246 Spiritual poems

I Swear by what the Sages spoke Round the Mareotic Lake That the Witch of Atlas knew, Spoke and set the cocks a-crow. Swear by those horsemen, by those women, Complexion and form prove superhuman, That pale, long visaged company That airs an immortality Completeness of their passions won; Now they ride the wintry dawn Where Ben Bulben sets the scene. Here's the gist of what they mean. II Many times man lives and dies Between his two eternities, That of race and that of soul, And ancient Ireland knew it all. Whether man dies in his bed Or the rifle knocks him dead, A brief parting from those dear Is the worst man has to fear. Though grave-diggers' toil is long, Sharp their spades, their muscle strong, They but thrust their buried men Back in the human mind again. III You that Mitchel's prayer have heard `Send war in our time, O Lord!' Know that when all words are said And a man is fighting mad, Something drops from eyes long blind He completes his partial mind, For an instant stands at ease, Laughs aloud, his heart at peace, Even the wisest man grows tense With some sort of violence Before he can accomplish fate Know his work or choose his mate. IV Poet and sculptor do the work Nor let the modish painter shirk What his great forefathers did, Bring the soul of man to God, Make him fill the cradles right. Measurement began our might: Forms a stark Egyptian thought, Forms that gentler Phidias wrought. Michael Angelo left a proof On the Sistine Chapel roof, Where but half-awakened Adam Can disturb globe-trotting Madam Till her bowels are in heat, Proof that there's a purpose set Before the secret working mind: Profane perfection of mankind. Quattrocento put in paint, On backgrounds for a God or Saint, Gardens where a soul's at ease; Where everything that meets the eye Flowers and grass and cloudless sky Resemble forms that are, or seem When sleepers wake and yet still dream, And when it's vanished still declare, With only bed and bedstead there, That Heavens had opened. Gyres run on; When that greater dream had gone Calvert and Wilson, Blake and Claude Prepared a rest for the people of God, Palmer's phrase, but after that Confusion fell upon our thought. V Irish poets learn your trade Sing whatever is well made, Scorn the sort now growing up All out of shape from toe to top, Their unremembering hearts and heads Base-born products of base beds. Sing the peasantry, and then Hard-riding country gentlemen, The holiness of monks, and after Porter-drinkers' randy laughter; Sing the lords and ladies gay That were beaten into the clay Through seven heroic centuries; Cast your mind on other days That we in coming days may be Still the indomitable Irishry. VI Under bare Ben Bulben's head In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid, An ancestor was rector there Long years ago; a church stands near, By the road an ancient Cross. No marble, no conventional phrase, On limestone quarried near the spot By his command these words are cut: Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by!

It’s not paradise I’m looking for but the naming I hardly gave a thought to. Call it the gift I carried in my loneliness among the animals before I started listening to the news. Call it the hint I had about the knowledge that would explode. In the meantime, which is real time plus the past, you’re swishing your skirt and speaking French, which is more than I can take, which I marvel at like a boy from the most distant seat in the Kronos Dome, where I am one of so many now I see the point of falling off. There’s not enough seats for us all to attend the eschaton. This ecstasy that plants beauty on my tongue, so that if it were a wing, I’d be flying with the quickness of a hummingbird and grace of a heron, is so much mercy in light of the darkness that comes. Who would say consolation? Who would say dross? Not that anyone would blame them. All night I hear so many echoes in the forest I’m tempted to look back, to save myself in hindsight, where all I see is the absence of me. Where all I hear is your voice, which couldn’t be more strange. How to go on walking hand in hand without our bodies on the path we made for our feet, talking, talking?

After Nadia Reid This spirit she came upon me as I slept — in such a way my life or yours could come to be so thoroughly owned — she was reckless — I knew she would make me run away with her — I said spirit, slow down — but the spirit wanted to ride — but I am so afraid, I said — I have all this tenderness to impart — but the tenderness is not mine to give away — but all your tenderness is your own tenderness, said the spirit — it is not, I said — why then did you give it all away? — I did not give it away — then it is yours to give away — the spirit riddled like this — if in her arms I read a story — if out of her arms I had the choice to write one but I chose not — chose not because I did not know where I was going — because my path broke down & I had this choice — stay or split — if I knew that were I to split one part of me would become a ghost — if I did not know yet which part — if the voice calling me out asked me to describe the splitting & I did — if I said it was like smoke spiraling outwards — it was like smoke lifting off me taking on form & leaving me — if  it was like a delicate girl I never met but dreamed of — if it was like the flags of my youth fluttering, far out at sea — like breathing out a breath you will never take back in — but you know you can never take any breath back in — if I saw her outside of myself & mourned her like I have mourned no other loss — if I knew it was both a miracle & the most terrible tragedy — to open up — release a flame — watch the flame go — have you seen it? A flame that can ride water — she was my daughter & if I could I would send her to you, if I sent her to you would you take her? Listen, I ran this out of me because I knew it would burn me down — my trainers press the ground & lift up again — I saw myself on my back in high grass in high summer with everything coming to me — how this ghost left me & printed a new person all over me — I could peel her off or live like this — I cried —one or both will destroy me!— the spirit called it fate but I knew it was just drama —I will never know why a good person must die — fate does not exist I said, but every door I opened showed yes yes yes — I shut each one & locked it — checked the locks three times — went back & checked them again — shook them to be sure — drew hearts round the keyholes so the spirit would know I loved her — it wasn’t — it was never — that I didn’t love her —

This World is not Conclusion. A Species stands beyond - Invisible, as Music - But positive, as Sound - It beckons, and it baffles - Philosophy, dont know - And through a Riddle, at the last - Sagacity, must go - To guess it, puzzles scholars - To gain it, Men have borne Contempt of Generations And Crucifixion, shown - Faith slips - and laughs, and rallies - Blushes, if any see - Plucks at a twig of Evidence - And asks a Vane, the way - Much Gesture, from the Pulpit - Strong Hallelujahs roll - Narcotics cannot still the Tooth That nibbles at the soul -

To George Herbert Aspiration's breath, millennial trance, two-pointed ladder propped in a void; busy buzzard claws, verbs on a leash, slow blush of brain damage on a plate. Stunned journey of dust. A holey sock. Grind of an afternoon's axles, abandoned juggernaut in a field; inhabited interval with a pencil stub, curved strips of silence: postbox for the inner ear. Tarantula's footstep, a weight of light: inadvertent sky in the skull. Wishbone couture: promiscuous secret, peepshow in the street. Paraphrase of planets. Ocean in a tablespoon. Ordinary in the ordinary: nothing come of anything, matter unpossessed.

I emerge from the mind’s cave into the worse darkness outside, where things pass and the Lord is in none of them. I have heard the still, small voice and it was that of the bacteria demolishing my cosmos. I have lingered too long on this threshold, but where can I go? To look back is to lose the soul I was leading upwards towards the light. To look forward? Ah, what balance is needed at the edges of such an abyss. I am alone on the surface of a turning planet. What to do but, like Michelangelo’s Adam, put my hand out into unknown space, hoping for the reciprocating touch?

When you put on the mask the thunder starts. Through the nostril’s orange you can smell the far hope of rain. Up in the Nilgiris, glisten of eucalyptus, drip of pine, spiders tumbling from their silver webs. The mask is raw and red as bark against your facebones. You finger the stripes ridged like weals out of your childhood. A wind is rising in the north, a scarlet light like a fire in the sky. When you look through the eyeholes it is like falling. Night gauzes you in black. You are blind as in the beginning of the world. Sniff. Seek the moon. After a while you will know that creased musky smell is rising from your skin. Once you locate the ears the drums begin. Your fur stiffens. A roar from the distant left, like monsoon water. You swivel your sightless head. Under your sheathed paw the ground shifts wet. What is that small wild sound sheltering in your skull against the circle that always closes in just before dawn? Note The poem refers to a ritual performed by some Rajasthani hill tribes to ensure rain and a good harvest.

To be held by the light was what I wanted, to be a tree drinking the rain, no longer parched in this hot land. To be roots in a tunnel growing but also to be sheltering the inborn leaves and the green slide of mineral down the immense distances into infinite comfort and the land here, only clay, still contains and consumes the thirsty need the way a tree always shelters the unborn life waiting for the healing after the storm which has been our life.

To lie back under the tallest oldest trees. How far the stems rise, rise before ribs of shelter open! To live in the mercy of God. The complete sentence too adequate, has no give. Awe, not comfort. Stone, elbows of stony wood beneath lenient moss bed. And awe suddenly passing beyond itself. Becomes a form of comfort. Becomes the steady air you glide on, arms stretched like the wings of flying foxes. To hear the multiple silence of trees, the rainy forest depths of their listening. To float, upheld, as salt water would hold you, once you dared. . To live in the mercy of God. To feel vibrate the enraptured waterfall flinging itself unabating down and down to clenched fists of rock. Swiftness of plunge, hour after year after century, O or Ah uninterrupted, voice many-stranded. To breathe spray. The smoke of it. Arcs of steelwhite foam, glissades of fugitive jade barely perceptible. Such passion— rage or joy? Thus, not mild, not temperate, God’s love for the world. Vast flood of mercy flung on resistance.

Hope fills me this morning as I fashion letters into a tree that sighs, that stays put yet moves, reaching to its limits, swaying and settling, a compass pointing to its place on earth where every morning it blocks the sun for me, at work in my studio, where I scratch and scrawl and loop letters into shapes so I can enter the Tabernacle of their bodies and hear each foot, each syllable sending its roots to a depth as great as that tree’s, which has been standing and rooting and swaying long before I came to memorize its plain mystery, its wide-bodied hull open to stars at night, each a point that I lengthen into a letter and each letter into a word, and with the words build a Tabernacle for the ten most broken and the ten most resonant words. I will place them in an inner sanctum enclosed by hanging carpets, and outside it, another space enclosed by carpets, and outside it, another, so that those who wish to read the words, to say them out loud, must first pull one curtain back and step inside, and then another, and another until they arrive in a hushed space, a soundproofed, heavy quiet where they come to know that which makes all things day after day, and out of which the earth was made. Stepping behind each curtain they learn that the mystery of making is not a secret hidden within but a series of moves, a sequence of steps, outlined on a blueprint with notes and call-outs, white on black, constellations in the night sky, the primordial living Torah, circulating in the letters as trees circulate light, capturing it with their leaves, caching it within the soil, then drawing it back up, watering the tallest branches with the radiant dark.