445 Religion poems

Quis consurget mecum adversus malignantes? aut quis stabit mecum adversus operantes iniquitatem? Nemo, Domine! What can it avail To drive forth a snail, Or to make a sail Of an herring’s tail; To rhyme or to rail, To write or to indict, Either for delight Or else for despight; Or books to compile Of divers manner of style, Vice to revile And sin to exile; To teach or to preach, As reason will reach? Say this, and say that, His head is so fat, He wotteth never what Nor whereof he speaketh; He crieth and he creaketh, He prieth and he peeketh, He chides and he chatters, He prates and he patters, He clitters and he clatters, He meddles and he smatters, He gloses and he flatters; Or if he speak plain, Then he lacketh brain, He is but a fool; Let him go to school, On a three footed stool That he may down sit, For he lacketh wit; And if that he hit The nail on the head, It standeth in no stead; The devil, they say, is dead, The devil is dead. It may well so be, Or else they would see Otherwise, and flee From worldly vanity, And foul covetousness, And other wretchedness, Fickle falseness, Variableness, With unstableness. And if ye stand in doubt Who brought this rhyme about, My name is Colin Clout. I purpose to shake out All my connying bag, Like a clerkly hag; For though my rhyme be ragged, Tattered and jagged, Rudely rain beaten, Rusty and moth eaten, If ye take well therewith, It hath in it some pith.

I struck the board, and cried, "No more; I will abroad! What? shall I ever sigh and pine? My lines and life are free, free as the road, Loose as the wind, as large as store. Shall I be still in suit? Have I no harvest but a thorn To let me blood, and not restore What I have lost with cordial fruit? Sure there was wine Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn Before my tears did drown it. Is the year only lost to me? Have I no bays to crown it, No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted? All wasted? Not so, my heart; but there is fruit, And thou hast hands. Recover all thy sigh-blown age On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute Of what is fit and not. Forsake thy cage, Thy rope of sands, Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee Good cable, to enforce and draw, And be thy law, While thou didst wink and wouldst not see. Away! take heed; I will abroad. Call in thy death's-head there; tie up thy fears; He that forbears To suit and serve his need Deserves his load." But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild At every word, Methought I heard one calling,Child! And I replied My Lord.

God’s name is bare of honour in our hearing, And even worn out with our blasphemous swearing. Between the infant and the aged, both The first and last they utter, is an oath. Oh hellish manners of our profane age. Jehovah’s fear is scoffed upon the stage, The Mimicking jester, names it every day; Unless God is blashphem’d, it is no play.

I. Isaiah awoke angry. Lapping at Isaiah’s ears black birdsong no it was anger. God had filled Isaiah’s ears with stingers. Once God and Isaiah were friends. God and Isaiah used to converse nightly, Isaiah would rush into the garden. They conversed under the Branch, night streamed down. From the sole of the foot to the head God would make Isaiah ring. Isaiah had loved God and now his love was turned to pain. Isaiah wanted a name for the pain, he called it sin. Now Isaiah was a man who believed he was a nation. Isaiah called the nation Judah and the sin Judah’s condition. Inside Isaiah God saw the worldsheet burning. Isaiah and God saw things differently, I can only tell you their actions. Isaiah addressed the nation. Man’s brittleness! cried Isaiah. The nation stirred in its husk and slept again. Two slabs of bloody meat lay folded on its eyes like wings. Like a hard glossy painting the nation slept. Who can invent a new fear? Yet I have invented sin, thought Isaiah, running his hand over the knobs. And then, because of a great attraction between them— which Isaiah fought (for and against) for the rest of his life— God shattered Isaiah’s indifference. God washed Isaiah’s hair in fire. God took the stay. From beneath its meat wings the nation listened. You, said Isaiah. No answer. I cannot hear you, Isaiah spoke again under the Branch. Light bleached open the night camera. God arrived. God smashed Isaiah like glass through every socket of his nation. Liar! said God. Isaiah put his hands on his coat, he put his hand on his face. Isaiah is a small man, said Isaiah, but no liar. God paused. And so that was their contract. Brittle on both sides, no lying. Isaiah’s wife came to the doorway, the doorposts had moved. What’s that sound? said Isaiah’s wife. The fear of the Lord, said Isaiah. He grinned in the dark, she went back inside.

‘Gabble-gabble, . . . brethren, . . . gabble-gabble!’ My window frames forest and heather. I hardly hear the tuneful babble, Not knowing nor much caring whether The text is praise or exhortation, Prayer or thanksgiving, or damnation. Outside it blows wetter and wetter, The tossing trees never stay still. I shift my elbows to catch better The full round sweep of heathered hill. The tortured copse bends to and fro In silence like a shadow-show. The parson’s voice runs like a river Over smooth rocks, I like this church: The pews are staid, they never shiver, They never bend or sway or lurch. ‘Prayer,’ says the kind voice, ‘is a chain That draws down Grace from Heaven again.’ I add the hymns up, over and over, Until there’s not the least mistake. Seven-seventy-one. (Look! there’s a plover! It’s gone!) Who’s that Saint by the lake? The red light from his mantle passes Across the broad memorial brasses. It’s pleasant here for dreams and thinking, Lolling and letting reason nod, With ugly serious people linking Sad prayers to a forgiving God . . . . But a dumb blast sets the trees swaying With furious zeal like madmen praying.

Strapped to the bed of circumcision lies My son. This mutilation ties You to the fathers. They will never let You forget, or your flesh be enfranchised ever, Though you pray all your life long. They set you early on the rack, infect you with a fever Of remembering. In the marriage bed, When you are naked, there the sign is red. There is neither meeting nor mating but the past Cries that you've been waited for and wed already— I will not bless this mark upon your body. For you the hurricane is rising fast; I feel the horns of Moses in my head And Law wrenched again from the dead Hand of deity, and I descend out of the blast to you Mad with loneliness upon this bed. But I reserve also the rage That broke the Law upon you like a rain of stone That other time I saw you so could yearn. The Law is broken, baby. I will not ascend again.

I joy, dear mother, when I view Thy perfect lineaments, and hue Both sweet and bright. Beauty in thee takes up her place, And dates her letters from thy face, When she doth write. A fine aspect in fit array, Neither too mean nor yet too gay, Shows who is best. Outlandish looks may not compare, For all they either painted are, Or else undress'd. She on the hills which wantonly Allureth all, in hope to be By her preferr'd, Hath kiss'd so long her painted shrines, That ev'n her face by kissing shines, For her reward. She in the valley is so shy Of dressing, that her hair doth lie About her ears; While she avoids her neighbour's pride, She wholly goes on th' other side, And nothing wears. But, dearest mother, what those miss, The mean, thy praise and glory is And long may be. Blessed be God, whose love it was To double-moat thee with his grace, And none but thee.

(being a conversation in eight poems between an aged Lucifer and God, though only Lucifer is heard. The time is long after.) 1 invitation come coil with me here in creation’s bed among the twigs and ribbons of the past. i have grown old remembering the garden, the hum of the great cats moving into language, the sweet fume of the man’s rib as it rose up and began to walk. it was all glory then, the winged creatures leaping like angels, the oceans claiming their own. let us rest here a time like two old brothers who watched it happen and wondered what it meant. 2 how great Thou art listen. You are beyond even Your own understanding. that rib and rain and clay in all its pride, its unsteady dominion, is not what you believed You were, but it is what You are; in your own image as some lexicographer supposed. the face, both he and she, the odd ambition, the desire to reach beyond the stars is You. All You, all You the loneliness, the perfect imperfection. 3 as for myself less snake than angel less angel than man how come i to this serpent’s understanding? watching creation from a hood of leaves i have foreseen the evening of the world. as sure as she the breast of Yourself separated out and made to bear, as sure as her returning, i too am blessed with the one gift You cherish; to feel the living move in me and to be unafraid. 4 in my own defense what could I choose but to slide along behind them, they whose only sin was being their father’s children? as they stood with their backs to the garden, a new and terrible luster burning their eyes, only You could have called their ineffable names, only in their fever could they have failed to hear. 5 the road led from delight into delight. into the sharp edge of seasons, into the sweet puff of bread baking, the warm vale of sheet and sweat after love, the tinny newborn cry of calf and cormorant and humankind. and pain, of course, always there was some bleeding, but forbid me not my meditation on the outer world before the rest of it, before the bruising of his heel, my head, and so forth. 6 “the silence of God is God.” —Carolyn Forche tell me, tell us why in the confusion of a mountain of babies stacked like cordwood, of limbs walking away from each other, of tongues bitten through by the language of assault, tell me, tell us why You neither raised your hand Nor turned away, tell us why You watched the excommunication of That world and You said nothing. 7 still there is mercy, there is grace how otherwise could I have come to this marble spinning in space propelled by the great thumb of the universe? how otherwise could the two roads of this tongue converge into a single certitude? how otherwise could I, a sleek old traveler, curl one day safe and still beside YOU at Your feet, perhaps, but, amen, Yours. 8 “.........is God.” so. having no need to speak You sent Your tongue splintered into angels. even i, with my little piece of it have said too much. to ask You to explain is to deny You. before the word You were. You kiss my brother mouth. the rest is silence.

The world’s light shines, shine as it will, The world will love its darkness still. I doubt though when the world’s in hell, It will not love its darkness half so well.

Nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard metudæs maecti end his modgidanc uerc uuldurfadur sue he uundra gihuaes eci dryctin or astelidæ he aerist scop aelda barnu m heben til hrofe haleg scepen. tha middungeard moncynnæs uard eci dryctin æfter tiadæ firum foldu frea allmectig Nu scilun herga hefenricæs uard metudæs mehti and his modgithanc uerc uuldurfadur sue he uundra gihuæs eci dryctin or astelidæ. he ærist scop ældu barnum hefen to hrofæ halig sceppend tha middingard moncynnæs uard eci dryctin æfter tiadæ firum foldu frea allmehtig