246 Spiritual poems

Teach me, my God and King, In all things Thee to see, And what I do in anything To do it as for Thee. Not rudely, as a beast, To run into an action; But still to make Thee prepossest, And give it his perfection. A man that looks on glass, On it may stay his eye; Or if he pleaseth, through it pass, And then the heav'n espy. All may of Thee partake: Nothing can be so mean, Which with his tincture—"for Thy sake"— Will not grow bright and clean. A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine: Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws, Makes that and th' action fine. This is the famous stone That turneth all to gold; For that which God doth touch and own Cannot for less be told.

A momentary rupture to the vision: the wavering limbs of a birch fashion the fluttering hem of the deity’s garment, the cooling cup of coffee the ocean the deity waltzes across. This is enough—but sometimes the deity’s heady ta-da coaxes the cherries in our mental slot machine to line up, and our brains summon flickering silver like salmon spawning a river; the jury decides in our favor, and we’re free to see, for now. A flaw swells from the facets of a day, increasing the day’s value; a freakish postage stamp mails our envelope outside time; hairy, claw-like magnolia buds bloom from bare branches; and the deity pops up again like a girl from a giant cake. O deity: you transfixing transgressor, translating back and forth on the border without a passport. Fleeing revolutions of same-old simultaneous boredom and boredom, we hoard epiphanies under the bed, stuff them in jars and bury them in the backyard; we cram our closet with sunrise; prop up our feet and drink gallons of wow!; we visit the doctor because all this is raising the blood’s levels of c

The flowering sea and the mountains in the moon’s waning the great stone close to the Barbary figs and the asphodels the jar that refused to go dry at the end of day and the closed bed by the cypress trees and your hair golden; the stars of the Swan and that other star, Aldebaran. I’ve kept a rein on my life, kept a rein on my life, travelling among yellow trees in driving rain on silent slopes loaded with beech leaves, no fire on their peaks; it’s getting dark. I’ve kept a rein on my life; on your left hand a line a scar at your knee, perhaps they exist on the sand of the past summer perhaps they remain there where the north wind blew as I hear an alien voice around the frozen lake. The faces I see do not ask questions nor does the woman bent as she walks giving her child the breast. I climb the mountains; dark ravines; the snow-covered plain, into the distance stretches the snow-covered plain, they ask nothing neither time shut up in dumb chapels nor hands outstretched to beg, nor the roads. I’ve kept a rein on my life whispering in a boundless silence I no longer know how to speak nor how to think; whispers like the breathing of the cypress tree that night like the human voice of the night sea on pebbles like the memory of your voice saying ‘happiness’. I close my eyes looking for the secret meeting-place of the waters under the ice the sea’s smile, the closed wells groping with my veins for those veins that escape me there where the water-lilies end and that man who walks blindly across the snows of silence. I’ve kept a rein on my life, with him, looking for the water that touches you heavy drops on green leaves, on your face in the empty garden, drops in the motionless reservoir striking a swan dead in its white wings living trees and your eyes riveted. This road has no end, has no relief, however hard you try to recall your childhood years, those who left, those lost in sleep, in the graves of the sea, however much you ask bodies you’ve loved to stoop under the harsh branches of the plane trees there where a ray of the sun, naked, stood still and a dog leapt and your heart shuddered, the road has no relief; I’ve kept a rein on my life. The snow and the water frozen in the hoofmarks of the horses.

—Katounakia, 2007 The cave itself is pleasantly austere, with little clutter—nothing save a narrow slab, a threadbare woolen wrap, and in the chipped-out recess here three sooty icons lit by oil lamp. Just beyond the dim cave's aperture, a blackened kettle rests among the coals, whereby, each afternoon, a grip of wild greens is boiled to a tender mess. The eremite lies prostrate near two books—a gospel and the Syrian's collected prose—whose pages turn assisted by a breeze. Besides the thread of wood smoke rising from the coals, no other motion takes the eye. The old man's face is pressed into the earth, his body stretched as if to reach ahead. The pot boils dry. He feeds on what we do not see, and may be satisfied.

Who knows more of gods than I? Deities defied, not the first time. I scan scraps of Abraxas, Rap along to Pac; rip Big’s Faith, My skin infection scratched, an itch With which I cannot live. I pray For nightmares —Dana Dane— to stop Effluvial rainfall. Oh, here comes The wet stuff. Here come I. Up the train, off the 7, up The stairs to Vernon. The church? St. Mary’s. 49th, 49th, 49th. El ay si mac and cheese. IPA. A walk across Pulaski Hump to Greenpoint. It’s post-pop Hipster, so my jeans press Just one plum to my leg. The Dionysus to the other, The Apollo orbiting right, left. In the middle, Bazooka Joe. It is, after all, so cold (the plum). Baller status. Church bells chime, The chimera within. A right on Driggs, Parallel to Bedford. Ratty chains, skulls patch a pylon Maze of bubblegum dusk. Live from Bedford-Stuyvesant, The livest one.

BODY Farewell! I go to sleep; but when The day-star springs, I’ll wake again. SOUL Go, sleep in peace; and when thou liest Unnumber’d in thy dust, when all this frame Is but one dram, and what thou now descriest In sev’ral parts shall want a name, Then may his peace be with thee, and each dust Writ in his book, who ne’er betray’d man’s trust! BODY Amen! but hark, ere we two stray How many hours dost think ’till day? SOUL Ah go; th’art weak, and sleepy. Heav’n Is a plain watch, and without figures winds All ages up; who drew this circle, even He fills it; days and hours are blinds. Yet this take with thee. The last gasp of time Is thy first breath, and man’s eternal prime.

O sweet everlasting Voices, be still; Go to the guards of the heavenly fold And bid them wander obeying your will, Flame under flame, till Time be no more; Have you not heard that our hearts are old, That you call in birds, in wind on the hill, In shaken boughs, in tide on the shore? O sweet everlasting Voices, be still.

From the tawny light from the rainy nights from the imagination finding itself and more than itself alone and more than alone at the bottom of the well where the moon lives, can you pull me into December? a lowland of space, perception of space towering of shadows of clouds blown upon clouds over new ground, new made under heavy December footsteps?the only way to live?

It was homemade and primitive, like pulling a tooth with a string and a slamming door, like taking out an appendix by kerosene light where dogs wandered in and out the dirt-floored room. Nothing for the pain that everyone wanted to examine, the twisted heart they thought they could shout back into place. Moaning and fluttering their fleshy hands on the wind, on the wail of the soul possessed, they certified her in a manner Inquisitional, frantic when she held to the grip of darkness, grimly determined to wait the thing out, something learned from movie sheriffs, white hats ghostly in the moonlight. When she would not answer (though they conjured her by heaven and by the all mighty names they knew), they laid hands on her and shouted down the well of her eyes. Many tongues twisted in their mouths when she went, leaving behind only the smallest tooth of wickedness.

From morn to midnight, all day through, I laugh and play as others do, I sin and chatter, just the same As others with a different name. And all year long upon the stage I dance and tumble and do rage So vehemently, I scarcely see The inner and eternal me. I have a temple I do not Visit, a heart I have forgot, A self that I have never met, A secret shrine—and yet, and yet This sanctuary of my soul Unwitting I keep white and whole, Unlatched and lit, if Thou should'st care To enter or to tarry there. With parted lips and outstretched hands And listening ears Thy servant stands, Call Thou early, call Thou late, To Thy great service dedicate.