Category: Sunday poems

Refuge for my broken spirit.

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

(Oops. I meant to schedule this for this coming Sunday, but made a mistake. I trust God will use it for you now.) This Sunday I offer you this bit of a longer poem by Gregory of Narek:

Refuge for my broken spirit lies in your
living incorruptible, constant hope,
that looking on me with mercy,
as one condemned to perdition,
when I present myself before your heavenly beneficence,
empty-handed and without gifts,
bringing with me the evidence of your untold glory,
I will remind you
who never shuts your eyes,
never ignores the sighs of grief,
that with your cross of light
you may lift away from me, I beg you, the peril that chokes me,
with your comforting care, the vacillating sadness,
with your crown of thorns, the germs of my sin,
with the lashes of the whip, the blows of death,
with the memory of the slap in the face, the neediness of my shame,
with the spitting of your enemies, my contemptible vileness,
with your sip of vinegar, the bitterness of my soul.

Gregory of Narek 

Do not fear the memory of sin

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

A lovely, lovely poem from Malcolm Guite. I find it most encouraging at the beginning of this Lent. Lent can be a discouraging time for many of us because we are so aware of our obvious faults.

Through the Gate

Begin the song exactly where you are,
For where you are contains where you have been
And holds the vision of your final sphere.

And do not fear the memory of sin;
There is a light that heals, and, where it falls,
Transfigures and redeems the darkest stain

Into translucent colour. Loose the veils
And draw the curtains back, unbar the doors,
Of that dread threshold where your spirit fails.

The hopeless gate that holds in all the fears
That haunt your shadowed city fling it wide
And open to the light that finds, and fares

Through the dark pathways where you run and hide.
Through all the alleys of your riddled heart,
As pierced and open as his wounded side.

Open the map to him and make a start,
And down the dizzy spirals, through the dark,
His light will go before you. Let him chart

And name and heal. Expose the hidden ache
To him, the stinging fires and smoke that blind
Your judgments, carry you away, the mirk 

And muted gloom in which you cannot find
The love that you once thought dying for.
Call him to all you cannot call to mind.

He comes to harrow Hell and now to your
Well-guarded fortress let his love descend.
The icy ego at your frozen core

Can hear his call at last. Will you respond?

mgupIXg

The Garments of God

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The poem I chose for last Sunday–“Suspended”–reminds me of another poem, one I have posted before, but am going to do again because it’s always worth a re-read. Both speak of God’s garments and our touching them. In “Suspended”, the author’s “hand slipped on the rich silk of it.” In this one, Jessica Powers writes of holding fast to it, clutching it.

The Garments of God

God sits on a chair of darkness in my soul.
He is God alone, supreme in His majesty.
I sit at His feet, a child in the dark beside Him;
my joy is aware of His glance and my sorrow is tempted
to nest on the thought that His face is turned from me.
He is clothed in the robes of His mercy, voluminous garments–
not velvet or silk and affable to the touch,
but fabric strong for a frantic hand to clutch,
and I hold to it fast with the fingers of my will.
Here is my cry of faith, my deep avowal
to the Divinity that I am but dust.
Here is the loud profession of my trust.
I need not go abroad
to the hills of speech or the hinterlands of music
for a crier to walk in my soul where all is still.
I have this potent prayer through good or ill:
here in the dark I clutch the garments of God.

                                 Jessica Powers

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

Wring the Changes

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

A Sunday poem.

Wring the Changes

I have known the breathless feeling of a sponge that has been wrung
thoroughly and roughly above my life’s chipped sink,
squeezed to the point of tearing by the chapped hands of God
until my shape was nothing. Until I could not think.

I have known the way one squishes at the crushing of one’s foam,
have felt the curious balling of a thing without a spine.
But all of it led to a hope I do not hold alone:
that when my water’s all pressed out, I might soak in his wine. 

                                   Paul J. Pastor

Epiphany

Sr. Dorcee, beloved3 Comments

They have brought gold and spices to my King,
Incense and precious stuffs and ivory;
O holy Mother mine, what can I bring
That so my Lord may deign to look on me?
They sing a sweeter song than I can sing,
All crowned and glorified exceedingly:
I, bound on earth, weep for my trespassing,–
They sing the song of love in heaven, set free.
Then answered me my Mother, and her voice
Spake to my heart, yea answered in my heart:
‘Sing, saith He to the heavens, to earth, Rejoice:
Thou also lift thy heart to Him above:
He seeks not thine, but thee such as thou art,
For lo His banner over thee is Love.’

Christina Rossetti

20 January 1852

Be born, sweet Child

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Advent Summons

Come forth from the holy place,
Sweet Child,
Come from the quiet dark
Where virginal heartbeats
Tick your moments.

Come away from the red music
Of Mary’s veins.
Come out from the Tower of David
Sweet Child,
From the House of Gold.

Leave your lily-cloister,
Leave your holy mansion,
Quit your covenant ark.
O Child, be born!

Be born, sweet Child,
In our unholy hearts.

Come to our trembling,
Helpless Child.
Come to our littleness,
Little Child,
Be born unto us
Who have kept the faltering vigil.
Be given, be born,
Be ours again.

Come forth from your holy haven,
Come away from your perfect shrine,
Come to our wind-racked souls
From the flawless tent,
Sweet Child.

Be born, little Child,
In our unholy hearts.

~Mother Mary Francis

Tenth Month

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Tenth Month

Advent

Those heavy days, the Child cramped
within you and girding his limbs,
your lungs squeezed breathless-high,
the ordinary, unnerving simmer
of black waters within, Woman,
what did you think?

Or was thought
all prayer—trust in the buds
of epiphanies, the unquantifiable
blood to be let. But Mother,
those unspeakably swollen days,
olives combed out of ashen leaves,
or wine leeching out its vinegar smell,
did you feel the tug of split hearts,
in city streets, at tabernacles, in bars?
As your belly drew down, drawn
by hormones and truth, did you weigh,
too, the clumsy imploring down all
our bloodlines, for this saving parcel of flesh?

Sally Read

Not All Gold

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Not All Gold

(for KJM)

Not all gold in deep vaults is locked away.
Not all gold is sealed, seamed in stone, from day.
Not all gold is sluiced into crystal streams,
Deeply dug, fire tried, forged and formed for dreams
That circle fingers, slim and supple necks.

Not all gold forms crowns or pours gilded decks
Down rivers rowed by slaves in chains below
Not all gold, not all gold will you find so.

There is a gold so sweet and free you’d cry
To hold, though freely let it from you fly.
Beyond reach this gold, of hand but not eye,
Appears above you in the morning sky
And lights the edges of the tallest leaves
Dancing in very tops of all the trees.

Before the wind wakes and shakes down the dew
It shatters green, this gold, the last bit of night
And scatters little diamonds from the height
To the waiting eye and memory.  You
Will find it so at dawn’s coming when with ease
In golden air, clear shifting, shaping, still
You spy shimmering in morning breeze,
The gold of God and his creating thrill.

-Peadar Ban

Originally posted here.