445 Religion poems

Have but one God: thy knees were sore If bent in prayer to three or four. Adore no images save those The coinage of thy country shows. Take not the Name in vain. Direct Thy swearing unto some effect. Thy hand from Sunday work be held— Work not at all unless compelled. Honor thy parents, and perchance Their wills thy fortunes may advance. Kill not—death liberates thy foe From persecution’s constant woe. Kiss not thy neighbor’s wife. Of course There’s no objection to divorce. To steal were folly, for ’tis plain In cheating there is greater gain. Bear not false witness. Shake your head And say that you have “heard it said.” Who stays to covet ne’er will catch An opportunity to snatch.

1 We travel upon the Ark, in mud and rain, Our oars promises from God. We live—and the rest of Humanity dies. We travel upon the waves, fastening Our lives to the ropes of corpses filling the skies. But between Heaven and us is an opening, A porthole for a supplication. "Why, Lord, have you saved us alone From among all the people and creatures? And where are you casting us now? To your other Land, to our First Home? Into the leaves of Death, into the wind of Life? In us, in our arteries, flows a fear of the Sun. We despair of the Light, We despair, Lord, of a tomorrow In which to start Life anew. If only we were not that seedling of Creation, Of Earth and its generations, If only we had remained simple Clay or Ember, Or something in between, Then we would not have to see This World, its Lord, and its Hell, twice over." 2 If time started anew, and waters submerged the face of life, and the earth convulsed, and that god rushed to me, beseeching, "Noah, save the living!" I would not concern myself with his request. I would travel upon my ark, removing clay and pebbles from the eyes of the dead. I would open the depths of their being to the flood, and whisper in their veins that we have returned from the wilderness, that we have emerged from the cave, that we have changed the sky of years, that we sail without giving in to our fears— that we do not heed the word of that god. Our appointment is with death. Our shores are a familiar and pleasing despair, a gelid sea of iron water that we ford to its very ends, undeterred, heedless of that god and his word, longing for a different, a new, lord.

The body is a nation I have not known. The pure joy of air: the moment between leaping from a cliff into the wall of blue below. Like that. Or to feel the rub of tired lungs against skin- covered bone, like a hand against the rough of bark. Like that. “The body is a savage,” I said. For years I said that: the body is a savage. As if this safety of the mind were virtue not cowardice. For years I have snubbed the dark rub of it, said, “I am better, Lord, I am better,” but sometimes, in an unguarded moment of sun, I remember the cowdung-scent of my childhood skin thick with dirt and sweat and the screaming grass. But this distance I keep is not divine, for what was Christ if not God’s desire to smell his own armpit? And when I see him, I know he will smile, fingers glued to his nose, and say, “Next time I will send you a down as a dog to taste this pure hunger.”

I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place Where I was lost alone Folk looked right through me into space And passed with eyes of stone O homeless hand on many a street Accept this change from me A friendly smile or word is sweet As fearless charity Woe workingman who hears the cry And cannot spare a dime Nor look into a homeless eye Afraid to give the time So rich or poor no gold to talk A smile on your face The homeless ones where you may walk Receive amazing grace I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place Where I was lost alone Folk looked right through me into space And passed with eyes of stone

The child is not dead. She is sleeping. Gone from this world Which is broken. The angel of Michael Outside the garden His circle of fire Maddening around the tree. He put the word Back into her: A heavy kind of music. Then she was free. As we all are. All night I stood in the icy wind, Praying for the storm to destroy me. But the wind blew through me Like I was a hologram. If you say I am a mystic, Then fine: I’m a mystic. The trees are not trees, anyway.

Where i -95 meets the Pike, a ponderous thunderhead flowered; stewed a minute, then flipped like a flash card, tattered edges crinkling in, linings so dark with excessive bright

As a boy he had trouble speaking, past three before a real word preened from his lips. And for the longest time, malaprops haunted him. His older sister did what she could to train the bitten seal of   his brain to twirl the red ball on the nose of eloquence, and his grandmother tired of   insisting he utter the names of   toys or foods — for every desire was coded — and gave him whatever he grunted and pointed to. O, the man then a boy thought, when I tower among them I should invent my own speech and leave others empty and afraid that they did not know it, could not ask or plead their case in the one tongue that mattered. I shall have them look upon the simplest things, the man then a boy thought, and fill up with stolen awe, and point with their faces, their pupils wide as blackened coins, and hope with all the revenue shattered heart-glass can muster that someone had grasped their need as need and not as the monstrous coupling of   sounds in a trance of whims. Then, the grind of   his teeth vowed, then the plazas of my city will fill with my name, and their blood will matter as little to them as to me.

Christ, whose glory fills the skies, Christ, the true, the only light, Sun of Righteousness, arise, Triumph o’er the shades of night: Day-spring from on high, be near: Day-star, in my heart appear. Dark and cheerless is the morn Unaccompanied by thee, Joyless is the day’s return, Till thy mercy’s beams I see; Till thy inward light impart, Glad my eyes, and warm my heart. Visit then this soul of mine, Pierce the gloom of sin, and grief, Fill me, Radiancy Divine, Scatter all my unbelief, More and more thyself display, Shining to the perfect day.

gravity accounts for the distance between weight and mass it can also mean alarming importance human bones are so full of gravity it’s hard for us to swim I lost my glasses chasing a branch in the ocean which is far too deep to dredge      sometimes I imagine the sea’s made of actual tears this would explain the salt      think of all the disconsolate toddlers weeping right now into the earth the tears must go somewhere      it’s important to consider everything to name what we’re able      oceans give us rain but we don’t call rain ocean knot a dozen rats together by the tail and you’ve got a roi de rats which is harder than rain to hear in the night and far less welcome       who mourns a rat king frustrated chthonic always the biter never the bitten they give us the evil we need to stay moored to good still I would break any promise to avoid finding one       O Terrible God of the Mechanical Age I am your favorite pilgrim yet even I am finding it impossible to speak to you now without asking for protection

O joys! infinite sweetness! with what flow’rs And shoots of glory my soul breaks and buds! All the long hours Of night, and rest, Through the still shrouds Of sleep, and clouds, This dew fell on my breast; Oh, how it bloods And spirits all my earth! Hark! In what rings And hymning circulations the quick world Awakes and sings; The rising winds And falling springs, Birds, beasts, all things Adore him in their kinds. Thus all is hurl’d In sacred hymns and order, the great chime And symphony of nature. Prayer is The world in tune, A spirit voice, And vocal joys Whose echo is heav’n’s bliss. O let me climb When I lie down! The pious soul by night Is like a clouded star whose beams, though said To shed their light Under some cloud, Yet are above, And shine and move Beyond that misty shroud. So in my bed, That curtain’d grave, though sleep, like ashes, hide My lamp and life, both shall in thee abide.