Tag Archives: Poetry

A Land Without Prayer

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A meditation on solitude by Fr. Thomas Merton:

 

Lady, the night has got us by the heart.
The whole wide world is tumbling down.
Words turn to ice in my dry throat,
Praying for a land with no prayer.

Walking to you on water all winter
In a year that wants more war.

 

 

 

 

Palm Reading – a meditation for a new year

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Have you made resolutions?

If you are not resolved to see them through, don’t bother. Instead, read your right palm. Look at it carefully as if you are looking into your own soul and tell me what you see. Tell me last year’s word:

  • Broken
  • Sore
  • Lonely
  • Ugly
  • Fat
  • Poor

See last year’s words written there and weep if you have to, and remember: last year.

That was then. This is now.

Time to read the words on your left hand which should resemble the one on the right (if you’re playing our game correctly) and there on the left, on the “bad hand,” you see the resemblance, and you see that the writing on the left takes those old words and turns them on their pole:

  • Made whole
  • Exercised
  • Loved
  • Handsome
  • Perfect
  • Blessed

The trick to turning over a new year is to take all that sludge that is left over in life from the past year, and do what is in your power to transform it. Start with the easy stuff – start with how you look vs. the way you think people see you. Start with the weight of bad thoughts that you think others have against you, and realize that they. too, feel the same about the way others see them. And if they are so worried with their own lives, surely there is no time for them to single you out to think all the bad things you are convinced they think about you.

The solution sounds as if talking is in order.

The solution calls for an end to our loneliness by removing ourselves from the ones who dislike us, and drawing close to the ones who love us. Not that “I love you” second date talk or the “I love you” passing the Peace at church but the honest, true, “who is the person you most want to go out on a bender with, and then smile when you wake up next to them in jail the next morning.” That, children, is some love!

See what you were and see where you are going, and rest in the great wonder of what you will be when you get there! Dreams are not just the playground of children. Teach yourself to be who you were in order to be where you are now, in great anticipation of where you are going. Now is the time to move away from what is bad and wrong and the people who are bad and wrong. Now is the time to stand up and say No! to those preachers who tell you that you are sinful and wrong.

Now is the time – and this is the place – to realize we are a united, loved and very blessed people. The great challenge of this new year is:

We only need to believe it.

Keep the faith!
 - Amen

from “I Sing the Body Electric”
a poem by Walt Whitman in his collection,
Leaves of Grass

 

from Leaves of Grass

19. I Sing the Body Electric

1

I SING the Body electric;
The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.
Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves;          5
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do as much as the Soul?
And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?
2

The love of the Body of man or woman balks account—the body itself balks account;
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.   10
The expression of the face balks account;
But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face;
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists;
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees—dress does not hide him;
The strong, sweet, supple quality he has, strikes through the cotton and flannel;   15
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more;
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.
The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the contour of their shape downwards,
The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up, and rolls silently to and fro in the heave of the water,
The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats—the horseman in his saddle,   20
Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,
The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,
The female soothing a child—the farmer’s daughter in the garden or cow-yard,
The young fellow hoeing corn—the sleigh-driver guiding his six horses through the crowd,
The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty, good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown, after work,   25
The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,
The upper-hold and the under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;
The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,
The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,
The natural, perfect, varied attitudes—the bent head, the curv’d neck, and the counting;   30
Such-like I love—I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother’s breast with the little child,
Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with the firemen, and pause, listen, and count.
3

I know a man, a common farmer—the father of five sons;
And in them were the fathers of sons—and in them were the fathers of sons.
This man was of wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person;   35
The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and beard, and the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes—the richness and breadth of his manners,
These I used to go and visit him to see—he was wise also;
He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old—his sons were massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome;
They and his daughters loved him—all who saw him loved him;
They did not love him by allowance—they loved him with personal love;   40
He drank water only—the blood show’d like scarlet through the clear-brown skin of his face;
He was a frequent gunner and fisher—he sail’d his boat himself—he had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner—he had fowling-pieces, presented to him by men that loved him;
When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish, you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang.
You would wish long and long to be with him—you would wish to sit by him in the boat, that you and he might touch each other.
4

I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,		   45
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them, or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment—what is this, then?
I do not ask any more delight—I swim in it, as in a sea.
There is something in staying close to men and women, and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well;   50
All things please the soul—but these please the soul well.
5

This is the female form;
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot;
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction!
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor—all falls aside but myself and it;   55
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, the atmosphere and the clouds, and what was expected of heaven or fear’d of hell, are now consumed;
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it—the response likewise ungovernable;
Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands, all diffused—mine too diffused;
Ebb stung by the flow, and flow stung by the ebb—love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching;
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of love, white-blow and delirious juice;   60
Bridegroom night of love, working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn;
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day.
This is the nucleus—after the child is born of woman, the man is born of woman;
This is the bath of birth—this is the merge of small and large, and the outlet again.   65
Be not ashamed, women—your privilege encloses the rest, and is the exit of the rest;
You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.
The female contains all qualities, and tempers them—she is in her place, and moves with perfect balance;
She is all things duly veil’d—she is both passive and active;
She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as daughters.   70
As I see my soul reflected in nature;
As I see through a mist, one with inexpressible completeness and beauty,
See the bent head, and arms folded over the breast—the female I see.
6

The male is not less the soul, nor more—he too is in his place;
He too is all qualities—he is action and power;   75
The flush of the known universe is in him;
Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him well;
The wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is utmost, become him well—pride is for him;
The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul;
Knowledge becomes him—he likes it always—he brings everything to the test of himself;   80
Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail, he strikes soundings at last only here;
(Where else does he strike soundings, except here?)
The man’s body is sacred, and the woman’s body is sacred;
No matter who it is, it is sacred;
Is it a slave? Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf?   85
Each belongs here or anywhere, just as much as the well-off—just as much as you;
Each has his or her place in the procession.
(All is a procession;
The universe is a procession, with measured and beautiful motion.)
Do you know so much yourself, that you call the slave or the dull-face ignorant?   90
Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has no right to a sight?
Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float—and the soil is on the surface, and water runs, and vegetation sprouts,
For you only, and not for him and her?
7

A man’s Body at auction;
I help the auctioneer—the sloven does not half know his business.   95
Gentlemen, look on this wonder!
Whatever the bids of the bidders, they cannot be high enough for it;
For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years, without one animal or plant;
For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll’d.
In this head the all-baffling brain;  100
In it and below it, the makings of heroes.
Examine these limbs, red, black, or white—they are so cunning in tendon and nerve;
They shall be stript, that you may see them.
Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition,
Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant back-bone and neck, flesh not flabby, good-sized arms and legs,  105
And wonders within there yet.
Within there runs blood,
The same old blood!
The same red-running blood!
There swells and jets a heart—there all passions, desires, reachings, aspirations;  110
Do you think they are not there because they are not express’d in parlors and lecture-rooms?
This is not only one man—this is the father of those who shall be fathers in their turns;
In him the start of populous states and rich republics;
Of him countless immortal lives, with countless embodiments and enjoyments.
How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring through the centuries?  115
Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace back through the centuries?
8

A woman’s Body at auction!
She too is not only herself—she is the teeming mother of mothers;
She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers.
Have you ever loved the Body of a woman?  120
Have you ever loved the Body of a man?
Your father—where is your father?
Your mother—is she living? have you been much with her? and has she been much with you?
—Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all, in all nations and times, all over the earth?
If any thing is sacred, the human body is sacred,  125
And the glory and sweet of a man, is the token of manhood untainted;
And in man or woman, a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is beautiful as the most beautiful face.
Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the fool that corrupted her own live body?
For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves.
9

O my Body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of the parts of you;		  130
I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the Soul, (and that they are the Soul;)
I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems—and that they are poems,
Man’s, woman’s, child’s, youth’s, wife’s, husband’s, mother’s, father’s, young man’s, young woman’s poems;
Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,
Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eye-brows, and the waking or sleeping of the lids,  135
Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges,
Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue,
Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the ample side-round of the chest.
Upper-arm, arm-pit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,  140
Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, fore-finger, finger-balls, finger-joints, finger-nails,
Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,
Ribs, belly, back-bone, joints of the back-bone,
Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-balls, man-root,
Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,  145
Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under leg,
Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;
All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body, or of any one’s body, male or female,
The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,
The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,  150
Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity,
Womanhood, and all that is a woman—and the man that comes from woman,
The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping, love-looks, love-perturbations and risings,
The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,
Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,  155
Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and tightening,
The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,
The skin, the sun-burnt shade, freckles, hair,
The curious sympathy one feels, when feeling with the hand the naked meat of the body,
The circling rivers, the breath, and breathing it in and out,  160
The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward toward the knees,
The thin red jellies within you, or within me—the bones, and the marrow in the bones,
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say, these are not the parts and poems of the Body only, but of the Soul,
O I say now these are the Soul!

 

 

Hot Summer – a meditation in poetry

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Steam — summer — steam
cook — August — cook
smoke — night — smoke.

People lie on roofs
talkin’ and pokin’ at the sky
like if you reached high
enough, you’d poke through
and some of that silver light
would wash on down.

People lie on roofs
talkin’ and singin’
sometimes a baby cries,
scared ’cause there’s no ceiling
just this black empty sky
and someone says, “Look,
honey — stars, don’t cry.”

 - Ann Turner (from “Street Talk”)

Keep the faith!

Silver Fruit Upon Silver Trees – Prayer at Night

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This is a poem that our teacher put on the wall above her desk when I was in the third grade. On a large sheet of poster paper, written in huge square and readable letters, Silver sort-of watched over us most of the year. And not counting rudiments like The A-B -C Song, or nursery rhymes, this was the first “real” poem I memorized as a child.

I’ve carried the poet’s name – Walter de la Mare – with me all these years, I’ve read his oeuvre, and none of it has the same effect on me as this simple little poem about what the night time looks like. The words linger in my heart the same as Sandburg’s poem about Chicago and the fog “…walking in on cat’s feet.”

During the day – when we are awake – we fill the air around us with one type of prayer or another. Even the unexpected “Jesus!!” during a quick maneuver in traffic, or spilling a bit of food on our sweater. But at night: oh yes! we sleep and rest as much as there is sleep and rest to be had, and it would seem that the prayers walk around us like angels, like the moonlight in this poem.

The prayers see us.
Angels see us.
God sees us

Theirs is the vigil , then.  At night, when our prayers fall away to silence and sleep, this must be what happens around us.

Keep the faith!

 

Silver

by Walter de la Mare

Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in silver feathered sleep
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws, and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.

 

 

 

Ozymandius

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My thoughts paused for just a second over a few verses from the Psalm reading for today.

I woke up this morning the same as I went to sleep last night, haunted by sorrow and fears of politics. Politics made me afraid.

The politcal milieu has become such a whirlwind of negativity that it makes me wonder why anyone would take the curse upon themselves of becoming a politician, of always pointing out what is wrong with x-y-z, and how bad the opposition is. Minister-types in general do not make good politicians. They make far better activists!

My political ideals are mine alone just the same as my personal spiritual way belongs only to me. Neither is truly worth the time of debate as long as there are far better things to do with our time like smile and laugh, touch a gentle hand, or read a great bit of writing that stirs the soul, and lifts us from the sorrow. These things shield us from the fears.

A spiritual path cannot be thought of in terms of two year, or four year, or six year “terms.” It is a life-sentence that does not change with the seasons or bend to the point of  breaking  with the whims of public opinion.

A spiritual path simply is.

If you are hearing too much tintinnabulation of political screaming about right and wrong, about good and bad, about moral and immoral, (and I’m talking about Preachers, too! Not just Politicians!) maybe one way to remove yourself from the noise is to look beyond the noise and the short term catch phrases and jingoism.

In those times look into your meditations to that which – inside you – is more eternal.

 

2 I will sing
and praise
the LORD God
for as long as I live.

3 You can’t depend on anyone,
not even a great leader.

4 Once they die and are buried,
that will be the end
of all their plans.

5 The LORD God of Jacob blesses
everyone
who trusts him
and depends on him.

6 God made heaven and earth;
he created the sea
and everything else.

God always keeps his word.

7 He gives justice to the poor
and food to the hungry.
The LORD sets prisoners free

8 and heals blind eyes.
He gives a helping hand
to everyone who falls.

 

(Psalm 146:2-8 CEV)

 

I read this and the first thought that came to me was a poem we had to memorize for English class in High School:

 

Ozymandius

 

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said — “two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert … near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.” –

(Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1817)

 

Keep the faith!