my cells worship the dying star
lying on warm earth
with eyes shut –
primeval float
before a creator
in the blinding temple of white
my mind echoes the receding ages
into the spiraled universe
 
all whom I love will die
atoms of memory
joy and pain
meeting the still earth
under the fated sun.
bodies at rest
their spirits find birth
against darkness of night
 
(1960s)

 
do not touch this flame unless
you would be burned,
or breathe your quiet atmosphere
in circles round this light which will consume
and bind your strength
with heat so bright
you will be turned
to new substance
 
your hurt is not intended here
except as nature draws
each loss to transformed goodness
but this diminishment
for you, as you, is death
 
still, if you will be fire
and join the uncaused Cause
which shines beyond infinity
a blaze of primal energy
and radiates all laws,
I only need your willingness
 
 (1960s)

 
Oh, Hidden Jesus,  [i] 
ever more endearing
by your swaddling veils
which reassure us
with a barrier to sight
that God prevails
 
It is the nature of this world
to express through hiding,  [ii]  
where plainest natural fact
in all transparency
still speaks a secret
from creation’s mystery
 
 Oh, fully Hidden Jesus,
what shall we look behind?
The irony of searching thus
is not to seek, by reaching out,
for truly we are happier,
to find you – finding us.
 
(2010s)

[i]  Walsh, Thomas William.  Our Lady of Fatima.  New York:  The MacMillan Company, 1948.  –  See multiple references to the Portuguese  name for the Blessed Sacrament,  “The Hidden Jesus,”  for example, pp. 26-7.   

[ii]   Faber, Frederick William, DD.  The Blessed Sacrament.  Philadelphia, PA:  The Peter Reilly Co. 1958,  “The Blessed Sacrament a Picture of God: Book III, Section III – God Sought and Found,”  pp. 246 ff.
“Seen by the moonlight of reason, as well as by the sunshine of revelation, all creation lies before us as a vast region, every point of which is a hiding-place of Him who made it. With Him, to reveal Himself is to conceal Himself. It seems a sort of necessity of His incomprehensible perfections.”

 
If I had had heart’s wish, I think
I would have bread and laughter
an arm of love to rest my head
and children’s love to follow after
 
But for the fragments of the sky
the shards and crystal pieces falling
through which I see at Heaven’s breaking,
though forced to pay a cruel tax,
I bear heart’s aching
 
(1970s ?)

 
Your will’s my bitter prison, Lord
This place distasteful
These people strange
work slavery
my plans refused
desires denied
 
Yet others think I’m free,
all choices mine.
And I am free:
free to be yours or mine,
and therefore your prisoner.
 
I can hardly be
me
I so disagree
with Thee
 
(1960s)

 
If man of himself
could in a perfect manner
know all things visible and invisible,
it would indeed be foolish
to believe what he does not see.
 
But our manner of knowing is so weak
that no philosopher
could perfectly investigate the nature
of even one little fly.  [i]
 
“Sermon on the Apostles' Creed”
Thomas Aquinas   (died 1274)
 


[i] “Thomas Aquinas”.  en.wikiquote.org.  {https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas}  (accessed December 1, 2021). 

 
His foundation upon the holy mountains
the Lord loves,
the gates of Zion,   
more than any dwelling of Jacob.
Glorious things are said of you,  O city of God!
 
I tell of Egypt and Babylon
among those that know the Lord;
Of Philistia, Tyre, Ethiopia:
“This man was born there.”
 
And of Zion they shall say:
“One and all were born in her;
And he who has established her
is the Most High Lord.”
 
They shall note, when the peoples are enrolled:
“This man was born there.”
And all shall sing, in their festive dance:
“My home is within you.”  [i]
 


[i]   Psalm 87: 1-7  –  “Daily Readings”. United States Catholic Conference of Bishops. {https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/042721.cfm}  (accessed January 19. 2022).