445 Religion poems

( new jersey, 1918 ) Its quiet graves were made for peace till Gabriel blows his horn. Those wise old elms could hear no cry Of all that distant agony— Only the red-winged blackbird, and the rustle of thick ripe corn. The blue jay, perched upon that bronze, with bright unweeting eye Could never read the names that signed The noblest charter of mankind; But all of them were names we knew beneath our English skies. And on the low gray headstones, with their crumbling weather-stains, —Though cardinal birds, like drops of blood, Flickered across the haunted wood,— The names you’d see were names that woke like flowers in English lanes John Applegate was fast asleep; and Temperance Olden, too. And David Worth had quite forgot If Hannah’s lips were red or not; And Prudence veiled her eyes at last, as Prudence ought to do. And when, across that patch of heaven, that small blue leaf-edged space At times, a droning airplane went, No flicker of astonishment Could lift the heavy eyelids on one gossip’s upturned face. For William Speakman could not tell—so thick the grasses grow— If that strange humming in the sky Meant that the Judgment Day were nigh, Or if ’twere but the summer bees that blundered to and fro. And then, across the breathless wood, a Bell began to sound, The only Bell that wakes the dead, And Stockton Signer raised his head, And called to all the deacons in the ancient burial-ground. “The Bell, the Bell is ringing! Give me back my rusty sword. Though I thought the wars were done, Though I thought our peace was won, Yet I signed the Declaration, and the dead must keep their word. “There’s only one great ghost I know could make that ’larum ring. It’s the captain that we knew In the ancient buff and blue, It’s our Englishman, George Washington, who fought the German king!” So the sunset saw them mustering beneath their brooding boughs, Ancient shadows of our sires, Kindling with the ancient fires, While the old cracked Bell to southward shook the shadowy meeting house.

Kin Kletso/Yellow House Chaco Canyon, San Juan County, New Mexico Anasazi Ruins, AD 1125-1130 for Henri, at 2 You step down into the Flat World Then ask me to say it, to explain How our name can mean both ancestor And enemy. Your body begins in four directions. Here, one calendar takes eighteen years. I am three. One day is an eyelash. Your body is a segment of prehistoric road, A buried stairwell with only the top stair obvious. We are alluvial, obsidian. Sometimes the ground swells With disappointment; sometimes we know our mountains Will be renamed after foreign saints. We sing nine-hundred-year-old hymns That instruct us in how to sit still For forty-nine years Through a fifty-year drought. We climb down through the hole anyway, And agree to the arrangement.

mary is an old woman without shoes. she doesn’t believe it. not when her belly starts to bubble and leave the print of a finger where no man touches. not when the snow in her hair melts away. not when the stranger she used to wait for appears dressed in lights at her kitchen table. she is an old woman and doesn’t believe it. when Something drops onto her toes one night she calls it a fox but she feeds it.

Protestants pray for grace, Scientists look to space. Jews find truth in the Torah, New Agers, in each other's aura. Catholics are blessed by a Pope, Yaquis enlightened by dope. Maoris use ritual chants, Navahos get up and dance. Muslims bow daily to Allah, Norsemen aspire to Valhalla. Feminists swear by a She, Quakers swear not, silently. Confucians kowtow to ancestors, Hare Krishnas, to airport investors. Hindus revere Lord Brahma, Richard Gere, the Dalai Lama. Baptists believe in the Ark, Physicists, in the quark. Moonies obey Reverend Sun, Mormons say Brigham's the one. Daoists extol yang and yin, Sufis transcend in a spin. Shintos seek peace where it's grassy, Rastas, in Haile Selassie. When we meet in the Afterlife, We can laugh at sectarian strife. But meanwhile back to the wars, 'Cause my God's better than yours.

I haled me a woman from the street, Shameless, but, oh, so fair! I bade her sit in the model’s seat And I painted her sitting there. I hid all trace of her heart unclean; I painted a babe at her breast; I painted her as she might have been If the Worst had been the Best. She laughed at my picture and went away. Then came, with a knowing nod, A connoisseur, and I heard him say; “’Tis Mary, the Mother of God.” So I painted a halo round her hair, And I sold her and took my fee, And she hangs in the church of Saint Hillaire, Where you and all may see.

Big Jack and his walking stick live on the ridge. Navajo orphan kids dance for him, bobcat urine’s in the weeds, the shotgun barrel's up his sleeve, a Persian coin is on the wind. The Chinese Mountains smell the moon and arch their backs. I tell him, Jack, there’s times I wish I was living in canvas France, the old west, a picture book, the Sea of Tranquility, or even in the den near the hot spring. He says, kid, to hell with phantom limbs; spring is a verb, a wish is a wash, a walking stick is a gottdam wing.

My sin is an act of cruelty depriving myself of worldly desires. Locked in a rented room I sit all day, listening to the murmurs of many-headed visions. Cockroaches are my temporary friends dwelling in their underground castles. The ocean is my mother I visit in need of love and companionship. She only listens to my laughs and cries like God in presence. Old wounds all over again come hand in hand off and on like jealous friends wanting someone else’s credit. Under a lamp in the night I meet a unicorn sitting in my mirror.

The hinge of the year the great gates opening and then slowly slowly closing on us. I always imagine those gates hanging over the ocean fiery over the stone grey waters of evening. We cast what we must change about ourselves onto the waters flowing to the sea. The sins, errors, bad habits, whatever you call them, dissolve. When I was little I cried out I! I! I! I want, I want. Older, I feel less important, a worker bee in the hive of history, miles of hard labor to make my sweetness. The gates are closing The light is failing I kneel before what I love imploring that it may live. So much breaks, wears down, fails in us. We must forgive our broken promises— their sharp shards in our hands.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want him for long.

The old cupola glinted above the clouds, shone among fir trees, but it took him an hour for the half mile all the way up the hill. As he trailed, the village passed him by, greeted him, asked about his health, but everybody hurried to catch the mass, left him leaning against fences, measuring the road with the walking stick he sculpted. He yearned for the day when the new church would be built—right across the road. Now it rises above the moon: saints in frescoes meet the eye, and only the rain has started to cut through the shingles on the roof of his empty house. The apple trees have taken over the sky, sequestered the gate, sidled over the porch.