poetic King James version of the Bible (I think, when it comes down to it, I do too). But there is something interesting about the way Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the Bible brings a new slant to the old familiar words. I like to read both, or several versions, just to compare the tone and feeling each conveys. This passage is a wonderful example of a “wake-me-up”. Something to take up after a sleepless night in which your worries have grown to enormous scope and paralyzing power, where the guilty corners of conscience are full of ugly and unshakable recollections, where the fear that there are nothing but odds against and nothing to even us, to balance, to restore or right us, and then, the morning – my gosh, have you ever felt that inexplicable loneliness of simply being alive? Well that’s when I take up the wake-up poetry, the break-up-this-narrowing-mental-corridor-going-nowhere poetry; and listen to me on this, there is no better place to find this but in the Bible. It’s like a hand upraised, a voice that says, “Peace. Be still.” And it stops. It all stops. The noise in my head, the tightness of my chest, the snowballing thoughts. It’s like being off-kilter, out of joint, askew, and having someone take me by the shoulders and set me right in place. My place. Where I fit, where I belong.

“Who is like me?”

Oh yeah. There it is. That’s right. My God, my God, my heavenly father – he knows. He has not forgotten. He has not been sleeping or looking the other way. He is working, he has never paused, hesitated, or faltered. He has not changed his mind about loving me. I can shake off this weight. I can stand up straight. I can go on.

The King James version gets the spirit of the last verse best -

“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength;

they shall mount up with wings like eagles;

they shall run and not grow weary;

and they shall walk, and not faint.”

Nomad Heart

Dan McCarthy

Nomad Heart

for Kevin Page


Sometimes looking to the cold wintry stars

you can feel the planet move as it whirls

in the flux of the galaxy, the whole

path of the milky way buzzing like a hive.


They say it’s better to journey than arrive—

halting being the usual rigmarole

of move-along-shift. Sometimes the soul

just craves a place to rest, safe from earthly wars.


The city lights come on in twos and threes

and leaves are freezing hard in mucky pools,

cars are stuck in jams or droning home.


If we’re not brought to our knees, we’ll fall to our knees

in thanks, in praise, in trust, in hope—the rule

of law mapped clear on heaven’s ample dome.



Paula Meehan,  fr."Painting Rain"

 

 

Meehan's description of looking up at the stars  - did you recognize how she felt? This is the thing about poetry, it shows us the things that flow between us, strangers, friends, enemies. How many of us have looked up at the night sky, and thought we felt the earth moving in its orbit, saw the stars and the more we looked, the more we saw? How small, how small we feel! And yet, we have our part. Our place. We, stars and cars, cities and planets, moving together on a journey - through time and space  - to where? To what end? And is it really better to journey than to arrive? "If we're not brought to our knees, we'll fall to our knees..." Is that true? Are you thankful, hopeful, full of praise? Should you be? Is there "a rule of law mapped clear on heaven's ample dome"? Is there order and purpose and destination? What are the stars saying?

 

 

And Death Shall Have No Dominion

Unknown

And Death Shall Have No Dominion

And death shall have no dominion.

Dead man naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the west moon; 

When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,

They shall have stars at elbow and foot; 

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; 

Though lovers be lost love shall not; 

And death shall have no dominion.

Dylan Thomas

This is one stanza of a longer poem, but enough for today. (Thomas's images often baffle me, and I wish I had on hand my trusty guidebook to all things Thomas - "Where Have All the Old Words Got Me?" by Ralph Maud, who is wonderful at unraveling his poetry.) Last night, a dear family member of mine passed away. To know that love does not die, that death does not rule - matters a great deal.

 

Landscape

Tom Perkinson

from "Landscape"


"I want to watch the blue mist of the night come on,
The windows and the stars illumined, one by one,
The rivers of dark smoke pour upward lazily,
And the moon rise and turn them silver. I shall see
The springs, the summers, and the autumns slowly pass;
And when old Winter puts his blank face to the glass,
I shall close all my shutters, pull the curtains tight,
And build me stately palaces by candlelight."


Charles Baudelaire, trans. George Dillon

I like the way this poem moves from outside, watching the night come on and the colours change, to inside, and watching the candle's flicker. That retreat from Winter is like a kind of hibernation. I imagine someone reading by candlelight, with stories and characters coming to life out of thin air. It's magical, when you think about it - blue mist and silver moons rising outside, and whole worlds within our heads. What fortunate beings we are. Beauty everywhere.



  

Fern Hill

James Bateman, "Haytime in the Cotswolds"

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
     The night above the dingle starry,
          Time let me hail and climb
     Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
          Trail with daisies and barley
     Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
     In the sun that is young once only,
          Time let me play and be 
     Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
          And the sabbath rang slowly
     In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
     And playing, lovely and watery
          And fire green as grass.
     And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
     Flying with the ricks, and the horses
          Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
     Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
          The sky gathered again
     And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
     Out of the whinnying green stable
          On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
     In the sun born over and over,
          I ran my heedless ways,
     My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
     Before the children green and golden
          Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
     In the moon that is always rising,
          Nor that riding to sleep
     I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
          Time held me green and dying
     Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Dylan Thomas 

One of my most favorite poems ever. There is so much to say about it, I hesitate to say anything.

Doesn't it say it all?