Category: Porter, Anne

A Year of Jubilee

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

It’s Sunday, and since it is indeed a Year of Jubilee, I thought it would be appropriate to share this poem by Anne Porter. My favorite part is her ending.

A Year of Jubilee

You grew up like a sapling
With fishermen and shepherds
And the God-haunted mountains
Of your small holy country.

You looked the same
As all your people
So for a time
You went unnoticed
You who were later killed
Most cruelly

One Sabbath morning
You stood up in the temple
Young village rabbi
From the provinces

And you unrolled the scroll
And read aloud form it
The Word welled up to us
Out of Isaiah’s book
As fresh as the clear streams
That well up in the mountains

“The Spirit of the Lord
Has come upon me
He has anointed me
To bring glad tidings
To the poor
To heal the brokenhearted
To give the blind their sight
To free the captives
Release the prisoners and proclaim
A year of jubilee.”

We recognized the voice
This was the Promised One
This was the Shepherd
Our hearts were burning

We listened when you told us
About our heavenly Father
Who wishes us
To cherish one another
To be forgiving, generous
As he is himself

And festive, carefree
As the meadow-flowers
Lights as the swallows

He wishes us 
To be like children

You also told us
Our Father
Blesses us most of all
When we are poor

As even when our bodies
Have grown old
And our heads are filled with confusion

He will not love us 
Any the less for that.

004-jesus-nazareth

Cause of Our Joy

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

Quartz_oisan

Cause of Our Joy

by Anne Porter

Rock crystal
Clearer than crystal
Stronger than rock

Snow crown of Sinai
Melting on the heights
Pouring through the valleys
In pure rushing water
And wine that sings of justice.

* * *

Chose from the chosen
Mystical rose
Your creature petals
Mirror that beauty
No one can see and live
You hide in your heart
Like dew simple and silent
That blazing majesty.

Small as you are, your fragrance
Fills all the world,
Fragrance of hope,
Fragrance of the gospels.

Come to the old woman
Whose lodging is the street
Come to the drugged boy
The landlord, the general
Come to the haunted hunter by his jungle river
Come to the banker, the prisoner, the torturer
The hungry, the shut-in, the runaway in danger
Come to the backward child.

Whether or not we know you
Come to the rich and poor
Come to us all.

* * *

Star of morning
There is still such darkness
Only by the light
Of your innocent fire
We know this is the morning.

But sweet in this dark morning
Is a freshness of new bread
And the newborn Word in his cradle
Is just beginning to stir.

Queen of Angels
You’re up early
Washing, baking, sweeping,
Young country girl
From a scorned province

Broken for the broken

Wife of a carpenter
Mother of a convict
Cause of our joy.

from An Altogether Different Language: Poems 1934-1994

A shy yet solemn glory

Sr. Dorcee, beloved3 Comments

A Sunday poem.

Music

When I was a child
I once sat sobbing on the floor
Beside my mother’s piano
As she played and sang
For there was in her singing
A shy yet solemn glory
My smallness could not hold

And when I was asked
Why I was crying
I had no words for it
I only shook my head
And went on crying

Why is it that music
At its most beautiful
Opens a wound in us
An ache a desolation
Deep as a homesickness
For some far-off
And half-forgotten country

I’ve never understood
Why this is so

But there’s an ancient legend
From the other side of the world
That gives away the secret
Of this mysterious sorrow

For centuries on centuries
We have been wandering
But we were made for Paradise
As deer for the forest

And when music comes to us
With its heavenly beauty
It brings us desolation
For when we hear it
We half remember
That lost native country

We dimly remember the fields
Their fragrant windswept clover
The birdsongs in the orchards
The wild white violets in the moss
By the transparent streams

And shining at the heart of it
Is the longed-for beauty
Of the One who waits for us
Who will always wait for us
In those radiant meadows

Yet also came to live with us
And wanders where we wander.

                         Anne Porter