Tag Archives: poetry

Wendell Berry’s Mother

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To My Mother

by Wendell Berry

<!– (from Entries) –>

I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.

So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,

prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,

and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of it

already given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed. 

~     ~     ~

I received a keeper Mother’s Day card in the mail yesterday.  Here’s one sentence from it:

I honor you for the hard work, blood, sweat and tears

that you poured into me as a child and want you to know

that these have been small seeds planted in my life;

but they have reaped a bounty of blessings on me.

This same son wrote a Mother’s Day note when we had been reading Milton.  It began

To my precious,

I love you more than false Unas

or a damnéd sprite

a sentiment that made me laugh (you have to read the Faerie Queen to get it) and rejoice both.

The Light is Back

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Another sign of spring: there is a window of sunlight shining into our kitchen in the early mornings.  During the winter the yawning sun just can’t stretch its beams around to this spot.  Now it plays peek a boo for five minutes. In August it will linger long enough for a cup of tea.

The light that brightens the tulips and roses also illumines the bookshelf in the hallway.  Isn’t it odd how light can both lighten and lift our spirits?

William Cowper, my father’s favorite poet,
struggled with depression and wrote about the effect of light.

Sometimes a light surprises the Christian while he sings;
It is the Lord, who rises with healing in His wings:
When comforts are declining, He grants the soul again
A season of clear shining, to cheer it after rain.

(Click link for full lyrics)

~   ~   ~

God Moves in a Mysterious Way, another Cowper hymn,
was originally titled Light Shining Out of Darkness.

What is lightening your heart today?
 

A Deer in the Target

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Here it is halfway through April and I have not even mentioned National Poetry Month.  This poem, introduced to me by The Writer’s Almanac, delights me on many levels.  All my sons are deer hunters, but one spent time as a “team member” in a red polo shirt in Target.  Enjoy!

A Deer in the Target 
by Robert Fanning 

I only got a ten-second shot,
grainy footage of the huge deer
caught in the crosshairs
of a ceiling security camera, a scene
of utter chaos in a strip mall store,
shown on the late local news.
The beautiful beast clearly scared
to death in this fluorescent forest,
its once graceful legs giving out
on mopped floors, think Bambi
as a fawn its first time standing.
Seeing the scattering shoppers,
you’d think a demon had barged
into this temple of commerce,
as they sacrificed their merchandise,
stranded full carts and dove for cover.
And when the aisles were emptied
of these bargain hunters, who was left
but an army of brave red-shirted
team members, mobilized by
the store manager over the intercom
to drive this wild animal out.
I wager there’s nothing on this
in the How to Approach
an Unsatisfied Shopper
section in the Target employee handbook,
but there they were: the cashiers
and stockers, the Floor Supervisor,
the Assistant Floor Supervisor,
the Store Manager,
the Assistant Store Manager,
the District Associate Manager,
the District Supervisor,
the District Assistant Supervisor
and visiting members from
the Regional Corporate Office,
running after it, it running after
them, bull’s eye logos on their red golf shirts,
everyone frenzied and panting: razor hooves
clattering on the mirror-white floor tiles,
nostrils heaving, its rack clearing
off-season clothes from clearance racks.
All of them, in Target,
chasing the almighty buck.

Like Wheat Arising Green

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Now the green blade rises 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 arising green.

In the grave they laid him, love by hatred slain,
Thinking that he would never wake again,
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen;
Love is come again, like wheat arising green.

Forth he came at Easter, like the risen grain,
He that for three days in the grave had lain;
Raised from the dead, my living Lord is seen:
Love is come again, like wheat arising green.

When our hearts are wintry, grieving or in pain,
Your touch can call us back to life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat arising green.

~  J.M.C. Crum (1872-1958)

Thankful, Spring Edition

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Sky_Lark_e09-1-072_l_1

photo credit: National Audubon Society

Thankful, Spring Edition

Fair sunshine and small flecks of green,
revealing treasures emerging,
an opened window, freshened air,
the deep inhaling of this grace.

Sorrow distilled,
ache and agony
poured in one vessel,
yearning for relief;
You who gather tears in a bottle,
hear our prayer.

For reunions in the produce section,
full-exposure answers to politely worded questions,
so satisfying an exchange
that we wonder
why
we ever let our friendship drift…

For a cataract of books,
flooding my shelves,
swamping my senses.
I splash
and sing
and scoop them up,
drenched in delight,
mesmerized by the mist
of so many nourishing words.

Balsamic vinegar,
fresh-squeezed lime,
tangy smooth yogurt,
crumbled cashews,
aroma of cilantro,
pan-fried asparagus,
savory lamb,
sweet oranges,
a cup of cold water.

For a well-placed chord or two,
a progression that knocks down
any preconceived notions,
a new way of hearing
a familiar tune.

For nicknames and
the way they bore
through apathy and passivity.
The current that keeps cracklin’
when I hear his voice say
“Hey, Babe!”

The foreshadow of Easter
in the springtime cycles:
awakening,
arising,
blooming,
growing,
lightening,
warming,
returning,
rejoicing.

The song of the crocus and daffodil,
the squeaks and chirps and outside noises,
The solid joy of this abiding truth:
Winter is past.
Death is dead.

Awake, my soul, and sing!

~

“Ten thousand thousand precious gifts
my daily thanks employ;
nor is the least a cheerful heart
that tastes those gifts with joy.”*

* Joseph Addison

More Thankful posts.

 

Twiceborn

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An offering from my husband, Curt, the occasional poet.

Twiceborn…

 

 

                                                Conception’s seed                  

                                                            Adam’s son

                                                Womb’s darkness                               

                                                            Sin’s tomb

                                                Unconscious growth                          

                                                            Blind existence

                                                Sleepful swimming                            

                                                            Dead-man walking

                                                Nine-month gestation                        

                                                            Thirty-year enslavement

                                                Stressed contractions                         

                                                            Offensive preaching

                                                Pushed and squeezed                         

                                                            Drawn and dragged

                                                Useless resistance                               

                                                            Excuses exhausted

                                                Optionless choice                               

                                                            Broken will

                                                Distant voices                                    

                                                            Divine call

                                                Squinting brightness                          

                                                            Glorious light

                                                Crying gasp                                        

                                                            Holy Breath

                                                Severed cord                                      

                                                            Bondage broken

                                                Washed and wrapped                        

                                                            Baptized and robed

                                                Clean and safe                                               

                                                            Forgiven and kept

                                                Daddy’s arm-cradle                           

                                                            Father’s mercy

                                                Mommy’s milk                                   

                                                            Mother Church

                                                Family likeness                                   

                                                            Kingdom membership

                                                A child is born                                               

                                                            A son is reborn

 

…of water and the Spirit


Betjeman and Toplady

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This is an addendum to the post about altered hymns.  And an addendum to the post about WWII reading.

Last night I picked up Trains and Buttered Toast: Selected Radio Talks by the poet John Betjeman (pronounced Betchman).  Random flipping brought me to a talk about Augustus Toplady (how would you say his name?), the author of the hymn Rock of Ages. Betjeman’s words:

“One further fact about the hymn, before going on to its author: in my hymn books the last verse has been revised to start:

When I draw this fleeting breath,
When mine eyelids close in death…

Toplady’s words are far more vivid and less mellifluously Victorian: they are more characteristic of Quarles and the seventeenth-century poets Toplady loved:

When I draw this fleeting breath
When my eyestrings break in death…

I always sing that line myself, despite the rest of the congregation.”

The heat and intensity with which Toplady and John Wesley publicly quarrel is a bit of a shock.  Controversy in the church is nothing new.  One last quote from the article, an Augustus Toplady quote:

“The deathbed of a Christian is the antechamber of heaven, the very suburbs of the New Jerusalem.”

~     ~     ~

I am fascinated, intrigued and just plain interested in John Betjeman, a man about whom C.S. Lewis (his tutor at Oxford) wrote “I wish I could get rid of the idle prig.”  Yet a book critic called him “one of the pleasantest minor writers in the world.”

Several of Betjeman’s books now populate my wish list, but there is one I plan to buy soon: Sweet Songs of Zion: Selected Radio Talks.  From the product description:

…these talks concerning hymns and hymn writers were Betjeman’s swan song as a broadcaster. ‘Hymns are the poems of the people’, Betjeman observed in his first talk, and went on to show how variously this insight has been borne out over generations. Rich in anecdote and packed with information, these timeless talks will appeal to fans of Betjeman and newcomers alike, and will inspire everyone who has a fondness for hymns, and delights in Betjeman’s unique voice.  
 

My Boy Jack

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Last night my men put a moratorium on sad (WWI) war movies.  Ain’t gonna study war no more!

In the all-or-nothing mentality that marinates in the marrow of all those born with my maiden name, I have had my guys watch a dozen movies on the Great War with me.  (psst – don’t mention it, but there are seven more in my queue – there is a delete button, I guess)  This 2007 BBC movie of a screen play written by David Haig is a top notch movie that will surely make you cry.  There is not a happy ending, my friend.

Daniel Radcliffe plays young John “Jack” Kipling, a young man whose desire to go to war is thwarted by his extreme nearsightedness.  His father uses his influence to get Jack into the Irish Guards. 

The arc of this movie about Rudyard Kipling and his family is similar to the arc in the story of C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands.  A strong speaker with large audiences makes bold, booming declarative statements.  Life intervenes; by the end of story you see a profoundly changed man struggling with his private grief. 

David Haig, who wrote the screenplay and played Kipling, looks uncannily like Rudyard Kipling.  Part of the movie was filmed at Bateman’s, Kiplings estate in Sussex.

I need to learn more about Kipling.  He’s considered controversial these days, especially his poem “The White Man’s Burden.”  His astonishing ability to tell stories is framed well in this movie.  But he was indubitably an British imperialist, a man of his time.  Here is his poem, My Boy Jack. 

My Boy Jack

“HAVE you news of my boy Jack?”
    Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
    Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

“Has any one else had word of him?”
    Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
    Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
    None this tide,
    Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind—
    Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
    This tide,
    And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
    And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

How To Be a Poet

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I found this poem at the Poetry Foundation site. 

How To Be A Poet
by Wendell Berry

(to remind myself)

i

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill–more of each
than you have–inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity.  Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

ii

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

iii

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

Little Lamb

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The Lamb
William Blake

Little Lamb, who made thee

Does thou know who made thee

Gave thee life & bid thee feed.

By the stream & o’er the mead;

Gave thee clothing of delight,

Softest clothing woolly bright;

Gave thee such a tender voice.

Making all the vales rejoice:

Little Lamb who made thee

Does thou know who made thee



Little Lamb I’ll tell thee,

Little Lamb I’ll tell thee;

He is called by thy name,

For he calls himself a Lamb:

He is meek & he is mild,

He became a little child

I a child & thou a lamb,

We are called by His name,

Little Lamb God bless thee,

Little Lamb God bless thee.