445 Religion poems

Hark! the herald Angels sing, Glory to the new-born King, Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinner reconcil’d. Hark! the herald Angels sing, Glory to the new-born King. Joyful all ye nations rise, Join the triumph of the skies, With the angelic host proclaim, Christ is born in Bethlehem. Hark! the herald Angels sing, Glory to the new-born King. Christ by highest Heaven ador’d, Christ the everlasting Lord! Late in time behold him come, Offspring of a virgin’s womb. Hark! the herald Angels sing, Glory to the new-born King. Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, Hail, the incarnate Deity, Pleased as Man with man to dwell, Jesus our Immanuel! Hark! the herald Angels sing, Glory to the new-born King. Hail the Heaven-born Prince of Peace! Hail the Sun of Righteousness! Light and life to all he brings, Risen with healing in his wings. Hark! the herald Angels sing, Glory to the new-born King. Mild he lays his glory by, Born that man no more may die, Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth. Hark! the herald Angels sing, Glory to the new-born King.

The Fathers put their trust in the end of the world And they were wrong.   The Gnostics were right and not Right.   Dragons copulate with their knobby tails. Some somnolent wealth rises unconcerned, Over there!   In the world!   Ponderous stubborn Sorrow weighs down the flying Gospels. Some enormous obstacle blocks our way. The untempered soul grumbles in empty light.

Over an edge of cloud the naked angel blasts his long horn downward and they rise, or try to, skeletons, half-skeletons, the still-fleshed bodies of the newly dead, rising and pushing up the stone lids, heaving the crypt doors open, clambering over one another, dumbstruck, frightened, warily peeking out from inside tombs, or out of ditches, their eye holes blacker than the black they peek from while some reach out of habit for a robe to hide a nakedness they have no longer, a phantom shame that must be all the bones remember of the living flesh they were, and all of them worn away to nearly nothing, more wisp of form than form, more wraith than wisp, as if before your eyes they’re sinking into what they’re rising out of, coming into view by fading from it, there and gone, as if the very stone, unsure of what it holds, can neither cling to nor relinquish now the dream of something in it more than stone, other than hard or heavy, as over the face of it the air of a wished-for morning ripples the robes to water while it washes through the skulls and half-skulls tilted back to see just what the noise is that won’t let them sleep.

No, not in the flesh — if Jesus was ever in ordinary flesh — but in the faces of the Christian ladies, heads held high chanting their sorrows and joys for all to share. He had turned away, Froggy said, from sacred things since he was old enough to pay his way. And here he was half-gone on muscatel when he felt the soul soar loose from the wreck of his body, all 350 misshapen pounds of it. No, not in church, but on “the damn crosstown streetcar running late.” A distant Sunday night in the City of Dreams, Froggy on his way to his weekend of the usual low-notes, cheap cigars, Michigan wine, and stud poker, when Jesus “come a knockin’.” At Twelfth Street the trolley stopped and a dozen ladies mounted, each in her best flowered dress, each with her worn Bible in hand, each one blessed and glowing. “Changed my life,” Froggy says — for maybe the hundredth time — though how is hard to say. Orphan of destiny, descendant of voyagers, fur traders, whiskey priests run amok in the final wilderness, Froggy takes his ease on the battered throne of history — a sprung barrel chair — his tiny slippered feet resting on a mismatched ottoman out on the driveway. Sunday’s his day, he tells us. Sleeps late, breakfasts on OJ and sips of “Morgan Davis” — a consecrated beverage — , and delivers his great truths to anyone slow enough or dumb enough to listen.

My last Sabbath, I follow the girls, who sneak into the wedding tent, scattered with sun flower seeds and remnants of celebration. They each stand up on a table. Take a crushed beer can as a microphone, sing and move their fifteen-year-old hips. I watch, clap for them, until a small face peers in the door. A boy. His face white with something. The door slamming, his very small fist holding it shut, having found what was inside wrong. Enough, I tell him; enough! He leaves. The girls dance again, but less bold. Look: the boy has come back, is looking you hard in the eye, through the crack of the door. There, in his hand, a neon plastic BB gun. He does this for his grandmother and for his son.

So I spake unto the people in the morning: and at even my wife died; and I did in the morning as I was commanded. — Ezekiel 24:18 She is approaching him, God, he sees her in his eye-edge, a tiny gold speck getting bigger, scintillating. Her beauty lashes him with its sword — but she has heard all this before. She approaches him, the one who killed her, and she reeks of life. He waits for her to dissolve in him, but her grit encircles his teeth. He waits for her to become what he has made her, an angel, passionate and cold as the dawn, quietly encased in power, churning out neutral love and fastened to eternity, backwards and forwards all the days. But the world is tangled in her hair. She is getting closer and her gold beauty is greening, her face is turning furious, fury-like, her death opens around him and he feels a human fear. He cannot match her, she has the reins of creation in her slim white paws, he feels the world creeping away from him. He makes to shove her from heaven, let her slip and slumber through the world. But he cannot grip her. She gleams through him like heaven through a needle. the stroll God takes Ezekiel for many walks. He talks about all the things he will do to the people, this and this and this, and then they will know who I am. One day they chance upon a valley of bones splintering and whitening in the sun. Shall these bones live? These bones? Oh Lord. God flings sinew on the bones, liver, spleen, gristle. The bodies rise. Rise without breath, wet clay glistens in the sun. He gives breath, as if an afterthought. Ezekiel tries to see in their eyes, one at a time. The men not moving but lunging forward like warriors, eyes ice cold mud seen through mist, waiting for their souls to snap back in. They are bruised with an ache made not by the world. Their forgotten stories rift their faces, their deaths now a hole they can walk through. Home a space that closed after them, rinsed of the mourning that ran its course. They glimmer in new reality, still speechless, as if they were really the miracle ... But already God has taken Ezekiel by the elbow.

When one stands before the throne of glory, he begins reciting the hymn that the throne of glory sings each day:

In flowerbeds we crowd, some praying, some bowing as the world, minute as it is, stays in motion: box stores doing business, fast food joints, and above us a crow, secular bird, lighting on a lamppost while we take pictures or cry as if we could live forever in this gloried surround, gazing up at the window holding her bleared hair, her mouth that is a frenzy of trapped pollen or dust, eyes like smooth shells that make us forget what fertilized the flowers at our feet, bulbs fortified with potash or bone meal, dried blood, which reminds me of the Annunziata I saw in Italy, painted by those who thought color itself was divine: crushed shell, coral and ash, pigments mixed with egg in a man’s mouth, and I worry about standing too close to the believers, I who rubberneck and lie, do I stand too close to the woman at least six months along with her own child, waving a sonogram with a faint infant shape inside, an image scratched by waves: light squandered here, dilated there, compressed oil and dust as every body contains its atlas of salt, kiss-worn, and always some bud dreamed in springtime, and though I’m a yarner and one for whom doubt is a clutched root, I can’t yet walk to my car, standing here wondering if after His birth the virgin girl saw the rest of her life would be nothing but a way to talk about that morning: gold nearly blinding, herdsmen and kings, and with its broad warm tongue a cow licking the afterbirth from the hay.

“Oh! for a thousand tongues to sing My great Redeemer’s praise: The glories of my Lord and King, The triumphs of His grace.” Oh! for a thousand cedar posts To fence my garden ’round. To hinder the neighbors’ pigs and goats From rooting up my potato ground. Oh! for a thousand hickory rails, To make my fence secure; A thousand patent locks and keys, To lock my stable door. Oh! for a thousand bricks and stones, To build my chimney higher, To keep the neighbors’ boys and girls From putting out my fire. Oh! for a thousand old shot guns, That I might be a match, For all the tramps that I can find In my watermelon patch. Oh! for a thousand pumpkin seeds, To plant for my son John; He says that pumpkin pies are good When the winter time comes on. Oh! for a thousand cribs of corn, Filled chuck up to the beam; And a thousand pails that’s good and strong, To keep the milk and cream. Oh! for a thousand turnip bads, Placed all into a row; Lord! please send a little rain, To make the ’tatoes grow. Oh! for a thousand tongues to ask My maker, who’s on high, To keep my smoke-house filled with meal, Fat bacon, rock and rye. Now, Lord, I close my humble prayer, Which (to some) may seem a vision; Numbers ask for all I’ve named, Whilst few ask for RELIGION.

Under dust plush as a moth’s wing, the book’s leather cover still darkly shone, and everywhere else but this spot was sodden beneath the roof’s unraveling shingles. There was that back-of-the-neck lick of chill and then, from my index finger, the book opened like a blasted bird.   In its box of familiar and miraculous inks, a construction of filaments and dust, thoroughfares of worms, and a silage of silverfish husks:   in the autumn light, eight hundred pages of perfect wordless lace.