445 Religion poems

When my devotions could not pierce Thy silent ears, Then was my heart broken, as was my verse; My breast was full of fears And disorder. My bent thoughts, like a brittle bow, Did fly asunder: Each took his way; some would to pleasures go, Some to the wars and thunder Of alarms. “As good go anywhere,” they say, “As to benumb Both knees and heart, in crying night and day, Come, come, my God, O come! But no hearing.” O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue To cry to thee, And then not hear it crying! All day long My heart was in my knee, But no hearing. Therefore my soul lay out of sight, Untuned, unstrung: My feeble spirit, unable to look right, Like a nipped blossom, hung Discontented. O cheer and tune my heartless breast, Defer no time; That so thy favors granting my request, They and my mind may chime, And mend my rhyme.

From the far star points of his pinned extremities, cold inched in—black ice and squid ink— till the hung flesh was empty. Lonely in that void even for pain, he missed his splintered feet, the human stare buried in his face. He ached for two hands made of meat he could reach to the end of. In the corpse’s core, the stone fist of his heart began to bang on the stiff chest’s door, and breath spilled back into that battered shape. Now it’s your limbs he comes to fill, as warm water shatters at birth, rivering every way.

That we await a blessed hope,& that we will be struck With great fear, like a baby taken into the night, that every boot, Every improvised explosive, Talon & Hornet, Molotov & rubber-coated bullet, every unexploded cluster bomblet, Every Kevlar & suicide vest & unpiloted drone raining fire On wedding parties will be burned as fuel in the dark season. That we will learn the awful hunger of God, the nerve-fraying Cry of God, the curdy vomit of God, the soiled swaddle of God, The constant wakefulness of God, alongside the sweet scalp Of God, the contented murmur of God, the limb-twitched dream- Reaching of God. We’re dizzy in every departure, limb-lost. We cannot sleep in the wake of God,& God will not sleep The infant dream for long. We lift the blinds, look out into ink For light. My God, my God, open the spine binding our sight.

For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and all were made to drink of one Spirit. —1 Corinthians 12:13 If in his image made am I, then make me a miracle. Make my shrine a copper faucet leaking everlasting Evian to the masses. Make this empty water glass a goblet of long-legged French wine. Make mine a Prince-purple body bag designed by Crown Royal for tax collectors to spill over & tithe into just before I rise. If in his image made am I, then make my vessel a pearl Coupe de Ville. Make mine the body of a 28-year-old black woman in a blue patterned maxi dress cruising through Hell on Earth, TX again alive. If in his image made are we, then why the endless string of effigies? Why so many mortal blasphemes? Why crucify me in HD across a scrolling news ticker, tied to a clothesline of broken necks long as Time? Is this thing on? Jesus on the ground. Jesus in the margins. Of hurricane & sea. Jesus of busted levees in chocolate cities. Jesus of the Middle East (Africa) & crows flying backwards. Of blood, on the leaves, inside diamond mines, in under- developed mineral-rich countries. If in your image made are we, the proliferation of your tie-dyed hippie doppelgänger makes you easier to daily see. & in this image didn’t we make the godhead, slightly stony, high enough to surf a cloud? & didn’t we leave you there, where, surely, paradise or justice must be meted out? Couldn’t we see where water takes the form of whatever most holds it upright? If then this is what it’s come down to. My faith, in rifle shells. In Glock 22 magazine sleeves. Isn’t it also then how, why, in a bucket shot full of holes, I’ve been made to believe?

Our annual prairie Chanukah party— latkes, kugel, cherry blintzes. Friends arrive from nearby towns and dance the twist to “Chanukah Lights Tonight,” spin like a dreidel to a klezmer hit. The candles flicker in the window. Outside, ponderosa pines are tied in red bows. If you squint, the neighbors’ Christmas lights look like the Omaha skyline. The smell of oil is in the air. We drift off to childhood where we spent our gelt on baseball cards and matinees, cream sodas and potato knishes. No delis in our neighborhood, only the wind howling over the crushed corn stalks. Inside, we try to sweep the darkness out, waiting for the Messiah to knock, wanting to know if he can join the party.

I Immense, august, like some Titanic bloom, The mighty choir unfolds its lithic core, Petalled with panes of azure, gules and or, Splendidly lambent in the Gothic gloom, And stamened with keen flamelets that illume The pale high-altar. On the prayer-worn floor, By worshippers innumerous thronged of yore, A few brown crones, familiars of the tomb, The stranded driftwood of Faith’s ebbing sea— For these alone the finials fret the skies, The topmost bosses shake their blossoms free, While from the triple portals, with grave eyes, Tranquil, and fixed upon eternity, The cloud of witnesses still testifies. II The crimson panes like blood-drops stigmatise The western floor. The aisles are mute and cold. A rigid fetich in her robe of gold, The Virgin of the Pillar, with blank eyes, Enthroned beneath her votive canopies, Gathers a meagre remnant to her fold. The rest is solitude; the church, grown old, Stands stark and grey beneath the burning skies. Well-nigh again its mighty framework grows To be a part of nature’s self, withdrawn From hot humanity’s impatient woes; The floor is ridged like some rude mountain lawn, And in the east one giant window shows The roseate coldness of an Alp at dawn.

For hours now the Last Supper has been over, And the beating almost over, and morning’s cry Yet to be heard by the workmen in the courtyard Warming themselves by the hasty fire, and Peter, Near the agony in the garden, feeling something Terrible happening, blinking back stale sleep, Peter turns his face from strangers’ stares. “This man also was with Jesus.” The others Slowly turning toward him with cold interest, And his own voice, thick-tongued: “I do not know him.” That the cock crows not then but at the third No Must tell us much about the nature of faith, How it leans on separations, how it robes simple Gestures—a hand waving from an open window— With deferral, as if real knowledge only comes after, As though Peter could only see what he’d done Upon going from the high priest’s courtyard And, all alone, weeping bitterly in the dawn. That much we can understand, but why then Does Chekhov revisit this known, hard ground With a half-frozen student who, on his way back From a failed hunt, thinks how this same chill Easter wind must have blown in Rurik’s age And scourged the hungry poor in the years Of Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible? Wind, raw wind, hunger, icy needles of rain . . . The same as then—until, coming on two widows, A huge, shapeless old woman in a man’s overcoat And her putty-faced daughter washing a kettle, The student asks if he might share their fire, Saying, as he does, that St. Peter had on such A night warmed himself before a fire, on such A cold, extraordinarily long and terrible night. Murmuring welcomes, they bring him inside, And soon he finds himself describing in detail That part of the gospel which is Peter’s betrayal: “. . . thus I imagine it: the garden deathly still And very dark, and in the silence came Sounds of muffled sobbing—” Here his account Breaks off when the absently-smiling Vasilissa Suddenly weeps, burying her eyes in her apron; Whereupon her daughter, herself bowed down By sickness and filth, blushes and turns away. The student, for all his theology, is speechless. There’s nothing for it now but to step out With empty game-bag and find his moonlit Way back home across the ancient marsh. Only then does he see in the waterlogged Meadow, well beyond the river’s sedges, Something remarkable: a high-walled garden Looming green against a background of sand. Nineteen hundred years crossed in heartbeats! In that kindled instant all the world’s travails Drop from his shoulders. Just twenty-two, He has found the very quick of faith. Gone are hunger, sleet and useless words. Gone! Ah, we leave him there at century’s end, Before he has returned to his village —And all that returning would surely mean— In this, the briefest of the master’s stories.

On Sundays, the preacher gives everyone a chance to repent their sins. Miss Edna makes me go to church. She wears a bright hat I wear my suit. Babies dress in lace. Girls my age, some pretty, some not so pretty. Old ladies and men nodding. Miss Edna every now and then throwing her hand in the air. Saying Yes, Lord and Preach! I sneak a pen from my back pocket, bend down low like I dropped something. The chorus marches up behind the preacher clapping and humming and getting ready to sing. I write the word HOPE on my hand.

The church knelt heavy above us as we attended Sunday School, circled by age group and hunkered on little wood folding chairs where we gave our nickels, said our verses, heard the stories, sang the solid, swinging songs. It could have been God above in the pews, His restless love sifting with dust from the joists. We little seeds swelled in the stone cellar, bursting to grow toward the light. Maybe it was that I liked how, upstairs, outside, an avid sun stormed down, burning the sharp- edged shadows back to their buildings, or how the winter air knifed after the dreamy basement. Maybe the day we learned whatever would have kept me believing I was just watching light poke from the high, small window and tilt to the floor where I could make it a gold strap on my shoe, wrap my ankle, embrace any part of me.

the voyage of st. brendan A cry of “Land!” A cliff face, iron ore red, a monastery perched on top, gold-gilded. The crew cast anchor, doggy-swam ashore and surfed the scree slopes in buoyant uproar. The summit gained, they gasped: seven monks advanced in welcome, cooing like rock doves. The ground was fire-grate ash, entirely barren; reading looks, the eldest spoke to Brendan: “We drink the dew. Our food arrives by raven, one loaf one fish, our drop, our daily ration, the bird so clockwork and plain bountiful. Rest here, brothers. Come, observe our ritual.” The monks performed a wordless parable: seven stones in a fruit picker’s pail, bird-skin robes. Cried Brendan: “Holy fathers, bless you — these are quality palavers.” The crew half-slept, that night, in golden cells, their dreams hatchlings, their nerves eggshells. Before the raven-dawn they fled in haste, fearing their hosts’ hunger, and their faith.