246 Spiritual poems

Rarely, rarely, comest thou, Spirit of Delight! Wherefore hast thou left me now Many a day and night? Many a weary night and day 'Tis since thou are fled away. How shall ever one like me Win thee back again? With the joyous and the free Thou wilt scoff at pain. Spirit false! thou hast forgot All but those who need thee not. As a lizard with the shade Of a trembling leaf, Thou with sorrow art dismay'd; Even the sighs of grief Reproach thee, that thou art not near, And reproach thou wilt not hear. Let me set my mournful ditty To a merry measure; Thou wilt never come for pity, Thou wilt come for pleasure; Pity then will cut away Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay. I love all that thou lovest, Spirit of Delight! The fresh Earth in new leaves dress'd, And the starry night; Autumn evening, and the morn When the golden mists are born. I love snow, and all the forms Of the radiant frost; I love waves, and winds, and storms, Everything almost Which is Nature's, and may be Untainted by man's misery. I love tranquil solitude, And such society As is quiet, wise, and good; Between thee and me What difference? but thou dost possess The things I seek, not love them less. I love Love—though he has wings, And like light can flee, But above all other things, Spirit, I love thee— Thou art love and life! Oh come, Make once more my heart thy home.

(excerpt) Sweet is the dew that falls betimes, And drops upon the leafy limes; Sweet Hermon's fragrant air: Sweet is the lily's silver bell, And sweet the wakeful tapers smell That watch for early pray'r. Sweet the young nurse with love intense, Which smiles o'er sleeping innocence; Sweet when the lost arrive: Sweet the musician's ardour beats, While his vague mind's in quest of sweets, The choicest flow'rs to hive. Sweeter in all the strains of love, The language of thy turtle dove, Pair'd to thy swelling chord; Sweeter with ev'ry grace endu'd, The glory of thy gratitude, Respir'd unto the Lord. Strong is the horse upon his speed; Strong in pursuit the rapid glede, Which makes at once his game: Strong the tall ostrich on the ground; Strong thro' the turbulent profound Shoots xiphias to his aim. Strong is the lion—like a coal His eye-ball—like a bastion's mole His chest against the foes: Strong, the gier-eagle on his sail, Strong against tide, th' enormous whale Emerges as he goes. But stronger still, in earth and air, And in the sea, the man of pray'r; And far beneath the tide; And in the seat to faith assign'd, Where ask is have, where seek is find, Where knock is open wide. Beauteous the fleet before the gale; Beauteous the multitudes in mail, Rank'd arms and crested heads: Beauteous the garden's umbrage mild, Walk, water, meditated wild, And all the bloomy beds. Beauteous the moon full on the lawn; And beauteous, when the veil's withdrawn, The virgin to her spouse: Beauteous the temple deck'd and fill'd, When to the heav'n of heav'ns they build Their heart-directed vows. Beauteous, yea beauteous more than these, The shepherd king upon his knees, For his momentous trust; With wish of infinite conceit, For man, beast, mute, the small and great, And prostrate dust to dust. Precious the bounteous widow's mite; And precious, for extreme delight, The largess from the churl: Precious the ruby's blushing blaze, And alba's blest imperial rays, And pure cerulean pearl. Precious the penitential tear; And precious is the sigh sincere, Acceptable to God: And precious are the winning flow'rs, In gladsome Israel's feast of bow'rs, Bound on the hallow'd sod. More precious that diviner part Of David, ev'n the Lord's own heart, Great, beautiful, and new: In all things where it was intent, In all extremes, in each event, Proof—answ'ring true to true. Glorious the sun in mid career; Glorious th' assembled fires appear; Glorious the comet's train: Glorious the trumpet and alarm; Glorious th' almighty stretch'd-out arm; Glorious th' enraptur'd main: Glorious the northern lights a-stream; Glorious the song, when God's the theme; Glorious the thunder's roar: Glorious hosanna from the den; Glorious the catholic amen; Glorious the martyr's gore: Glorious—more glorious is the crown Of Him that brought salvation down By meekness, call'd thy Son; Thou that stupendous truth believ'd, And now the matchless deed's achiev'd, Determin'd, dar'd, and done.

The View The plain’s hatching now after rainless months. A dust devil rips through a peach orchard down there, a seam snuffed by falling dust-fruit. Behind the vine rows’ shriveled abundance a low fire runs ragged by the ditch, flaying the pale sod. The voided skins wave. September, thirsting, sings our Hosannah, shrieks red poverties to old heaven’s eye. * * * 1944 You want February? Snow and sleet came down hard, heaven’s post-Christmas gift to freeze our eyelids shut. Walking the icy ground, our shoes all shot with holes, we did the Alexander’s Army Ragtime Dance, stomping snow off bones safely packed in newspapers. From down below, we must have looked crazy happy, dancing like Hollywood Indians, though who had anything to eat? We dreamed lard. So the wolves came, not straight into town, not into the piazza, but near the outcrop behind the church. God’s design, the best, the way they study the tired world makes them next to human, or more. They’re waiting while they move. I’d worship that expectancy. If I could talk to one, just a few minutes, he’d teach me hunger’s secrets. So one awful night I wrapped my legs and feet, stuffed more papers inside my pants and shirt, then danced my way behind the church. Faint gray writing on the snow. Skin and bones, sneezes, frost feathers, drifting away. Two of them walked back, canny bigshot archbishop warrior types. They said: The moon’s blue, we know you want secrets, help, advice, news from this side. Our truth is: Forget likenesses, live inside your carbon soul, the moon’s black and blue, in the soul’s time the world’s one winter together. * * * Renunciation The snowy poplar seeds are everywhere, balling against curbs and car wheels, sifting through gates, doorways, kitchen windows, snagged by white blossoms shaken loose from the nodding horse-chestnut leaves. We stand in their shadows—our springtime’s dark. The debris scrapes our cheeks, clings an instant to our lashes, chokes the soft breath before tumbling off the near precipice. We want divine uncertainty. O give us the Judas tree’s blood shadows, make us sick with rank pear blossoms, blind us with earth’s random pieces engorged with broom’s milky fallen-sun flesh.

Love the drill, confound the dentist. Love the fever that carries me home. Meat of exile. Salt of grief. This much, indifferent affliction might yield. But how when the table is God’s own board and grace must be said in company? If hatred were honey, as even the psalmist persuaded himself, then Agatha might be holding her breasts on the plate for reproach. The plate is decidedly ornamental, and who shall say that pity’s not, at this remove? Her gown would be stiff with embroidery whatever the shape of the body beneath. Perhaps in heaven God can’t hide his face. So the wounded are given these gowns to wear and duties that teach them the leverage of pain. Agatha listens with special regard to the barren, the dry, to those with tumors where milk should be, to those who nurse for hire. Let me swell, let me not swell. Remember the child, how its fingers go blind as it sucks. Bartholomew, flayed, intervenes for the tanners. Catherine for millers, whose wheels are of stone. Sebastian protects the arrowsmiths, and John the chandlers, because he was boiled in oil. We borrow our light where we can, here’s begging the pardon of tallow and wick. And if, as we’ve tried to extract from the prospect, we’ll each have a sign to be known by at last— a knife, a floursack, a hammer, a pot— the saints can stay, the earth won’t entirely have given us up.

These little limbs, These eyes and hands which here I find, These rosy cheeks wherewith my life begins, Where have ye been? behind What curtain were ye from me hid so long? Where was, in what abyss, my speaking tongue? When silent I So many thousand, thousand years Beneath the dust did in a chaos lie, How could I smiles or tears, Or lips or hands or eyes or ears perceive? Welcome ye treasures which I now receive. I that so long Was nothing from eternity, Did little think such joys as ear or tongue To celebrate or see: Such sounds to hear, such hands to feel, such feet, Beneath the skies on such a ground to meet. New burnished joys, Which yellow gold and pearls excel! Such sacred treasures are the limbs in boys, In which a soul doth dwell; Their organizèd joints and azure veins More wealth include than all the world contains. From dust I rise, And out of nothing now awake; These brighter regions which salute mine eyes, A gift from God I take. The earth, the seas, the light, the day, the skies, The sun and stars are mine if those I prize. Long time before I in my mother’s womb was born, A God, preparing, did this glorious store, The world, for me adorn. Into this Eden so divine and fair, So wide and bright, I come His son and heir. A stranger here Strange things doth meet, strange glories see; Strange treasures lodged in this fair world appear, Strange all and new to me; But that they mine should be, who nothing was, That strangest is of all, yet brought to pass.

It’s not that I harbor a weeping willow Shadow’s worth of longing for those cloaked Turns and straight-aways, or that swampy South Mississippi was ever half as tragic As I dreamed it could be, but that I still cruise From time to time in the dope-ripe Ford Fairlane of the mind where nothing Has changed, where we remain hopelessly Stoned devotees of the TOWN OF LEAKESVILLE Emblazoned upon the graffitied water tower’s Testimonies to love. We believed speed Would save us, would take us fast And far away from the junkyard wrecks Stacked in their mile-long convoy to nowhere. And though losing the way should Have seemed the worst of divine betrayals, We took it as a minor fall from grace, Tail-spun over the embankment rail, rocking That flung steel body down as if to play A bar-chord on the barbed-wire fence. I’ll never know what angelic overseer Was bored and on duty that night, but we Rose up and climbed out of the warped last Breath of that car, no one with so much As a scratch on his head, not a drop Of beer spilt, and the radiator hissing Like a teapot in hell when someone yelled She’s gonna blow! and each of us standing There, starving for something more, Something other than the black wheel Spinning that sudden dark, cricketed quiet.

Finally, I gave up on obeisance, and refused to welcome either retribution or the tease of sunny days. As for the can’t-be- seen, the sum-of-all-details, the One—oh, when it came to salvation I was only sure I needed to be spared someone else’s version of it. The small prayers I devised had in them the hard sounds of split and frost . I wanted them to speak as if it made sense to speak to what isn’t there in the beaconless dark. I wanted them to startle by how little they asked.

People pray to each other. The way I say "you" to someone else, respectfully, intimately, desperately. The way someone says "you" to me, hopefully, expectantly, intensely ... —Huub Oosterhuis You       who I don’t know       I don’t know how to talk to you —What is it like for you there? Here ... well, wanting solitude; and talk; friendship— The uses of solitude. To imagine; to hear. Learning braille. To imagine other solitudes. But they will not be mine; to wait, in the quiet; not to scatter the voices— What are you afraid of? What will happen. All this leaving. And meetings, yes. But death. What happens when you die? “... not scatter the voices,” Drown out. Not make a house, out of my own words. To be quiet in another throat; other eyes; listen for what it is like there. What word. What silence. Allowing. Uncertain: to drift, in the restlessness ... Repose. To run like water— What is it like there, right now? Listen: the crowding of the street; the room. Everyone hunches in against the crowding; holding their breath: against dread. What do you dread? What happens when you die? What do you dread, in this room, now? Not listening. Now. Not watching. Safe inside my own skin. To die, not having listened. Not having asked ... To have scattered life. Yes I know: the thread you have to keep finding, over again, to follow it back to life; I know. Impossible, sometimes.

I wore a garland of the briar that put me now in awe I wore a garland of the brain that was whole It commanded me, done babbling And I no more blabbed, spare no lie Tell womanhood she shake off pity Tell the man to give up tumult for the while To wonder at the sight of baby's beauty Ne let the monsters fray us with things that not be From a high tower poem issuing Everything run along in creation till I end the song Ne none fit for so wild beasts Ne none so joyous, ne none no give no lie Tell old woes to leave off here: I sing this into a scallop shell with face of a pearl & leave all sorrow bye & bye.

I. I borrow wings from other angels, coast the streets to find feathers loosely attached to slender silver ties. With care, I close the catch and fasten cardboard stiffened form so close I cannot breathe or fly for the air pushed out into a world in masquerade. I am African. I am goddess with flare sounding the trumpets. I call out God. Meaning changes like sea water in storm. I part the crowds until, beaten, my wings fly, fall, litter the streets. I cradle the newborn twins and realize that I am fallen, a lesser angel, wingless and depressed. I am seductress unpetaled, undressed. II. dress her navel in lotus flowers to swim in the pool of her abdomen twine orange blossoms in her hair and smell the scent of oils and natural perfume kiss her nipples so that they become pyramids wet from a summer rain of tongue press her down into soft linens with hard body folding into hers like tributary waters warm her hands against heated chest that covers drum rhythms resounding men, worship your women this way women, flush at the adoration and you will know how I feel when he touches my hand