445 Religion poems

Even on Easter Sunday when the church was a jungle of lilies and ferns fat Uncle Paul who loved his liquor so would pound away with both fists on the stone pulpit shouting sin sin sin and the fiery fires of hell and I cried all after- noon the first time I heard what they did to Jesus it was something the children shouldn’t know about till they were older but the new maid told me and both of us cried a lot and so mother got another one right away & she sent away Miss Richardson who came all the way from England because she kept telling how her fiancé Mr. Bowles- Lyon died suddenly of a heart attack he just said one day at lunch I’m afraid I’m not well and the next thing they knew he was sliding un- der the table. Easter was nice the eggs were silly but the big lilies were wonderful & when Uncle Paul got so fat from drinking that he couldn’t squeeze into the pulpit anymore & had to preach from the floor there was an el- ders’ meeting and they said they would have the pulpit rebuilt but Uncle Paul said no it was the Lord’s manifest will and he would pass his remaining years in sacred studies I liked Thanksgiving better be- cause that was the day father took us down to the mills but Easter I liked next best and the rabbits died because we fed them beet tops and the lamb pulled up the grass by the roots and was sold to Mr. Page the butcher I asked Uncle Robert what were sacred studies he said he was not really sure but he guessed they came in a bottle and mother sent me away from the table when I wouldn’t eat my lamb chops that was ridiculous she said it wasn’t the lamb of God it was just Caesar An- dromache Nibbles but I couldn’t I just couldn’t & the year of the strike we didn’t go to Church at all on Easter because they said it wasn’t safe down town so instead we had prayers in the library and then right in the mid- dle the telephone rang it was Mr. Shupstead at the mill they had had to use tear gas father made a special prayer right a- way for God’s protection & mercy and then he sent us out to the farm with mother we stayed a week and missed school but it rained a lot and I broke the bathroom mirror and had to learn a long psalm.

Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store, Though foolishly he lost the same, Decaying more and more, Till he became Most poore: With thee O let me rise As larks, harmoniously, And sing this day thy victories: Then shall the fall further the flight in me. My tender age in sorrow did beginne And still with sicknesses and shame. Thou didst so punish sinne, That I became Most thinne. With thee Let me combine, And feel thy victorie: For, if I imp my wing on thine, Affliction shall advance the flight in me.

When first thou on me, Lord, wrought'st thy sweet print, My heart was made thy tinder box. My ’ffections were thy tinder in’t: Where fell thy sparks by drops. Those holy sparks of heavenly fire that came Did ever catch and often out would flame. But now my heart is made thy censer trim, Full of thy golden altar’s fire, To offer up sweet incense in Unto thyself entire: I find my tinder scarce thy sparks can feel That drop out from thy holy flint and steel. Hence doubts out bud for fear thy fire in me ’S a mocking ignis fatuus; Or lest thine altars fire out be, It’s hid in ashes thus. Yet when the bellows of thy spirit blow Away mine ashes, then thy fire doth glow.

There is an old statue in the courtyard that weeps, like Niobe, its sorrow in stone. The griefs of the ages she has made her own. Her eyes are rain-washed but not hard, her body is covered in mould, the garden overgrown. One by one the first lights come on, those that haven’t been on all night. Christmas, the harshly festive, has come and gone. No snow, but the rain pours down in the first hour before dawn, before daylight. Swift’s home for ‘fools and mad’ has become the administrative block. Much there has remained unchanged for many a long year — stairs, chairs, Georgian widows shafting light and dust, of the satirist; but the real hospital is a cheerful modern extension at the back hung with restful reproductions of Dufy, Klee and Braque. Television, Russian fiction, snooker with the staff, a sifter of Lucozade, a paragraph of Newsweek or the Daily Mail are my daily routine during the festive season. They don’t lock the razors here as in Bowditch Hall. We have remained upright — though, to be frank, the Christmas dinner scene, with grown men in their festive gear, was a sobering sight. I watch the last planes of the year go past, silently climbing a cloud-lit sky. Earth-bound, soon I’ll be taking a train to Cork and trying to get back to work at my sea-lit, fort-view desk in the turf-smoky dusk. Meanwhile, next door, a visiting priest intones to a faithful dormitory. I sit on my Protestant bed, a make-believe existentialist, and stare the clouds of unknowing. We style, as best we may, our private destiny; or so it seems to me as I chew my thumb and try to figure out what brought me to my present state — an ‘educated man’, a man of consequence, no bum but one who has hardly grasped what life is about, if anything. My children, far away, don’t know where I am today, in a Dublin asylum with a paper whistle and a mince pie, my bits and pieces making a home from home. I pray to the rain-clouds that they never come where their lost father lies; that their mother thrives; and that I may measure up to them before I die. Soon a new year will be here demanding, as before, modest proposals, resolute resolutions, a new leaf, new leaves. This is the story of my life, the story of all lives everywhere, mad fools whatever we are, in here or out there. Light and sane I shall walk down to the train, into that world whose sanity we know, like Swift to be a fiction and a show. The clouds part, the rain ceases, the sun casts now upon everyone its ancient shadow.

It’s not true that Your saints have won everything: they left me with sins enough. Someday I’ll lie on my deathbed, Lord, ill-shaven and yellow as a lifelong drunk. And I’ll make a general examination of myself, looking back over all my days, And I’ll see that I’m rich after all, ripe and rich with evil in its unnumbered paths and ways. I haven’t lost one single chance, Lord, to make matter for You to pardon. Now I hearten myself with vice, having long ago sloughed off virtue’s burden. Each day has its own kind of crime, plain to see, and I count them like some paranoid miser. If what you need, Lord, are virgins, if what you need are brave men beneath your standard; If there are people for whom to be Christian words alone would not suffice, But who know rather that only in stirring themselves to chase after You is there any life, Well then there’s Dominic and Francis, Saint Lawrence and Saint Cecilia and plenty more! But if by chance You should have need of a lazy and imbecilic bore, If a prideful coward could prove useful to You, or perhaps a soiled ingrate, Or the sort of man whose hard heart shows up in a hard face— Well, anyway, You didn’t come to save the just but that other type that abounds, And if, miraculously, You run out of them elsewhere . . . Lord, I’m still around. And what kind of a man is so crude that he hasn’t held a little something back from You, Hasn’t in his free time fashioned something special for You, Hoping that one day the idea will come to You to ask it of him, And maybe this little that he’s made himself, kept back until then, though horrid and tortuous, will please Your whim. It would be something that he’d put his whole heart into, something useless and malformed. Just like that my little daughter once, on my birthday, teetered forward with encumbered arms And offered me, her heart at once full of timidity and pride, A magnificent little duck she had made with her own two hands, a pincushion, made of red wool and gold thread.

An Ode Attempted in English Sapphic When the fierce north wind with his airy forces Rears up the Baltic to a foaming fury, And the red lightning with a storm of hail comes Rushing amain down, How the poor sailors stand amazed and tremble, While the hoarse thunder, like a bloody trumpet, Roars a loud onset to the gaping waters, Quick to devour them! Such shall the noise be and the wild disorder, (If things eternal may be like these earthly) Such the dire terror, when the great Archangel Shakes the creation, Tears the strong pillars of the vault of heaven, Breaks up old marble, the repose of princes; See the graves open, and the bones arising, Flames all around ’em! Hark, the shrill outcries of the guilty wretches! Lively bright horror and amazing anguish Stare through their eyelids, while the living worm lies Gnawing within them. Thoughts like old vultures prey upon their heart-strings, And the smart twinges, when the eye beholds the Lofty Judge frowning, and a flood of vengeance Rolling afore him. Hopeless immortals! how they scream and shiver, While devils push them to the pit wide-yawning Hideous and gloomy, to receive them headlong Down to the center. Stop here, my fancy: (all away ye horrid Doleful ideas); come, arise to Jesus; How He sits God-like! and the saints around him Throned, yet adoring! Oh may I sit there when he comes triumphant Dooming the nations! then ascend to glory While our hosannas all along the passage Shout the Redeemer.

Day of Satan's painful duty! Earth shall vanish, hot and sooty; So says Virtue, so says Beauty. Ah! what terror shall be shaping When the Judge the truth's undraping— Cats from every bag escaping! Now the trumpet's invocation Calls the dead to condemnation; All receive an invitation. Death and Nature now are quaking, And the late lamented, waking, In their breezy shrouds are shaking. Lo! the Ledger's leaves are stirring, And the Clerk, to them referring, Makes it awkward for the erring. When the Judge appears in session, We shall all attend confession, Loudly preaching non-suppression. How shall I then make romances Mitigating circumstances? Even the just must take their chances. King whose majesty amazes, Save thou him who sings thy praises; Fountain, quench my private blazes. Pray remember, sacred Saviour, Mine the playful hand that gave your Death-blow. Pardon such behavior. Seeking me, fatigue assailed thee, Calvary's outlook naught availed thee; Now 'twere cruel if I failed thee. Righteous judge and learnèd brother, Pray thy prejudices smother Ere we meet to try each other. Sighs of guilt my conscience gushes, And my face vermilion flushes; Spare me for my pretty blushes. Thief and harlot, when repenting, Thou forgavest—complimenting Me with sign of like relenting. If too bold is my petition I'll receive with due submission My dismissal—from perdition. When thy sheep thou hast selected From the goats, may I, respected, Stand amongst them undetected. When offenders are indited, And with trial-flames ignited, Elsewhere I'll attend if cited. Ashen-hearted, prone and prayerful, When of death I see the air full, Lest I perish too be careful. On that day of lamentation, When, to enjoy the conflagration, Men come forth, O be not cruel: Spare me, Lord—make them thy fuel.

Dare a mighty row in Zion an’ de debbil’s gittin’ high, An’ de saints done beat de sinners, a-cussin’ on de sly; What for it am? you reckon, well, I’ll tell you how it ’gin Twuz ’bout a mighty leetle thing, de linin’ ub de hymns. De young folks say taint stylish to lin’ out no mo’, Dat dey’s got edikashun, an’ dey wants us all to know Dat dey likes to hab dar singin’ books a-holin’ fore dar eyes, An sing de hymns right straight along to mansion in de skies. Dat it am awful fogy to gin um out by lin’, An’ ef de ole folks will kumplain ’cause dey is ole an’ blin An’ slabry’s chain don kep dem back from larnin how to read, Dat dey mus’ take a corner seat, and let de young folks lead. We bin peatin’hine de pastor when he sez dat lubly pray’r Cause some un us don kno’ it an’ kin not say it squar, But dey sez we mus’ peat wid him, an’ ef we kan keep time, De gospel train will drap us off from follin’ long behin’. Well p’haps dez’s right, I kin not say, my lims is growin’ ole, But I likes to sing dem dear ole hymns ’tis music to my soul An’ ’pears to me twon’t do much harm to gin um out by lin’, So we ole folk dat kin not read kin foller long behin’. But few ub us am lef here now dat bore de slabry’s chain, We don edekate our boys an’ gals we’d do de sam’ agin An Zion’s all dat’s lef us now to cheer us wid its song, Dey mought’low us to sing wid dem, it kin not be fur long. De sarmons high-falutin’ an’ de chuch am mighty fin’, We trus’ dat God still understans ez he did in olden times; When we do ign’ant po an’ mean still worshiped wid de soul Do oft akross our peac’ful breas’ de wabes ub trouble rolled. De old time groans an’shouts an’moans am passin’ out ub sight, Edikashun changed all dat, and we believe it right: We should serb God wid ’telligence but fur dis thing I plead, Jes lebe a leetle place in chuch fur dem as kin not read.

As George Washington hacked at his cherry tree, Joseph said to him This is the tree that fed Mary When she lingered by the way. As George Washington polished his bright blade, Joseph told him This cherry tree Bent down and nourished the mother and her babe. As George Washington felled the cherry tree, Voices of root and stem Cried out to him In heavenly accents, but he heard not what they had to say. Rather, he was making A clearing in the wilderness, A subtle discrimination Of church and state, By which his little hatchet Harvested a continental Bumper crop for Mary Of natural corn.

Deeply repentant of my sinful ways And of my trivial, manifold desires, Of squandering, alas, these few brief days Of fugitive life in tending love's vain fires, To Thee, Lord, Who dost move hard hearts again, And render warmth unto the frozen snow, And lighten every bitter load of pain For those who with Thy sacred ardours glow, To Thee I turn, O stretch forth Thy right hand And from this whirlpool rescue me, for I Without Thine aid could never reach the land; O willingly for us didst suffer loss, And to redeem mankind hung on the Cross, O gentle Saviour, leave me not to die.