47 Faith poems

First they pulled from the burning a miracle, then a mistake. The Lord will lift them the priest with the grief in his eyes cried. Lord, what blue eyes bound there, what hurling, diving, shining, burning — reason surfaces and sinks, sinks and surfaces. Dawn without sunrise. Gray. Purple. Her Majesty in mourning. Her Majesty the warring. In the double house of  life all this was repeating itself, Naneferkaptah had already himself lived Setne’s story. When the rains began the teams with two-by-fours found the going treacherous as those in the desert found the food wretched. They prayed to the golden serpent on the staff to save them. And the serpent stretched itself tap, tap and became a hymn, white-throated, rising to give itself up for the good of the chosen ones. Mother I remember the buttons on your dressing gown. So blue and beady-eyed and true, when did I begin To fear them. The world now not so round with us. Velocity threatening to meet, to marry density at every corner carrying carrying Who can see the writing on our foreheads almost wet still Who can see tap, tap algae bloom beneath the board smoke from the sky Tell me if that is a hand if it is human what will it speak

He did not fall then, blind upon a road, nor did his lifelong palsy disappear. He heard no voice, save the familiar, ceaseless, self-interrogation of the sore perplexed. The kettle steamed and whistled. A heavy truck downshifted near the square. He heard a child calling, and heard a mourning dove intone its one dull call. For all of that, his wits remained quite dim. He breathed and spoke the words he read. If what had been long dead then came alive, that resurrection was by all appearances metaphorical. The miracle arrived without display. He held a book, and as he read he found the very thing he’d sought. Just that. A life with little hurt but one, the lucky gift of a raveled book, a kettle slow to heat, and time enough therefore to lift the book and find in one slight passage the very wish he dared not ask aloud, until, that is, he spoke the words he read.

Lord, it’s not true That my faith is cooling. It’s just that people Are saying that candle smoke Has caused cancer in church mice. And I also worry that candle light Is too weak to reach your cloud. Do I need a hydrogen candle? Are the Angels into lasers? Lord, as I think about it, Lately I haven’t had much to thank you for. Are you on vacation?

Which are the magic moments in ordinary time? All of them, for those who can see. That is what redemption means, I decide at the meeting. Then walk with David wearing his new Yale T-shirt and new long hair to 103. Leonard and Eileen come, too. Leonard wears a shark’s tooth on a chain around his neck and long blond hair. These days he’s the manager of Boots and Saddles (“Bras and Girdles,” my beloved Bobby used to say) and costumer for the Gay Cable Network’s Dating Game. One week the announcer is a rhinestone cowboy, sequin shirt and black fur chaps, the next a leatherman, etc. Eileen’s crewcut makes her face light up. Underneath our hairstyles, 23 years of sobriety, all told— the age of a girl who’s “not so young but not so very old,” wrote Berryman, who flew from his recovery with the force of a poet hitting bottom. It’s not the way I choose to go out of this restaurant or day today, and I have a choice. Wanda the comedian comes over to our table. “Call me wicked Wanda,” she smirks when we’re introduced. Why is New York City awash in stand-up comics at the least funny point in its history? Still, some things stay the same. People wonder what the people in their buildings would think if the ones who were wondering became incredibly famous, as famous as Madonna. Debby Harry lived in Eileen’s building in the Village in the early seventies, and she was just the shy girl in the band upstairs. Poets read the writing of their friends, and are happy when they like it thoroughly, when the work’s that good and the crippling sense of competition stays away. Trips get planned: David home to California, Eileen to New Mexico, Chris and I to France and Spain, on vectors which will spread out from a single point, like ribs of an umbrella. Then after the comfort of a wedge of blueberry peach pie and cup of Decaf, sober friends thread separate ways home through the maze of blankets on the sidewalk covered with the scraps of someone else’s life. Mine consists of understanding that the magic isn’t something that I make, but something that shines through the things I make and do and say the way a brooch or scrap of fabric shines from the detritus to catch Leonard’s eye and be of use for costumes, when I am fearless and thorough enough to give it room, all the room there is in ordinary time, which embraces all the people and events and hopes that choke the street tonight and still leaves room for everyone and everything and every other place, the undescribed and indescribable, more various and cacophonous than voice can tell or mind conceive, and for the sky’s vast depths from which they’re all a speck of light.

MY future will not copy fair my past On any leaf but Heaven's. Be fully done, Supernal Will ! I would not fain be one Who, satisfying thirst and breaking fast Upon the fulness of the heart, at last Saith no grace after meat. My wine hath run Indeed out of my cup, and there is none To gather up the bread of my repast Scattered and trampled ! Yet I find some good In earth's green herbs, and streams that bubble up Clear from the darkling ground, — content until I sit with angels before better food. Dear Christ ! when thy new vintage fills my cup, This hand shall shake no more, nor that wine spill.

Awake in a giant night is where I am There is a river where my soul, hungry as a horse drinks beside me An hour of immense possibility flies by and I do nothing but sit in the present which keeps changing moment to moment How can I tell you my mind is a blanket? It is an amazing story you won’t believe and a beautiful land where something is always doing in the barns especially in autumn Sliding down the hayrick! By March the sun is lingering and the land turns wet Brooks grow loud The eddies fill with green scum Crocuses lift their heads to say hello Soon it is good to be planting By then the woods are overflowing with dogwood, redbud, hickory, red and white oaks, hazelnut bushes, violets, jacks-in-the-pulpit, skunk cabbages, pawpaws and May apples whose names thrill you because you can name them! There are quail and rabbits too—but I go on too long Like the animal, I must stop by the water’s edge to have a drink and think things over * That was good. The drink I mean I feel refreshed and ready for anything Though I’m not in Vermont or Kentucky unfortunately but in New York City, the toughest place in the world And it’s December Here someone is always weeping, including me though I tend to cry in monster waves then turn into a fish wallowing in my own salty Puddle! Look out If you aren’t wearing boots you’ll be sorry and soggy too * This season’s cruelty hurts me and others, I’m sure, who’d rather be elsewhere but can’t because of their jobs, families, friends, money It’s rough anyway you look at it But what can you do? It’s worse elsewhere, I’m sure Take Vietnam No thanks I think about Vietnam a lot, however and wonder if I’ll ever “see” it The way I’ve seen Europe, I mean Those pretty Dutch girls! They all ride bicycles In Venice you travel by boat or foot The metro and the underground register like the names in connection with them: Hugo, Stephen, Stuart, Larry, Lee, Harry, David, Maxine What does it all mean? I never ask that, being shy In this apartment in which I dwell these thoughts pass by I hope you won’t mind the mess when you do too * You just walk in up a flight and you’re in paradise A cup of coffee, an easy chair, a loving person waiting for you who’s washing the dishes, reading a book Outside someone’s worrying about love and not sitting down either He’s probably freezing his ass off right now! And other vital parts which would feel great in the country, taking a walk, a hike, shoveling snow Though you can do that right here * The hub of the universe is where I am in a night whose promise grows with me, unlike the snow melting in the gutter Whatever I do, it is beside me I look out the window, there is night I sit in this lighted room knowing this night Night! Night! I wish you’d go so I could go to the post office, the bank, the supermarket Why aren’t they open at night? I wonder Then realize I’m not the only person who’s considered in the grand scope of daily living There are those fast asleep who want to be and would be horrified if the post office, the bank, and the supermarket were only open at night for you can’t be all there all the time I myself am only here part of the time which is enough For there are other places to run to Uptown, for example, where energy rushes you like some hideous but intriguing chemical you can’t ignore and you want to absorb the wisdom these buildings have How do they feel so high up like that? Pretty good, they seem to say in their absolute way But it’s the people inside who turn us on By then you are gone off in a cab and you are not alone I am beside you The streets are familiar from just traveling through We rarely stop and when we do there’s a reason Which is too bad We miss a lot for this same reason * They’re probably feeding the chickens about this time The smell of chicken feed overwhelms me The rooster crows on a 7th Street fire escape Breakfast is ready There is a forest by the river near the barn where things are happening, a whole new world on the edge of dawn * My little world goes on St. Mark’s Place To be not tired, but elated, I sing this song I think of The Beatles and The Beach Boys and the songs they sing It is a different thing to be behind the sound then leave it forever and it goes on without them, needing only you and me Here I am, though you are asleep The morning of December 3rd dawns on me in the shape of a poem called “Giant Night” It must end before it is too late All over the world children will celebrate Christmas And families will gather together to give and take this season Other religions and customs will prevail in their own separate ways having nothing to do with Christmas Soldiers will cease fire Some won’t know the difference but might be able to sense it in the air The smell of holly, pine, eggnog The friendly faces of Santa and his elves All these will add up to something and be gone forever Just like what is here one minute and not the next.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

For we are thy people, and thou art our God; We are thy children and thou our father. We are thy servants, and thou art our master; We are thy congregation and thou our portion. We are thine inheritance, thou our lot; We are thy flock, thou our shepherd. We are thy vineyard, and thou art our keeper; We are thy work, and thou our creator. We are thy faithful one: thou art our beloved; We are thy chosen: thou art the Lord our God. We are thy subjects, thou our King; We are thine acknowledged people, thou our acknowledged Lord.

Darkness is not a death, does not obliterate, will not bury you or take your breath away. Darkness will not erase you the way it erases day with night because darkness is not the clock but merely the time falling away from the clock's circular face. Darkness is not the loss but the thing misplaced, not the hammer but the nail in its curved emergence from wood's grasp, not the storm's insurgence but the limbs broken off from their miraculous suspension in a storm out far, beyond us. Darkness is not about hearts, imperfect as they are, but what leaks through their incorrigible doors, not the stars but the glissade or glide of their dust. Darkness no longer shields the hunters' musk in search of you, or turns you to animal prey, it is only a measure of weight or days. Not something without a beginning or an end, it is not even—especially not—an end. Nor is it vertigo, nor the whole, but merely a piece. No, darkness is but a ghost of an idea, the least remembered, most estranged prayer, and your fear but a lingering, limbic fear torn from shreds of forgotten years. Only that much is clear.

I He who has never tasted the grapes of Canaan can only view them from Pisgah. I have my tides, O sea-foamed Venus, dearer than watercress, pipkins, thyme and clymene. You once held me by the cord of my navel, but I have not died to live in Mahomet’s paradise. Would that I could gather up my love to me as one does one’s fate, or measure her nature as God does the sea. We are a weary race that hates seedtime. Poor Persephone, who is Maying springtime, and the coming up of flowers! We remember only what we seed, and Persephone goes down into the earth after Spring and Summer vegetation only because Pluto gave her pomegranate seeds to remember him, but if the seed perish, Persephone will die, and memory shall pass from the earth. A man of humble blood, with a soul of Kidron, needs a Rachel, but I labored for years in the weary fields for Leah. II The world is a wound in my soul, and I have sought the living waters in meditation, and the angelical fountains in the desert of Beersheba for solitude, for what health there is in friendship comes when one is alone. I shed tears on the Mount of Olives because people no longer care for each other, but my friends have lacked the character for the vigil. There is no Cana wine in human affections that are not always awake, for people who do not trouble about each other are foes. It is humiliating being the lamb and bleating to each passerby, “Feed me!” What is the use of saying that men are stones when I know I am going to try to turn them into bread. I am afraid to say that people are truthful. When a man tells me he is honest I press my hand close to my heart where I keep my miserable wallet. If he says he has any goodness in him, I avoid him, for I trust nobody who has so little fear of the evils that grow and ripen in us while we imagine we have one virtuous trait. These demons lie in ambush in the thick, heady coverts of the blood, where hypocrisy and egoism fatten, waiting to mock or betray us in any moment of self-esteem. I have no faith in a meek man, and regard anyone that shows a humble mien as one who is preparing to make an attack upon me, for there is some brutish, nether fault in starved vanity. Yet once a friend leaned as gently on my coat as that disciple had on the bosom of the Saviour, and I went away, not knowing by his affection whether I was the John Christ was said to have loved most. I whispered thanks to my soul because he leaned upon me, for I shall never know who I am if I am not loved. V Much flesh walks upon the earth void of heart and warm liver, for it is the spirit that dies soonest. Some men have marshland natures with mist and sea-water in their intellects, and are as sterile as the Florida earth which De Soto found in those meager, rough Indian settlements, and their tongues are fierce, reedy arrows. They wound and bleed the spirit, and their oaks and chestnut trees and acorns are wild, and a terrible, barren wind from the Atlantic blows through their blood as pitiless as the primitive rivers De Soto’s soldiers could not ford. Do not attempt to cross these mad, tumid rivers, boreal and brackish, for water is unstable, and you cannot link yourself to it. There are also inland, domestic men who are timid pulse and vetch, and though they may appear as stupid as poultry rooting in the mire, they are housed people, and they have orchards and good, tamed wine that makes men loving rather than predatory; go to them, and take little thought of their ignorance which brings forth good fruits, for here you may eat and not be on guard for the preservation of your soul. People who have domestic animals are patient, for atheism and the stony heart are the result of traveling: sorrow never goes anywhere. Were we as content as our forefathers were with labor in the fallow, or as a fuller with his cloth, or a drayman with his horses and mules, we would stay where we are, and that is praying. There are men that are birds, and their raiment is trembling feathers, for they show their souls to everyone, and everything that is ungentle or untutored or evil or mockery is as a rude stone cast at them, and they suffer all day long, or as Paul remarks they are slain every moment. God forgive me for my pride; though I would relinquish my own birthright for that wretched pottage of lentils which is friendship, I mistrust every mortal. Each day the alms I ask of heaven is not to have a new chagrin which is my daily bread. December 1959