445 Religion poems

1 A psalm of Isaak, accompanied by Jew's harp. O God Belovéd if obliquely so, dimly apprehended in the midst of this, the fraught obscuring fog of my insufficiently capacious ken, Ostensible Lover of our kind—while apparently aloof—allow that I might glimpse once more Your shadow in the land, avail for me, a second time, the sense of dire Presence in the pulsing hollow near the heart. Once more, O Lord, from Your enormity incline your Face to shine upon Your servant, shy of immolation, if You will. 2 A psalm of Isaak, accompanied by baying hounds. O Shaper of varicolored clay and cellulose, O Keeper of same, O Subtle Tweaker, Agent of energies both appalling and unobserved, do not allow Your servant's limbs to stiffen or to ossify unduly, do not compel Your servant to go brittle, neither cramping at the heart, nor narrowing his affective sympathies neither of the flesh nor of the alleged soul. Keep me sufficiently limber that I might continue to enjoy my morning run among the lilies and the rowdy waterfowl, that I might delight in this and every evening's intercourse with the woman you have set beside me. Make me to awaken daily with a willingness to roll out readily, accompanied by grateful smirk, a giddy joy, the idiot's undying expectation, despite the evidence. 3 A psalm of Isaak, whispered mid the Philistines, beneath the breath. Master both invisible and notoriously slow to act, should You incline to fix Your generous attentions for the moment to the narrow scene of this our appointed tedium, should You—once our kindly secretary has duly noted which of us is feigning presence, and which excused, which unexcused, You may be entertained to hear how much we find to say about so little. Among these other mediocrities, Your mediocre servant gets a glimpse of how his slow and meager worship might appear from where You endlessly attend our dreariness. Holy One, forgive, forgo and, if You will, fend off from this my heart the sense that I am drowning here amid the motions, the discussions, the several questions endlessly recast, our paper ballots. 4 Isaak's penitential psalm, unaccompanied. Again, and yes again, O Ceaseless Tolerator of our bleaking recurrences, O Forever Forgoing Foregone (sans conclusion), O Inexhaustible, I find my face against the floor, and yet again my plea escapes from unclean lips, and from a heart caked in and constricted by its own soiled residue. You are forever, and forever blessed, and I aspire one day to slip my knot and change things up, to manage at least one late season sinlessly, to bow before you yet one time without chagrin.

Hard, heavy, slow, dark, Or so I find them, the hands of Te Whaea Teaching me to die. Some lightness will come later When the heart has lost its unjust hope For special treatment. Today I go with a bucket Over the paddocks of young grass, So delicate like fronds of maidenhair, Looking for mushrooms. I find twelve of them, Most of them little, and some eaten by maggots, But they’ll do to add to the soup. It’s a long time now Since the great ikons fell down, God, Mary, home, sex, poetry, Whatever one uses as a bridge To cross the river that only has one beach, And even one’s name is a way of saying — ‘This gap inside a coat’ — the darkness I call God, The darkness I call Te Whaea, how can they translate The blue calm evening sky that plane tunnels through Like a little wasp, or the bucket in my hand, Into something else? I go on looking For mushrooms in the field, and the fist of longing Punches my heart, until it is too dark to see.

“Café-Concert at Les Ambassadeurs,” 1876–77 by Edgar Degas i have a red dress and no eyes. i have a dress that is blood red and i have eyes that don’t blink when the balcony sucks in. my dress is a beet swollen with thought, and hangs like a body on my body. i have eyes that don’t blink at being seen. i was halfway finished before i saw i’d begun. my dress drips down the center. my eyes are needle holes and my dress is an over-red thread. i hang my words in the air by their feet, limp and damp, and my dress is my only laugh that is actually red. my eyes are the backs of moons and afterwards men jest us like children, and smoke, and women who have been my dress circle their stomachs with their hands. i’m an actress. this is not my mother tongue. i have a dress that is yellow. my lines are written by a parisian man. we met in london. i came dancing out like god upon a crimson wave. my dress hung like a question or a suddenness. he wrote me coming out this way, he says, to make me like a lioness. the constellations are full of dead women, he says. he says my dress is the coat of a great lion. i turn like the blood inside a rose. the crowd is a great gasp. i can feel myself become a pear. it’s as if you haven’t taken pills, he says. i still have that dress. it’s not too blonde or red. you can grasp it with your eyes, he said, the way you wear it.

1 In the rheumatic heat of July, when Public Enemy blared on the blasters in a time when arbitrage and foreign policy were bureaus of each other, I made a wrong turn off Broadway and wound up at St. John the Divine where I sat in the hot dark until the traffic died. * And a voice comes over some columns to the breeze of the Golden Horn over the cypress groves and flowing bougainvillea where the bright blue weather and the old seawalls come together, where crates of cardamom and musk are piled and the cattle hang in blood above the brass, where the grain boats stink and red pleasure barges drift where Jason sailed for his fleece— a voice comes out of the dead water. In great Sophia light pours in rosy bars on the porphyry and the green marble till the air blooms, and a chrysalis of lit crosses makes circles in the air. Light falls through the lunettes like arrows of gold that could’ve sneaked up the Virgin’s dress. Had the Holy Ghost flitted in it would’ve been lost in the glare and the kiss of peace Justinian blew from the ambo. * Incantations flutter and rhyme in the apse like wings in a cloud of incense thinning on the gold-leafed vaults where the tongue’s vibration lingers in the upper air, and rises and rises as if the dome could open to a half-hemisphere of heaven where in the translucent glitter of the Kingdom the Saints are poised in gracious robes with their thousand-year-frozen faces— the one truth glued on the grout of their lips. 2 I sit with the incense of memory, and a bath of dark pours from the vaults above the pew Outside, boutiques of money collide with the street fires in Harlem, whole skyscrapers are levitated by arbitrage, and the only inside takeover I can negotiate is myself in this pew with my herringbone jacket which I should chuck in the Salvation Army bin down the block, so I could join the line of choir- boys in their last innocent ritual as they stand before the mounted sermon sign “he shall bring forth judgment unto truth” (Isaiah 42:3). The Puritans because they believed God’s altar needs not their polish lifted the boulder of truth higher than the glittering face of the Nazarene once leaded in glass. For the spirit they swallowed stones and shattered all the panes. But beneath the lavender arch of a Canon Table in an old Gospel I once tasted the consubstantial dewdrop in the faded color of a peacock’s wing. So while a stone sinks to the bottom of my river, a peacock’s wing floats by the shore. Who tells it like it is: Isaiah or Procopius? 3 I started walking backward down the aisle when I heard and thought I saw in the strange fenestration of that light— a voice, first incoherent, and then sharp as if it were in my ear There is no reign that executes justice and judgment; is that why you whine?

You lie in our bed as if an orchard were over us. You are what’s fallen from those fatal boughs. Where will we go when they send us away from here?

XVIII In Heaven, Some little blades of grass Stood before God. “What did you do?” Then all save one of the little blades Began eagerly to relate The merits of their lives. This one stayed a small way behind Ashamed. Presently God said: “And what did you do?” The little blade answered: “Oh, my lord, “Memory is bitter to me “For if I did good deeds “I know not of them.” Then God in all His splendor Arose from His throne. “Oh, best little blade of grass,” He said.

In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls, I walk from one epoch to another without a memory to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing the history of the holy ... ascending to heaven and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love and peace are holy and are coming to town. I was walking down a slope and thinking to myself: How do the narrators disagree over what light said about a stone? Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up? I walk in my sleep. I stare in my sleep. I see no one behind me. I see no one ahead of me. All this light is for me. I walk. I become lighter. I fly then I become another. Transfigured. Words sprout like grass from Isaiah’s messenger mouth: “If you don’t believe you won’t be safe.” I walk as if I were another. And my wound a white biblical rose. And my hands like two doves on the cross hovering and carrying the earth. I don’t walk, I fly, I become another, transfigured. No place and no time. So who am I? I am no I in ascension’s presence. But I think to myself: Alone, the prophet Muhammad spoke classical Arabic. “And then what?” Then what? A woman soldier shouted: Is that you again? Didn’t I kill you? I said: You killed me ... and I forgot, like you, to die.

Dead deer a week now by the snowy gate. Do I have to watch it be eaten? Do I have to see who comes first, who quarrels, who stays? And there is the question of the night, what flesh preferred by which creature— what sinew and fat, the organs, the eyes. These appetites: it’s enough to know the swoop and cut of wings over the snarl of something leaping away. Do I have to see the icy figure fused to the ground, scrabbled snow, not lovely or deep, but the surface of something spoiled? By now the rib bones arch above it all, unbroken light shining between them, above the black cavity. And I hear the crows, complaint, complaint splitting the morning, hunched over the skull. They know their offices.

CHORUS Come we shepherds whose blest sight Hath met love’s noon in nature’s night; Come lift we up our loftier song And wake the sun that lies too long. To all our world of well-stol’n joy He slept, and dreamt of no such thing, While we found out heav’n’s fairer eye, And kiss’d the cradle of our King. Tell him he rises now too late To show us aught worth looking at. Tell him we now can show him more Than he e’er show’d to mortal sight, Than he himself e’er saw before, Which to be seen needs not his light. Tell him, Tityrus, where th’ hast been; Tell him, Thyrsis, what th’ hast seen. TITYRUS Gloomy night embrac’d the place Where the Noble Infant lay; The Babe look’d up and show’d his face, In spite of darkness, it was day. It was thy day, Sweet! and did rise Not from the east, but from thine eyes. CHORUS It was thy day, Sweet! and did rise Not from the east, but from thine eyes. THYRSIS Winter chid aloud, and sent The angry North to wage his wars; The North forgot his fierce intent, And left perfumes instead of scars. By those sweet eyes’ persuasive pow’rs, Where he meant frost, he scatter’d flow’rs. CHORUS By those sweet eyes’ persuasive pow’rs, Where he meant frost, he scatter’d flow’rs. BOTH We saw thee in thy balmy nest, Young dawn of our eternal day! We saw thine eyes break from their east And chase the trembling shades away. We saw thee, and we bless’d the sight, We saw thee by thine own sweet light. TITYRUS Poor World, said I, what wilt thou do To entertain this starry stranger? Is this the best thou canst bestow, A cold, and not too cleanly, manger? Contend, ye powers of heav’n and earth, To fit a bed for this huge birth. CHORUS Contend, ye powers of heav’n and earth, To fit a bed for this huge birth. THYRSIS Proud World, said I, cease your contest, And let the Mighty Babe alone; The phoenix builds the phoenix’ nest, Love’s architecture is his own; The Babe whose birth embraves this morn, Made his own bed ere he was born. CHORUS The Babe whose birth embraves this morn, Made his own bed ere he was born. TITYRUS I saw the curl’d drops, soft and slow, Come hovering o’er the place’s head, Off’ring their whitest sheets of snow To furnish the fair Infant’s bed. Forbear, said I, be not too bold; Your fleece is white, but ’tis too cold. CHORUS Forbear, said I, be not too bold; Your fleece is white, but ’tis too cold. THYRSIS I saw the obsequious Seraphims Their rosy fleece of fire bestow; For well they now can spare their wings, Since Heav’n itself lies here below. Well done, said I, but are you sure Your down so warm will pass for pure? CHORUS Well done, said I, but are you sure Your down so warm will pass for pure? TITYRUS No no, your King’s not yet to seek Where to repose his royal head; See see, how soon his new-bloom’d cheek ’Twixt’s mother’s breasts is gone to bed. Sweet choice, said we! no way but so, Not to lie cold, yet sleep in snow. CHORUS Sweet choice, said we! no way but so, Not to lie cold, yet sleep in snow. BOTH We saw thee in thy balmy nest, Bright dawn of our eternal day! We saw thine eyes break from their east, And chase the trembling shades away. We saw thee, and we bless’d the sight, We saw thee, by thine own sweet light. CHORUS We saw thee, and we bless’d the sight, We saw thee, by thine own sweet light. FULL CHORUS Welcome, all wonders in one sight! Eternity shut in a span; Summer in winter; day in night; Heaven in earth, and God in man. Great little one, whose all-embracing birth Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heav’n to earth. Welcome; though nor to gold nor silk, To more than Caesar’s birthright is; Two sister seas of virgin-milk, With many a rarely temper’d kiss, That breathes at once both maid and mother, Warms in the one, cools in the other. Welcome, though not to those gay flies Gilded i’ th’ beams of earthly kings, Slippery souls in smiling eyes; But to poor shepherds, homespun things, Whose wealth’s their flock, whose wit, to be Well read in their simplicity. Yet when young April’s husband-show’rs Shall bless the fruitful Maia’s bed, We’ll bring the first-born of her flow’rs To kiss thy feet and crown thy head. To thee, dread Lamb! whose love must keep The shepherds more than they the sheep. To thee, meek Majesty! soft King Of simple graces and sweet loves, Each of us his lamb will bring, Each his pair of silver doves; Till burnt at last in fire of thy fair eyes, Ourselves become our own best sacrifice.

Here, where the noises of the busy town, The ocean's plunge and roar can enter not, We stand and gaze around with tearful awe, And muse upon the consecrated spot. No signs of life are here: the very prayers Inscribed around are in a language dead; The light of the "perpetual lamp" is spent That an undying radiance was to shed. What prayers were in this temple offered up, Wrung from sad hearts that knew no joy on earth, By these lone exiles of a thousand years, From the fair sunrise land that gave them birth! How as we gaze, in this new world of light, Upon this relic of the days of old, The present vanishes, and tropic bloom And Eastern towns and temples we behold. Again we see the patriarch with his flocks, The purple seas, the hot blue sky o'erhead, The slaves of Egypt,—omens, mysteries,— Dark fleeing hosts by flaming angels led. A wondrous light upon a sky-kissed mount, A man who reads Jehovah's written law, 'Midst blinding glory and effulgence rare, Unto a people prone with reverent awe. The pride of luxury's barbaric pomp, In the rich court of royal Solomon— Alas! we wake: one scene alone remains,— The exiles by the streams of Babylon. Our softened voices send us back again But mournful echoes through the empty hall: Our footsteps have a strange unnatural sound, And with unwonted gentleness they fall. The weary ones, the sad, the suffering, All found their comfort in the holy place, And children's gladness and men's gratitude 'Took voice and mingled in the chant of praise. The funeral and the marriage, now, alas! We know not which is sadder to recall; For youth and happiness have followed age, And green grass lieth gently over all. Nathless the sacred shrine is holy yet, With its lone floors where reverent feet once trod. Take off your shoes as by the burning bush, Before the mystery of death and God.