445 Religion poems

Like as the armed knight Appointed to the field, With this world will I fight And Faith shall be my shield. Faith is that weapon strong Which will not fail at need. My foes, therefore, among Therewith will I proceed. As it is had in strength And force of Christes way It will prevail at length Though all the devils say nay. Faith in the fathers old Obtained rightwisness Which make me very bold To fear no world's distress. I now rejoice in heart And Hope bid me do so For Christ will take my part And ease me of my woe. Thou saist, lord, who so knock, To them wilt thou attend. Undo, therefore, the lock And thy strong power send. More enmyes now I have Than hairs upon my head. Let them not me deprave But fight thou in my stead. On thee my care I cast. For all their cruel spight I set not by their haste For thou art my delight. I am not she that list My anchor to let fall For every drizzling mist My ship substancial. Not oft use I to wright In prose nor yet in rime, Yet will I shew one sight That I saw in my time. I saw a rial throne Where Justice should have sit But in her stead was one Of moody cruel wit. Absorpt was rightwisness As of the raging flood Sathan in his excess Suct up the guiltless blood. Then thought I, Jesus lord, When thou shalt judge us all Hard is it to record On these men what will fall. Yet lord, I thee desire For that they do to me Let them not taste the hire Of their iniquity.

for St. Mark's Episcopal, Good Friday 1999 In his careful welter of dried leaves and seeds, soil samples, quartz pebbles, notes-to-myself, letters, on Dr. Carver's bedside table next to his pocket watch, folded in Aunt Mariah's Bible: the Bill of Sale. Seven hundred dollars for a thirteen-year-old girl named Mary. He moves it from passage to favorite passage. Fifteen cents for every day she had lived. Three hundred fifty dollars for each son. No charge for two stillborn daughters buried out there with the Carvers' child. This new incandescent light makes his evening's reading unwaveringly easy, if he remembers to wipe his spectacles. He turns to the blossoming story of Abraham's dumbstruck luck, of Isaac's pure trust in his father's wisdom. Seven hundred dollars for all of her future. He shakes his head.

What say the Bells of San Blas To the ships that southward pass From the harbor of Mazatlan? To them it is nothing more Than the sound of surf on the shore,— Nothing more to master or man. But to me, a dreamer of dreams, To whom what is and what seems Are often one and the same,— The Bells of San Blas to me Have a strange, wild melody, And are something more than a name. For bells are the voice of the church; They have tones that touch and search The hearts of young and old; One sound to all, yet each Lends a meaning to their speech, And the meaning is manifold. They are a voice of the Past, Of an age that is fading fast, Of a power austere and grand; When the flag of Spain unfurled Its folds o'er this western world, And the Priest was lord of the land. The chapel that once looked down On the little seaport town Has crumbled into the dust; And on oaken beams below The bells swing to and fro, And are green with mould and rust. "Is, then, the old faith dead," They say, "and in its stead Is some new faith proclaimed, That we are forced to remain Naked to sun and rain, Unsheltered and ashamed? "Once in our tower aloof We rang over wall and roof Our warnings and our complaints; And round about us there The white doves filled the air, Like the white souls of the saints. "The saints! Ah, have they grown Forgetful of their own? Are they asleep, or dead, That open to the sky Their ruined Missions lie, No longer tenanted? "Oh, bring us back once more The vanished days of yore, When the world with faith was filled; Bring back the fervid zeal, The hearts of fire and steel, The hands that believe and build. "Then from our tower again We will send over land and main Our voices of command, Like exiled kings who return To their thrones, and the people learn That the Priest is lord of the land!" O Bells of San Blas, in vain Ye call back the Past again! The Past is deaf to your prayer; Out of the shadows of night The world rolls into light; It is daybreak everywhere.

if you didn’t mind the bible you’d surely mind the belt

The Angry God of  This World & His Throne in Purgatory Fog day, give us the sun. But the particulate hangover from Stuttgart’s bad days obscures. The weather of modernity. The lady’s tattooed musculature is what comes of getting too close to the angry father. Decode. He’d been left behind. We get on well now. Punk diadem, scales unjust, iced and fired, messianic Virgil and the golden aspiration for one wandering around in diaphanous red, the zoo escapees looking on hungrily but nervously. And a little bit curious. Even at the height of Coondle heat when I rose before dawn to catch the sun’s origins I realized I was looking into the core of purgatory. The house would stretch and crack with heat but then, as the sun played its games with the horizon, the curve of the hill, the house was at its coolest and retracted so a glass pane shattered into the corridor. The conspiracy of good and bad. Who is to choose? I don’t mind the walk, negotiating rough ground, but when jerks are taking potshots at you, it makes it impossible. I don’t use a GPS. A bit of bush knowledge, a lot of common sense. But this is Tübingen and we’re nearing our time: the songbird insurgence and weather vanes and swans, the bare branches and killed trees, the welcome and hatred of refugees, questions of which fruit will ripen or mature or fall or offer seed when its time comes. I study Hölderlin manuscripts with a friend and we will rewrite “Half of Life” upside down. The inversions of travel and temporariness and permanence. Tracy speaks to me from across the old town. It hasn’t rained today but the Ammer River is still swift outside this window. Classic. Stock epithet burnout. Behind the glissade of faces the goings home. Vengeance lurks therein. Such beautiful youth. Floating on Friday night promise. This brutal God watching on. In store. Adorning places of worship. I apologize for the distractions. Wondering while I write.

Rome, 15— Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity! Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back? Nephews—sons mine . . . ah God, I know not! Well— She, men would have to be your mother once, Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was! What's done is done, and she is dead beside, Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since, And as she died so must we die ourselves, And thence ye may perceive the world's a dream. Life, how and what is it? As here I lie In this state-chamber, dying by degrees, Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask "Do I live, am I dead?" Peace, peace seems all. Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace; And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know: —Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care; Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner South He graced his carrion with, God curse the same! Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side, And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, And up into the aery dome where live The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk: And I shall fill my slab of basalt there, And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest, With those nine columns round me, two and two, The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. —Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone, Put me where I may look at him! True peach, Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize! Draw close: that conflagration of my church —What then? So much was saved if aught were missed! My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood, Drop water gently till the surface sink, And if ye find . . . Ah God, I know not, I! ... Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft, And corded up in a tight olive-frail, Some lump, ah God, of lapis lazuli, Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape, Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast ... Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all, That brave Frascati villa with its bath, So, let the blue lump poise between my knees, Like God the Father's globe on both His hands Ye worship in the Jesu Church so gay, For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst! Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years: Man goeth to the grave, and where is he? Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black— 'Twas ever antique-black I meant! How else Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath? The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me, Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so, The Saviour at his sermon on the mount, Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off, And Moses with the tables . . . but I know Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee, Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope To revel down my villas while I gasp Bricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at! Nay, boys, ye love me—all of jasper, then! 'Tis jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve. My bath must needs be left behind, alas! One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut, There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world— And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts, And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs? —That's if ye carve my epitaph aright, Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word, No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line— Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need! And then how I shall lie through centuries, And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, And see God made and eaten all day long, And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke! For as I lie here, hours of the dead night, Dying in state and by such slow degrees, I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook, And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point, And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop Into great laps and folds of sculptor's-work: And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts Grow, with a certain humming in my ears, About the life before I lived this life, And this life too, popes, cardinals and priests, Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount, Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes, And new-found agate urns as fresh as day, And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet, —Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend? No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best! Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage. All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart? Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick, They glitter like your mother's for my soul, Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze, Piece out its starved design, and fill my vase With grapes, and add a vizor and a Term, And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down, To comfort me on my entablature Whereon I am to lie till I must ask "Do I live, am I dead?" There, leave me, there! For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude To death—ye wish it—God, ye wish it! Stone— Gritstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat As if the corpse they keep were oozing through— And no more lapis to delight the world! Well, go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there, But in a row: and, going, turn your backs —Ay, like departing altar-ministrants, And leave me in my church, the church for peace, That I may watch at leisure if he leers— Old Gandolf, at me, from his onion-stone, As still he envied me, so fair she was!

You wouldn't have believed it, how the man, a little touched perhaps, set his hands together and prayed for happiness, yet not his own; he meant his people, by which he meant not people really, but trees and cows, the dirty horses, dogs, the fox who lived at the back of his place with her kits, and the very night who settled down to rock his place to sleep, the place he tried so hard to tend he found he mended fences in his sleep. He said to the you above, who, let's be honest, doesn't say too much, I need you now up there to give my people happiness, you let them smile and know the reason; hear my prayer, Old Yam. The you who's you might laugh at that, and I agree, it's funny to make a prayer like that, the down-home words and yonder reach of what he said; and calling God the Elder Sweet Potato, shucks, that's pretty funny, and kind of sad.

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! O what a foretaste of glory divine! Heir of salvation, purchase of God, Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood! Chorus: This is my story, this is my song, Praising my Saviour all the day long. Perfect submission, perfect delight, Visions of rapture now burst on my sight; Angels descending bring from above Echoes of mercy, whispers of love. Perfect submission, all is at rest, I in my Saviour am happy and blest,— Watching and waiting, looking above, Filled with His goodness, lost in His love.

Today I heard a rich and hungry boy verbatim quote all last night’s infomercials — an anorectic son who bought with Daddy’s Amex black card the Bowflex machine and Abdomenizer, plus a steak knife that doth slice the inner skin of   his starving arms. Poor broken child of   Eve myself, to me, the flightless fly, the listing, blistered, scalded. I am the rod to their lightning. Mine is the earhole their stories pierce. At my altar the blouse is torn open and the buttons sailed across the incensed air space of the nave, that I may witness the mastectomy scars crisscrossed like barbed wire, like bandoliers. To me, the mother carries the ash contents of   the long-ago incinerated girl. She begs me for comfort since my own son was worse tortured. Justice, they wail for — mercy? Each prostrate body I hold my arms out for is a cross my son is nailed to.

Ezekiel saw the wheel, way up in the middle of the air. TRADITIONAL GOSPEL SONG Blood on the night soil man en route to the country prison Blood on the sullen chair, the one that holds you with its pleasure Blood inside the quartz, the beauty watch, the eye of the guard Blood on the slope of names & the tattoos hidden Blood on the Virgin, behind the veils, Behind—in the moon angel's gold oracle hair What blood is this, is it the blood of the worker rat? Is it the blood of the clone governor, the city maid? Why does it course in s's & z's? Blood on the couch, made for viewing automobiles & face cream Blood on the pin, this one going through you without any pain Blood on the screen, the green torso queen of slavering hearts Blood on the grandmother's wish, her tawdry stick of Texas Blood on the daughter's breast who sews roses Blood on the father, does anyone remember him, bluish? Blood from a kitchen fresco, in thick amber strokes Blood from the baby's right ear, from his ochre nose What blood is this? Blood on the fender, in the sender's shoe, in his liquor sack Blood on the street, call it Milagro Boulevard, Mercy Lanes #9 Blood on the alien, in the alligator jacket teen boy Juan There is blood, there, he says Blood here too, down here, she says Only blood, the Blood Mother sings Blood driving miniature American queens stamped into rage Blood driving rappers in Mercedes blackened & whitened in news Blood driving the snare-eyed professor searching for her panties Blood driving the championship husband bent in Extreme Unction Blood of the orphan weasel in heat, the Calvinist farmer in wheat Blood of the lettuce rebellion on the rise, the cannery worker's prize Blood of the painted donkey forced into prostitute zebra, Blood of the Tijuana tourist finally awake & forced into pimp sleep again It is blood time, Sir Terminator says, It is blood time, Sir Simpson winks, It is blood time, Sir McVeigh weighs. Her nuclear blood watch soaked, will it dry? His whitish blood ring smoked, will it foam? My groin blood leather roped, will it marry? My wife's peasant blood spoked, will it ride again? Blood in the tin, in the coffee bean, in the maquila oración Blood in the language, in the wise text of the market sausage Blood in the border web, the penal colony shed, in the bilingual yard Crow blood blues perched on nothingness again fly over my field, yellow-green & opal Dog blood crawl & swish through my sheets Who will eat this speckled corn? Who shall be born on this Wednesday war bed? Blood in the acid theater, again, in the box office smash hit Blood in the Corvette tank, in the crack talk crank below Blood boat Navy blood glove Army ventricle Marines in the cookie sex jar, camouflaged rape whalers Roam & rumble, investigate my Mexican hoodlum blood Tiny blood behind my Cuban ear, wine colored & hushed Tiny blood in the death row tool, in the middle-aged corset Tiny blood sampler, tiny blood, you hush up again, so tiny Blood in the Groove Shopping Center, In blue Appalachia river, in Detroit harness spleen Blood in the Groove Virus machine, In low ocean tide, in Iowa soy bean Blood in the Groove Lynch mob orchestra, South of Herzegovina, south, I said Blood marching for the Immigration Patrol, prized & arrogant Blood spawning in the dawn break of African Blood Tribes, grimacing & multiple—multiple, I said Blood on the Macho Hat, the one used for proper genuflections Blood on the faithful knee, the one readied for erotic negation Blood on the willing nerve terminal, the one open for suicide Blood at the age of seventeen Blood at the age of one, dumped in a Greyhound bus Blood mute & autistic & cauterized & smuggled Mayan & burned in border smelter tar Could this be yours? Could this item belong to you? Could this ticket be what you ordered, could it? Blood on the wheel, blood on the reel Bronze dead gold & diamond deep. Blood be fast.