445 Religion poems

Shiraishi called upon the great sky cock, wanted an explanation, wondered, why the echo of form without the wisdom, why the bent wit without the timing. Wondered, as I have, how a man, bare upon the bed may rise as if in praise but fail to be grateful for the gift at hand. O dick of questionable devise. O schlong of longing, as present but ultimately unknowable as your maker, I would worship at the fount if I had more faith, if I knew your weeping eye was on me alone.

After death, my father practices meticulously until the Bach is seamless, spun glass in a dream, you can no longer tell where the modulations are, or the pedal shifts or the split fingerings . . . if he rests it’s to wind the metronome or sip his cup of ice . . . but who is the other old man in the identical flannel gown, head cocked, listening ever more critically, deeper in the empty room?

Silent, about-to-be-parted-from house. Wood creaking, trying to sigh, impatient. Clicking of squirrel-teeth in the attic. Denuded beds, couches stripped of serapes. Deep snow shall block all entrances and oppress the roof and darken the windows.    O Lares, don’t leave. The house yawns like a bear. Guard its profound dreams for us, that it return to us when we return. November 1969

When Isaac, a small, freckled boy approaching seven, visits us for Family Camp, playing pirate with his rubber sword, sometimes he slumps in grief, trudging along, his sacrifice and small violin in hand, his palm over his chest, saying,Mother is here in my heart. Before he leaves for home, we ask if he’d like a Jewish blessing. Our grandson’s handsome face ignites; he chirps a rousing,yes, for a long life. We unfold the prayer shawl, its Hebrew letters silvering the spring light, hold the white tallis above his head, recite the blessing in its ancient language and then the English, adding,for a long life. Isaac complains, the tallis didn’t touch his head, so he didn’t feel the blessing. We lower its silken ceiling to graze his dark hair, repeat the prayer.

When Isaac, a small, freckled boy approaching seven, visits us for Family Camp, playing pirate with his rubber sword, sometimes he slumps in grief, trudging along, his sacrifice and small violin in hand, his palm over his chest, saying,Mother is here in my heart. Before he leaves for home, we ask if he’d like a Jewish blessing. Our grandson’s handsome face ignites; he chirps a rousing,yes, for a long life. We unfold the prayer shawl, its Hebrew letters silvering the spring light, hold the white tallis above his head, recite the blessing in its ancient language and then the English, adding,for a long life. Isaac complains, the tallis didn’t touch his head, so he didn’t feel the blessing. We lower its silken ceiling to graze his dark hair, repeat the prayer.

what more can man desire? Always, he woke in those days With a sense of treasure, His heart a gayer glow Than his window grand with sun, As a child, its mind all whirring With green and hollied pleasure Wakes in a haze of Christmas! The season of secrets done. Or as one on country linen Wakes with a start one morning— Then on comfort snugger than pillows Floats: July at the lake. Or has married a golden girl And can hardly believe, but turning Sees blossom for him that very face Worshipping cameras take. Toy trains whirr perky on Till springs contort beneath; The middle-age rower slumps Like a sack—indignant seizure! Late editions wail Screen Star in Mystery Death— Yet in those same days He woke with a sense of treasure. Knowing: my love is safe Though the Rockies plunge like water, Though surf like a wildfire rage And omens roam the sky; Though limbs of the swimmer laze Pale where the seaweed caught her, Nothing can touch my love As dangerous time goes by.

Before the God-bullied hull, call me— Before the God-bullied hull buckles, before The red flag unfurled on water bucks and drowns, Before the sky-hawk dives down, before The nail drives through the sky-hawk’s red-wing— Call me the nail driven through the wing And call me the wing driven through. A board On water is buoyant, I know: I cling to wood— A dictionary buckles and drowns. I know I do not drown: I’m abridged, afloat, call me— Sir, when my book arrives, when each page You’ve untied lets go the breath it held That was my breath, then my breath will not be mine— I think you’ll know. I know when doors open I mean to keep closed: study-door, desk-drawer. My wife found the key I hid beneath the fern. My pens she did not touch. She did not touch The hundred pages I left blank to fill other days. She took the cracked compass I keep for luck (the needle’s sharp, but stuck), took my green-glass Ink-pot, and centering the compass on my desk, Poured out each dark drop of ink unitl ink Seeped through cracked glass and left the compass Ink-full. The gold needle loosened, floated: a line. Bent back, I am taking you inside my head Turning back. Ahab bent The needle that refused North back to a magnet’s tow— Did, Ahab did, after The needle’s faith answered our question:No. How do you point at a horizon? Ask me. I know. Needle out your arm: close eyes: And turn in a circle. Inscribe a zero on the wood-deck— The Equator on zero latitudes lies. That is the truth, I know Sir, what name that bay a last page carves Out of no shore:ice? glacier? greenland? strand, shoal-of-white-sand? an artic-calm?

It's been two thousand years now that, with a wounded leg, the god's amazing loves have dragged along. He has aged. Soon he won't be noticed except from way up in a plane in the markings of wheat that yield the trace of an ancient sanctuary. He solicits a language of caresses, open pasture, available bodies, and the words refuse, and this elsewhere is already in his death except for a slender purple flower under the sun. He can still act the god all around, evening's worn heart. He guesses the flower will slip fragile from one century to the next with its prayer.

He dwelt among “apartments let,” About five stories high; A man I thought that none would get, And very few would try. A boulder, by a larger stone Half hidden in the mud, Fair as a man when only one Is in the neighborhood. He lived unknown, and few could tell When Jacob was not free; But he has got a wife,—and O! The difference to me!

Outside the hotel window, unenlightened pigeons weave and dive like Stukas on their prey, apparently some tiny insect brother. (In India, the attainment of nonviolence is considered a proper goal for human beings.) If one of the pigeons should fly into the illusion of my window and survive (the body is no illusion when it’s hurt) he could be taken across town to the bird hospital where Jains, skilled medical men, repair the feathery sick and broken victims. There, in reproof of violence and of nothing else, live Mahavira’s brothers and sisters. To this small, gentle order of monks and nuns it is bright Vishnu and dark Shiva who are illusion. They trust in faith, cognition, and nonviolence to release them from rebirth. They think that birds and animals—like us, some predators, some prey— should be ministered to no less than men and women. The Jains who deal with creatures (and with laymen) wear white, while their more enterprising hermit brothers walk naked and are called the sky-clad . Jains pray to no deity, human kindness being their sole illusion. Mahavira and those twenty-three other airy creatures who turned to saints with him, preached the doctrine of ahimsa , which in our belligerent tongue becomes nonviolence . It’s not a doctrine congenial to snarers and poultrymen, who every day bring to market maimed pheasants. Numbers of these are brought in by the Jain brothers and brought, to grow back wing-tips and illusions, to one of the hospitals succoring such small quarry. When strong and feathered again, the lucky victims get reborn on Sunday mornings to the world’s violence, released from the roofs of these temples to illusion. It is hard for a westerner to speak about men and women like these, who call the birds of the air brothers. We recall the embarrassed fanfare for Francis and his flock. We’re poor forked sky-clad things ourselves and God knows prey to illusion— e.g. , I claim these brothers and sisters in India, stemming a little violence, among birds.