Category Archives: poetry

A prayer utters itself.

poetry, prayer

PRAYER

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child’s name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer –-
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

-Carol Ann Duffy

Eugene Jansson, Dusk

Death is a change, but not an end.

death, poetry, quotes, , , , , , , , ,

AT UNIVERSITY

Puritans reckoned the cadavers
in Anatomy were drunks off the street;
idealists said they were benefactors
who had willed their bodies to science,
but the averted manila-colored
people on the tables had pinned-back
graves excavated in them
around which they lay scattered in the end
as if exhumed from themselves.

-Les Murray

This month marks ten years since my husband’s departing from his earthly life, which leads me to meditate again on this topic. And today is one of the Memorial Saturdays we Orthodox have during Lent:

“Saturday is the day which the Church has set aside for the commemoration of faithful Orthodox Christians departed this life in the hope of resurrection to eternal life. Since the Divine Liturgy cannot be served on weekdays during Great Lent, the second, third, and fourth Saturdays of the Fast are appointed as Soul Saturdays when the departed are remembered at Liturgy.” (OCA)

Les Murray’s poem recognizes something about human beings that our modern consciousness rarely grasps: the unity that exists between soul and body, and the brutality of violating the physical aspect of a fellow human.

Father John Whiteford writes that sometimes,

“…you will hear people say that the deceased is not in the coffin but with Christ, for example. However, if a person dies in Christ, their souls will be with Christ, but until the general resurrection, their body remains a part of them that will one day be reunited with their souls (though their body will be transformed) — and as such, the soul apart from the body is not the whole person (2 Corinthians 5:1-5). 

If you are interested to know more about the Orthodox perspective on end-of-life issues, you might check out the Ancient Faith podcast “A Christian Ending” from Deacon Mark Barna, who has also co-authored a book by that title. Episodes of the podcast include: “Understanding Death,” “Cremation,” and “Preparing the Body for Burial,” and about a dozen more.

My late husband’s casket in our house.

In the wholeness of Orthodox vision and practice, “…death is a change, but not an end. That which we see, the body, remains important and worthy of honor. A funeral, the service of remembrance, is a sacramental gathering in the presence of God. The body is honored, even venerated. The life of remembrance, eternal remembrance, begins.”

-Father Stephen Freeman, “A Secular Death”

St. Gregory Dialogus

poetry, quotes, saints, , ,

In the Eastern Orthodox Church, Gregory the Great (590-604) is usually called Saint Gregory Dialogus, Pope of Rome. The Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, which he compiled, is a service that we use on weekdays during Lent. You can read about his other writings and inspiring life, including several quotes from the saint, on this site. Here is one of the quotes, fitting for Lent:

“Every day you provide your bodies with good to keep them from failing. In the same way your good works should be the daily nourishment of your hearts. Your bodies are fed with food and your spirits with good works. You aren’t to deny your soul, which is going to live forever, what you grant to your body, which is going to die.”

I only recently began to learn about St. Gregory, after reading this poem by him:

DIVINE CREATOR OF THE LIGHT

Divine creator of the light,
Who, bringing forth the golden ray,
Didst join the morning with the night
And call the blessed union day;

We bow to thee, whose mighty word
Made time begin and heaven move;
Hear thou our tearful prayer, O Lord,

And warm us with the light of love.

Lord, let no crime our souls oppress,
Or keep us from thy law divine;
Oh guard us by thy saving grace

And make our wills accord with thine.

Still may we seek thy heavenly seat,
And strive eternal life to gain;
Oh, keep us in thy mercy sweet,

And cleanse our souls from earthly stain.

-Gregory the Great (c. 540 – 604) Italy

       Translated by Daniel Joseph Donahoe

Shy little bird in the rib cage.

books, poetry, quotes, , , , , ,

“Three forces carved the landscape of my life. Two of them crushed half the world. The third was very small and weak and, actually, invisible. It was a shy little bird hidden in my rib cage an inch or two above my stomach. Sometimes in the most unexpected moments the bird would wake up, lift its head, and flutter its wings in rapture. Then I too would lift my head because, for that short moment, I would know for certain that love and hope are infinitely more powerful than hate and fury, and that somewhere beyond the line of my horizon there was life indestructible, always triumphant.

“The first force was Adolf Hitler; the second, Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin. They made my life a microcosm in which the history of a small country in the heart of Europe was condensed. The little bird, the third force, kept me alive to tell the story.”

Those are the first two paragraphs of the book Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968 by Heda Margolius Kovály, which I read last year. What a survivor that “little bird” helped the author and heroine to be, again and again; her story is gripping and intriguing in every way, and I highly recommend it. She survived Auschwitz, and near the end of the war managed to escape. She ran to her friends in Prague, but none of them dared take her in. The remainder of her story is very suspenseful, and demonstrates the strength of will and hope that continued to uphold her through the suffering and loss under Communist rule.

An interview with Heda was recorded in 1980 for “Voices from the Holocaust,” which you can listen to here: Heda Kovály. The outline of her life is laid out in a transcript and episode notes. They are a good supplement to her book, but I’m very glad I learned her story first from her earlier, very personal telling of it.

Not long after reading Under a Cruel Star, I came across the poem below, which speaks of a place such as Heda’s little bird occupied — this hidden place from which help comes in the form of a song.

LACK OF FAITH

Yes,
even when I don’t believe—
there is a place in me
inaccessible to unbelief,
a patch of wild grace,
a stubborn preserve,
impenetrable,
pain untouched by the sleeping body,
music that builds its nest in silence.”

― Anna Kamieńska, Astonishments: Selected Poems