The Slumbering Host and the Fortunes of Poetry
I am not a poet. As most of my peers in undergrad— in possession of richer emotional timbres or more complex childhoods— filed into the creative track of my Christian alma mater’s English major, I plodded along in the ‘literature’ or critical track. I dutifully read old poetry. The Anglican tradition in poetry was a…
Red Trillium
Sanguine clot on an altar of white,singular or sparse clustered, drippedas from a painter’s brush, smudgedblood print against a vernal shroud, tripartite leafed, yellow exclamations hold its center.Wakerobin, birth-ease, red eye amidstthe common trillium, by what mythis your incongruity clarified or entered but by a woman conjured to a fleeing doe,a hunter’s arrow in her…
All Our Yesterdays
Time’s arrow from the past is launched With a force no bodkin may resist,And we have found eternal youthElusive too, the alchemiesAnd fountains long discredited. Yet immortality we have devisedTo preserve an endless, shining summer—To preserve them all, intact and whole,Not memories, but lived as new. Martin Crowe has died today, In middle-age—the cancer stoleWhat hair…
Geoffrey Chaucer Speaks of Julian of Norwich
Beside the saintly woman of Norwich, an anchorite without pretense, a prophet of startling revelations, my Wife of Bath and Madame Eglantine, my courteous knight and squire do pale. Confessor to many, her wisdom shared beside the river through embroidered scrim— I wonder: what if I met her before my tales were spawned, my pen…
Every Morning He Hallowed Himself
While still a student, wandering abroad But lodged in Dublin for the summer, I Would pass, each day, through King Street with a sigh Dismissing all I couldn’t afford as fraud, And turn, at the butt-end of Grafton Street To join the host of tourists on their way Beneath the Fusilier’s arch,…
Returned
The women’s gifts to Him would not last long: Just as His corpse itself must soon decay, Embalming myrrh’s soft sweetness drifts away. A tomb that’s carved in stone’s forever strong, But nothing can sweet aloes’ life prolong. What Joseph gave would stand beyond today: This granite burial site was sure to stay– Regardless of…
Apprenticeship
You fear these shop boy’s tasks will leave you fruitless.So far, you’ve shoveled gravel mountains, tilledWide fields, scrubbed bathroom floors angelic white,And little else. At home you lie there, bootless.Like you, the hours drift on unfulfilled,And always fade too quickly into night.Yet solace finds you in the lumber yard.Your hands, still disapproved to work the…
Grey Stone
From youth this cool, grey stone enchanted me,Its beauty one with its simplicity:The Archer of Aphaia poised to strike,Or mighty Neptune with his triple spike,The pointed arches of the Notre-Dame,Ascending heavenward with perfect calm:Their colors were but subtlety and shade,Nor garish nor flamboyant, rather madeOf naught but stone, quite serious and pure.Their substance never fading…
Wedding at Cana
Participants in gracious comedy, Francesca and Lotario agree, Find Pleasure sat with Duty, king and queen Upon two wine-dark thrones. Aghast at losing Face, each blamed the other. Pleasure, pale And drained, with croak complained, “Six arduous pails Of sweat and tears without one drop of blood,” While Duty, bloated, raised his fiery head To…
Suger and the Golden Eagle
1137 What were you? What benighted ritual functionserved you? Did you catch from slaughtered calvesthe ruby of their veins, and mete its halvesbetween strange gods and men who begged their unction?Would still man’s breast rekindle dark desireshould I from Eve’s lips wrest the unbit apple?I wrought the pagan archway in my chapel,yet still the kings…