Category Archives: poetry

Fierce hour and sweet.

Holy Week, poetry, ,

A famous poem for Palm Sunday that I don’t think I have ever posted before:

THE DONKEY

When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born;

With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.

-G.K. Chesterton

 

The reality of blood and beetles.

poetry, reality,

NOTE TO REALITY

Without even knowing it, I have
believed in you for a long time.
When I looked at my blood under a microscope
                I could see truth multiplying over and over.
—Not police sirens, nor history books, not stage-three lymphoma
                                                                                     persuaded me
but your honeycombs and beetles; the dry blond fascicles of grass
                                                              thrust up above the January snow.
Your postcards of Picasso and Matisse,
                                         from the museum series on European masters.
When my friend died on the way to the hospital
                                           it was not his death that so amazed me
but that the driver of the cab
                                              did not insist upon the fare.
Quotation marks: what should we put inside them?
Shall I say “I”  “have been hurt” “by”  “you,”  you neglectful monster?
I speak now because experience has shown me
                                 that my mind will never be clear for long.
I am more thick-skinned and male, more selfish, jealous, and afraid
                                   than ever in my life.
“For my heart is tangled in thy nets;
                              my soul enmeshed in cataracts of time…”
The breeze so cool today, the sky smeared with bluish grays and whites.
The parade for the slain police officer
goes past the bakery
and the smell of fresh bread

makes the mourners salivate against their will.

-Tony Hoagland

Women on the very edge of things.

feasts, poetry, women, , ,

We are celebrating the Feast of the Visitation on March 30; this is the commemoration of the visit the Virgin Mary made to her cousin Elizabeth, seemingly soon after the the Annunciation, because the Scripture says she “went with haste.” Elizabeth was also expecting a baby, the Holy Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John.

Malcolm Guite has written a sonnet for the feast, which you can find in the anthology Sounding the Seasons. In the West the feast is kept in May.

THE VISITATION

Here is a meeting made of hidden joys
Of lightenings cloistered in a narrow place
From quiet hearts the sudden flame of praise
And in the womb the quickening kick of grace.
Two women on the very edge of things
Unnoticed and unknown to men of power
But in their flesh the hidden Spirit sings
And in their lives the buds of blessing flower.
And Mary stands with all we call ‘too young’,
Elizabeth with all called ‘past their prime’
They sing today for all the great unsung
Women who turned eternity to time
Favoured of heaven, outcast on the earth
Prophets who bring the best in us to birth.

-Malcolm Guite