Soon I fell asleep, overcome with fatigue and delight. In dreams of unspeakable joy--of restored friendships; of revived embraces; of love which said it had never died; of faces that had vanished long ago, yet said with smiling lips that they knew nothing of the grave; of pardons implored, and granted with such bursting floods of love, that I was almost glad I had sinned--thus I passed through this wondrous twilight. I awoke with the feeling that I had been kissed and loved to my heart's content; and found that my boat was floating motionless by the grassy shore of a little island.

 

George MacDonald – Phantastes, A Fairie Romance for Men and Women

In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Mary Oliver
New and Selected Poems

The Song of Daniel

Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever;

       Wisdom and power are his.

He changes times and seasons;
       He sets up kings and deposes them.

He gives wisdom to the wise

       And knowledge to the discerning.

He reveals deep and hidden things

       He knows what lies in darkness,

       And light dwells with Him.

I thank and praise you, O God of my fathers:

       You have given me wisdom and power,

You have made known to me what we asked of you,

You have made known to us the dream of the king. 

Daniel 2:20-23

After William Carlos Williams,

and Walter Lewis Stevenson

And what shall I write you

                Of star song at morning

Or moonlight at sea

                Of love in the evening, or afternoon

Or come back to bed and be with me.

                Put aside the book, the tablet, the screen

Lay by the thought of breakfast, or supper or lunch

                And what the children are doing.

And be not in a hurry to go on, to the next

                Or the thing after that, or tomorrow.

Or the trip to the city to buy and to sell

                And make money.

Make love for us, instead, o loveliest of spouses.

For the roses on your trellis

                Are dying and the spectral singing of the moon

Tell only of the shortness of time and the day.

                And the fleeting moments

To dress in white, and anoint with fragrant oil

                And share a glass of wine,

A bit of bread, and time, and times and time again.

                Let not your ear be small. 

               

We love in flesh, we children of this world

Created thus, and placed here by our God for some days

But only the hand-breadth of a breath.

You see, somewhere, it’s April in Paris for an evening

And that is all, and we go to our eternal dwelling.

And to silence, where there is neither seeing, nor memory, nor singing. 

And heaven, the old priests will say, is for

                The pure worship of God, without the defilement of women.

Why then did God make women, and the love of them, and

                Place desire in the heart and limbs of man? 

The sea teems with living creatures, too small to see,

Too large to walk upon the earth, and the greater to

Multiply consumes the other, in obedience to the Command,

                The first and primate Directive, woven tightly into the

Warp and woof of all life, of any life - "Go forth, be fruitful, multiply and fill empty

                Space," with living, in all its variety and beauty.

But this is common, and so vulgar, and we wish to be left alone

                In our clean and sacred cloister, to be waited on

In bodily wants, by the halt, the lame, the deaf and mute

                Who will for us suck up dust like Roomba robots. 

Where then is the way, and what are the time and times again

                For love, when the Lord God looks and sees that

Breasts are formed, and the child is no longer, and is ready for love.

                Do not speak to us, Creator, in such vulgar terms

Of Love and Betrayal, and make a metaphor of Your love for us as though

                You were a desert sheikh, living in a tent on Saudi sands

And seeing Your young ward bloom with lithe grace, and full roundness

                As a woman is.  And Your place, and rule, and blessing

Is to become her Lover, and make promises of faithfulness and provision;

                Goat hair panels, dates and wine, and cheese and a donkey. 

That is not our people, not our past, and not in the paleness of our skin

                Or hair.  Who are You then, Thou terrible ravisher of innocence? 

You raise up, and cast down.  You bless and withhold.  You scatter seed

                And reap a hundredfold, or a thousand, and then fill the barren plains

With sand, or spread salt seas across the surface of the earth.

 

We rise and fall like the waves, and come and go on tides

As the moon, barren and pale as death, orbits the only rock spinning round

The sun, so adorned in blue and green and white, giving life by the

Ellipsis of her path. 

We despair of smallness, and marvel at the complexity of the eye

                And enjoy, delighting in touch and taste and sight.

And desire. We could wish to be wise, but young enough to leap upon the mountains

                Passing over the crags like a gazelle.

Without fear, and defiant of death, and the crumbling ledge. 

                So Lord God, we will leap into Your arms, with a thrill and laugh,

Like a little daughter to her father standing, arms up, in the water.  

And like a child, when we are hungry, we wish to eat,

                And when thirsty, we wish to drink,

And when soiled, we wish to be clean

                And when we desire love, we wish to be satisfied.

But we do not know enough of when

                To go out, or come in. 

Do not say to me then, love,

                Go and be warm, and well filled, and turn to go on

Your busy and merry way. 

But only what is meet for our smallness.

                What You give.  And we will wait for You and hope

As only love and faith do,

                In life, through death, through thirst and deprivation.

Let the bones speak, the dry bones you have scattered,

                Crushed bones, empty and hollow.

Put marrow in the core, clothe them with flesh again,

Breath upon them Breath and Word,

Let blood course, and lungs fill.

And even when the Old Order is passed, fill again with

Life, a sea, a land, and a sky, through and through,

And leave not the courses of heaven empty of lights, near or far,

                Thought the Light of the City Eternal is all that is required. 

O, Love, do not let the space of stars be absent the sounds of whale song

                Or the sighs of lovers in one another’s arms.    

February 14, 2014

The Bliss Text

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.”

"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

The Bliss Text

And for we who live and follow after

There is a freedom

                That makes truly free.

Verily, verily, I say unto you

                Except a man be born, again.

And in these fields of battle,

                Earth-wide, Gettysburg

To Leyte Gulf, there are in portions

                The final resting places

Of men, and women, and children

                Who gave the last full measure

Of their love of life, and freedom

                For mankind, and fullness,

Satisfaction, and great joy, that

                This Freedom of the Son of Man

Might not perish from the earth.

And this deep note

                Thrums bassly beneath the clay

The stone, and the water

                Erupting in climactic ecstasies

As Love does, from time to time,

                And place to place in the

Praise of every tongue, and nation, under God.

And we who live, and follow after

                Have poor power to either add or detract

From all the hand of God alone accomplishes,

                His mighty arm, outstretched

Treading alone, the grapes of wrath. 

And we who live, and follow after

                Must also, together with them

Take increased devotion to the cause of freedom

                First from despair, and then from un-forgiveness,

And from want, and from oppression

                Let justice pour down

In a never ending stream, and righteousness

                Like the pounding of the sea.

That vast sea

                Which will bring the nations of the earth

To the New Jerusalem, and the worship of the Lamb.  

Bubbleships

Bubbleships

And houses floating at three thousand feet

                Like red and yellow birds of paradise on slender stalks.

Odd to share such imaginings

                Decades after, and half the wide old earth

Blue and emerald at her girth. 

Your bubbleship was turreted however,

                With fast guns shooting blue fire

Darting like a dragonfly and shaped like one.

But that house!

                And the Haleakala sunrise

Burning orange rays bent into the liquid canopy

                Cloaking this ancient globe.

And a pool.  That’s a touch beyond me.

                But the red hair.  And English.

Full marks, Director.

                Who spoke to you, anyway,

And assembled the forgotten, dusty pieces

                Of a childhood spent in humid isolation,

Quiet and oppressive heat,

                Full of afternoon silence,

Broken only by the steady thrum

                Of crickets and cicadas,

And dreams of being cold. 

Why then, Maker, have you made mad men so

                Different, and at such distances, but with

Such common desire?  You are the Singularity in

                Which soul being has origin and end.

And I wonder at it,

                Under pale blue cloud free skies,

And dry, crisp air full of red and yellow and orange

                Lights.    

Corfu

Corfu

Odd that the heroine’s name

                Is expunged

From Wikipedia, and she is all.

The girl whose desire is Corfu

                The one found

Masks inked upon her shoulder blade

                On Mykonos where the

Five windmills spin upon a rock above

                Ionian waves.

Diligent hands, taking all that is offered

                The wealth that is given

For the risks she bore, the life that she

                Offered, exposed

And from courage created home, shelter, peace

                Abundance. 

All for the love of a man from the sea

                Like Ulysses, thrown up upon

Her snow covered shore, Calypso of

                Teutonic tongue.  Heiress of the cold.

Poor gypsy, tramp of all the world. 

And for this, like Nabal’s Abigail,

                Beautiful in wisdom, and fair of face

Provoking strength and protection.  The love of

                A man smelling of fish, and sweat, and the sea.   

The reward for all her labor, the travail of fear

                Is thus;  blue skies, bright sun, salt air

Wind through his hair, and the strength of his arm

                White walls, light rooms, tranquility.

The love of a man; kisses. Fast embrace. 

Again, fair Lord, the Natuna Sea,

                Her winds, and this companion

Whose love’s worth is far more than rubies.