Category Archives: poetry

God has right to peace.

Nativity, poetry

LULLABY AFTER CHRISTMAS

Little Child sleep softly,
Mary’s lullaby,
Worship of the shepherds,
Anthems from on high
May postpone the message:
You are born to die.

Little Child sleep softly,
To the tinkling coffer
Of the Three Kings bearing
Gifts they humbly offer
Lest the myrrh remind you
You are born to suffer.

Little Child sleep softly,
Ass and sheep adore You,
Hoping that their breath may
Warm the way before you.
Sharper than the horns of
Oxen, nails will gore you.

Little Child sleep softly,
Blood of babies slain
Near Your crib foreshadows
Yours in its deep stain.
Even God has right to
Peace before His pain.

-Vassar Miller

 

The blue sapphire.

Christmas, Nativity, poetry,

December 25.

Thou hast not made, or taught me, Lord, to care
For times and seasons—but this one glad day
Is the blue sapphire clasping all the lights
That flash in the girdle of the year so fair
When thou wast born a man, because alway
Thou wast and art a man, through all the flights
Of thought, and time, and thousandfold creation’s play.

-George MacDonald

Echoing through the frosty ages.

calendar, culture, nature, poetry, , , , ,

By Elise Mahan

THE SHORTEST DAY

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us – listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

-Susan Cooper (born 1935) England

 

Where the breath condenses.

poetry, winter, , , , , ,

INSIDE

I am my own
geology, strata on strata
of the imagination, tufa
dreams, the limestone mind
honeycombed by the running away
of too much thought. Examine
me, tap with your words’
hammer, awaken memories
of fire. It is so long
since I cooled. Inside me,
stalactite and stalagmite,
ideas have formed and become
rigid. To the crowd
I am all outside.
To the pot-holing few there is a way
in along passages that become
narrower and narrower,
that lead to the chamber
too low to stand up in,
where the breath condenses
to the cold and locationless
cloud we call truth. It
is where I think.

-R.S. Thomas

I began to read a biography of R.S. Thomas a while back. Its tone was unsympathetic, and as with many biographies of writers, it didn’t facilitate my relationship with the poet. With Thomas, if you want to be any kind of friend, you have to accept his particular “geology,” which is full of rocks and stones and cold clouds, all waiting for that day when the sun will shine fully on the landscape, burn off the fog, and never set again. I am content to wait with him, and not to try to “figure him out” in this life.

Where I grew up our winters frequently featured cold fog. Foggy days such as I actually enjoy on the beach nearest me, when the thermometer stays above 50, are way different from the 27-degree tule fog of my youth, which can hang on and chill the spirit all day.

Thomas seems to be saying that those few people who stumble into his inside, where he thinks, will not find a comfortable  place to rest. It’s a place without location, somehow. Whatever can be felt with the senses, it’s cold and cramped. There is little solace in abstract truth.

Even the request, “Examine me… tap… awaken memories of fire” refers to something of the mind: memories. But if this is a prayer, the real God who is not a memory or an idea, but is the only one who has Being in Himself, might come and be present in the present. Not just to revive memories of past events, but to create actual warmth and spaciousness in the soul. He has been called a consuming fire, and the Sun of Righteousness. He is definitely what the wintry and frozen soul needs.

“But for you who revere my name,
the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings.
And you will go out and leap like calves
released from the stall.”

Malachi 4:2