Into these turbulent waters your dove returns with Sunday: good will, Festival, proclaiming pleasant land. Huddled in loneliness, we sing and kiss our neighbor (1960s) I bring you purity not of white, of light, of ice but purity of blood that temperamental, precious element – red, rich, warm, salt aged through the ages and in my age running ever new the pulse of loyalty to our human-ness the fearsome taint of living this has done a kind of Purity I bring to you (1960s) To dance you to health I lift each finger with happy tune while you mark time apart in rest-beats, quietness We know that Francis and his ragged troop in monkish foolishness sang abandon – Nothing, except God and Joy. The music’s clownish beat cynically rings out paradox: in the Creator’s eyes all things made are marvelous, ridiculous – rejoice! My world overflows with love and flowers, for you I wave their shadow hands and feet paint Nothing filled with music. To conjure air is ancient art done for sickness where body and spirit in the dancer pray for their mirrors in the ill (1970s) Teach us, God, that truth is one; Let us see your only Son; Help us in our neighbor find fruitful cause of open mind, and seek in knowledge yet unheard the sign of your most holy Word; Let no fear restrain our search in the facts of your great works: as our father Abram went, [i] no End known, for your intent. (1960s) [i] Genesis 17:5 – “Genesis”. United States Catholic Conference of Bishops. {https://bible.usccb.org/bible/genesis/17} (accessed February 17, 2022): “No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham,* for I am making you the father of a multitude of nations.” Abram was his name when he set out on his search. He received his new name later. “Abraham”. Wikipedia.org. {https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham } (accessed February 17, 2022): “God had told Abram to leave his country and kindred and go to a land that he would show him, and promised to make of him a great nation, bless him, make his name great … Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran …. Thirteen years later, when Abram was 99 years of age, God declared Abram's new name: ‘Abraham’– ‘a father of many nations’. ” I am the Cross that he carried, I weighed him down, saying, I have sinned, and will sin, I will be saved and I will sin. So I pressed him down. I am the wood that abrased him, bruised him and cut him, hard, square and splintered, rubbing against him, inert, clumsy burden wherever I touched him I opened his sores. I am the wood he was pinned to. He willed himself on, smashing against me and would not tear down his Omnipotent palm; though I held the bonds, he would not step down. I am the cross that he died on. Like the bitten apple which could not grow again, each grain felt him dying, none could respond. From the soft body, blood running cool. While he prayed and thirsted Godhead condescended to union with the helpless inanimate in death. When the pulsing ended we were one. As the Cross I tell you: come within this Presence, only under outstretched arms catch one drop of life-spent blood, – you can kill him – he will save you. (1960s) Poetry breathes outside but I’m in my corner, fast beneath your crucifix, a heartful of inquiry. You look on tenderly Where in this depth and what in this nature? Roots of long ago spring fresh in a changed garden What is me and what is dream and what is your glory? You, friend, know me If I have ever loved, you know; If this pain is foolishness, you know. With gentle, compassionate laughter you speak me patience As if you felt no suffering on your cross I say, man is dead and poetry’s dead and love is dead, in me. You speak me patience, who are alive Every branch of being trembles in the winter to feel a secret sap: goodness, peace, no fiber useless, hibernation, waiting for the spring. (1960s) Dear God, thank you for the idea the needed, inspiring idea which will from now be my direction I see now that all the time I was looking for it it was finding me at the moment it seems too big for me I am painfully expanded by it while worlds upon worlds pour into me if only I could be content merely to unwind that future instead of, sightless to the present, feel all those unknown possibilities explode in me it is too big, it is too much but it is enough, it is what I wanted I will grow into it I am grateful for it this I will follow take the risk of its failing perhaps the need for new direction but for today for this idea for its hope and beauty and power I thank you (1970s ?) Helleborus – named like Hades, [i] word history meaning poison, then Niger, – black, [ii] year-long dark, dense, short and shady this dull and noxious tangle is redeemed by flowered crown winter-blooming white and gold, pure and warm, and most important, “outward-facing,” Think upon it, buds rising, freezing ground or snow, winter-blooming, outward-facing, Winter-blooming, outward-facing comes the Christmas Rose (2010s) [i] “hellebore”. Online Etymology Dictionary. {https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=hellebore+} (accessed January 20, 2022). [ii] “niger”. Online Etymology Dictionary. {https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=niger} (accessed January 20, 2022). each of us within his cells must practice emptiness compose a cave for worship’s hollowness from each day’s steadiness with simple things awake our selves in quietness let the sun flood our desert rock or gardened plot stand firm rules against intruder Loneliness incense Creation’s air adore its only-ness whatever world we live brother hermits past and now bound to vows of happiness ( 1980s) Like the tired, wasted frame of Age upon a bed of pain whose breath can hardly raise his chest whose limbs with life’s own weight are pressed down into death-like, stone-like rest, like the straining eyes which fade, the groping thoughts, the words unsaid, my Soul meets God with debts unpaid. (1960s) |
Poems by Janet
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von Gumppenberg |
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