445 Religion poems

Mary Magdalene Virgin Mother Mary, Sister of Martha

God-My-Father gave me three words: O-My-Love. O-My-God. Holy-Holy-Holy.

“Prince Jesus, crush those bastards ...” —Francois Villon, Grand Testament It is the unremarkable that will last, As in Brueghel’s camouflage, where the wren’s withheld, While elsewhere on a hill, small hawks (or are they other birds?) Are busily unraveling eyelashes & pupils From sunburned thieves outstretched on scaffolds, Their last vision obscured by wings, then broken, entered. I cannot tell whether their blood spurts, or just spills, Their faces are wings, & their bodies are uncovered. The twittering they hear is the final trespass. ~ And all later luxuries—the half-dressed neighbor couple Shouting insults at each other just beyond Her bra on a cluttered windowsill, then ceasing it when A door was slammed to emphasize, like trouble, The quiet flowing into things then, spreading its wake From the child’s toy left out on a lawn To the broken treatise of jet-trails drifting above—seem Keel scrapes on the shores of some enlarging mistake, A wrong so wide no one can speak of it now in the town That once had seemed, like its supporting factories That manufactured poems & weaponry, Like such a good idea. And wasn’t it everyone’s? Wasn’t the sad pleasure of assembly lines a replica Of the wren’s perfect, camouflaged self-sufficiency, And of its refusal even to be pretty, Surviving in a plumage dull enough to blend in with A hemline of smoke, sky, & a serene indifference? ~ The dead wren I found on a gravel drive One morning, all beige above and off-white Underneath, the body lighter, no more than a vacant tent Of oily feathers stretched, blent, & lacquered shut Against the world—was a world I couldn’t touch. And in its skull a snow of lice had set up such An altar, the congregation spreading from the tongue To round, bare sills that had been its eyes, I let It drop, my hand changed for a moment By a thing so common it was never once distracted from The nothing all wrens meant, the one feather on the road. No feeding in the wake of cavalry or kings changed it. Even in the end it swerved away, & made the abrupt Riddle all things come to seem ... irrelevant: The tucked claws clutched emptiness like a stick. And if Death whispered as always in the language of curling Leaves, or a later one that makes us stranger, “Don’t you come near me motherfucker”; If the tang of metal in slang made the New World fertile, Still ... as they resumed their quarrel in the quiet air, I could hear the species cheep in what they said ... Until their voices rose. Until the sound of a slap erased A world, & the woman, in a music stripped of all prayer, Began sobbing, & the man become bystander cried O Jesus. In the sky, the first stars were already faint And timeless, but what could they matter to that boy, blent To no choir, who saw at last the clean wings of indifferent Hunger, & despair? Around him the other petty thieves, With arms outstretched, & eyes pecked out by birds, reclined, Fastened forever to scaffolds which gradually would cover An Empire’s hills & line its roads as far As anyone escaping in a cart could see, his swerving mind On the dark brimming up in everything, the reins Going slack in his hand as the cart slows, & stops, And the horse sees its own breath go out Onto the cold air, & gazes after the off-white plume, And seems amazed by it, by its breath, by everything. But the man slumped behind it, dangling a lost nail Between his lips, only stares at the swishing tail, At each white breath going out, thinning, & then vanishing, For he has grown tired of amazing things.

How will you cut off from Zions, fall on your knees among the lions? What if you cut off from hymns confound worksong with anthem Cut off from Scripture find sense suspect and worship incoherence— distrust the laces and adore the tangled thread? What of you without a holy thing, but every sacrilege of the sacrileged class? Godsave your unsuspecting fists grasping the fiery ladder bare, your forehead fighting a wordless solitaire. Without some future language how can I ask you? If I could ask in Euphorese, Moonskrit, in Ecolow.... What will you do with Grandma’s savings — those relics atticked in your head of  effort, vision? On pain of  death, scratch pictures in the dust as she did — I fear my after-thirst.

Good and great God, can I not think of thee But it must straight my melancholy be? Is it interpreted in me disease That, laden with my sins, I seek for ease? Oh be thou witness, that the reins dost know And hearts of all, if I be sad for show, And judge me after; if I dare pretend To ought but grace or aim at other end. As thou art all, so be thou all to me, First, midst, and last, converted one, and three; My faith, my hope, my love; and in this state My judge, my witness, and my advocate. Where have I been this while exil'd from thee? And whither rap'd, now thou but stoop'st to me? Dwell, dwell here still. O, being everywhere, How can I doubt to find thee ever here? I know my state, both full of shame and scorn, Conceiv'd in sin, and unto labour borne, Standing with fear, and must with horror fall, And destin'd unto judgment, after all. I feel my griefs too, and there scarce is ground Upon my flesh t' inflict another wound. Yet dare I not complain, or wish for death With holy Paul, lest it be thought the breath Of discontent; or that these prayers be For weariness of life, not love of thee.

Can I not sin, but thou wilt be My private protonotary? Can I not woo thee to pass by A short and sweet iniquity? I'll cast a mist and cloud upon My delicate transgression, So utter dark as that no eye Shall see the hugg'd impiety. Gifts blind the wise, and bribes do please, And wind all other witnesses; And wilt not thou with gold be tied To lay thy pen and ink aside, That in the murk and tongueless night Wanton I may, and thou not write? It will not be; and therefore, now, For times to come I'll make this vow, From aberrations to live free, So I'll not fear the Judge, or thee.

Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. The rock lives in the desert, solid, taking its time. The wave lives for an instant, stable in momentum at the edge of the sea, before it folds away. Everything that is, lives and has size. The mole sleeps in a hole of its making, and the hole also lives; absence is not nothing. It didn’t desire to be, but now it breathes and makes a place, for the comfort of the mole. I am a space taken, and my absence will be shapely and of a certain age, in the everlasting. In the fierce evening, on the mild day, How long shall I be shaken? (Habakkuk)

Go, smiling souls, your new-built cages break, In heaven you’ll learn to sing, ere here to speak, Nor let the milky fonts that bathe your thirst Be your delay; The place that calls you hence is, at the worst, Milk all the way.

(excerpt) Thus heav’n-ward all things tend. For all were once Perfect, and all must be at length restor’d. So God has greatly purpos’d; who would else In his dishonour’d works himself endure Dishonour, and be wrong’d without redress. Haste then, and wheel away a shatter’d world, Ye slow-revolving seasons! we would see, (A sight to which our eyes are strangers yet) A world that does not dread and hate his laws, And suffer for its crime; would learn how fair The creature is that God pronounces good, How pleasant in itself what pleases him. Here ev’ry drop of honey hides a sting, Worms wind themselves into our sweetest flow’rs, And ev’n the joy that haply some poor heart Derives from heav’n, pure as the fountain Is sully’d in the stream; taking a taint From touch of human lips, at best impure. Oh for a world in principle as chaste As this is gross and selfish! over which Custom and prejudice shall bear no sway, That govern all things here, should’ring aside The meek and modest truth, and forcing her To seek a refuge from the tongue of strife In nooks obscure, far from the ways of men: Where violence shall never lift the sword, Nor cunning justify the proud man’s wrong, Leaving the poor no remedy but tears: Where he that fills an office, shall esteem Th’ occasion it presents of doing good More than the perquisite: Where law shall speak Seldom, and never but as wisdom prompts And equity; not jealous more to guard A worthless form, than to decide aright: Where fashion shall not sanctify abuse, Nor smooth good-breeding (supplemental grace) With lean performance ape the work of love. . . . He is the happy man, whose life ev’n now Shows somewhat of that happier life to come; Who, doom’d to an obscure but tranquil state, Is pleas’d with it, and, were he free to chuse, Would make his fate his choice; whom peace, the fruit Of virtue, and whom virtue, fruit of faith, Prepare for happiness; bespeak him one Content indeed to sojourn while he must Below the skies, but having there his home. The world o’erlooks him in her busy search Of objects more illustrious in her view; And, occupy’d as earnestly as she, Though more sublimely, he o’erlooks the world. She scorns his pleasures, for she knows them not; He seeks not hers, for he has prov’d them vain. He cannot skim the ground like summer birds Pursuing gilded flies, and such he deems Her honors, her emoluments, her joys. Therefore in contemplation is his bliss, Whose pow’r is such, that whom she lifts from earth She makes familiar with a heav’n unseen, And shows him glories yet to be reveal’d. . . . So life glides smoothly and by stealth away, More golden than that age of fabled gold Renown’d in ancient song; not vex’d with care Or stain’d with guilt, beneficent, approv’d Of God and man, and peaceful in its end. So glide my life away! and so at last, My share of duties decently fulfill’d, May some disease, not tardy to perform Its destin’d office, yet with gentle stroke, Dismiss me weary to a safe retreat, Beneath a turf that I have often trod. It shall not grieve me, then, that once, when call’d To dress a Sofa with the flow’rs of verse, I play’d awhile, obedient to the fair, With that light task; but soon, to please her more Whom flow’rs alone I knew would little please, Let fall th’ unfinish’d wreath, and rov’d for fruit; Rov’d far, and gather’d much: some harsh, ’tis true, Pick’d from the thorns and briars of reproof, But wholesome, well-digested; grateful some To palates that can taste immortal truth, Insipid else, and sure to be despis’d. But all is in his hand whose praise I seek. In vain the poet sings, and the world hears, If he regard not, though divine the theme. ’Tis not in artful measures, in the chime And idle tinkling of a minstrel’s lyre, To charm his ear, whose eye is on the heart; Whose frown can disappoint the proudest strain, Whose approbation—prosper even mine.

How should I praise thee, Lord! How should my rhymes Gladly engrave thy love in steel, If what my soul doth feel sometimes, My soul might ever feel! Although there were some forty heav'ns, or more, Sometimes I peer above them all; Sometimes I hardly reach a score; Sometimes to hell I fall. O rack me not to such a vast extent; Those distances belong to thee: The world's too little for thy tent, A grave too big for me. Wilt thou meet arms with man, that thou dost stretch A crumb of dust from heav'n to hell? Will great God measure with a wretch? Shall he thy stature spell? O let me, when thy roof my soul hath hid, O let me roost and nestle there: Then of a sinner thou art rid, And I of hope and fear. Yet take thy way; for sure thy way is best: Stretch or contract me thy poor debtor: This is but tuning of my breast, To make the music better. Whether I fly with angels, fall with dust, Thy hands made both, and I am there; Thy power and love, my love and trust, Make one place ev'rywhere.