Joseph Bottum shares this poem on Substack today:
A LAMENT
We who are left, how shall we look again
Happily on the sun, or feel the rain,
Without remembering how they who went
Ungrudgingly, and spent
Their all for us, loved, too, the sun and rain?
A bird upon the rain-wet lilac sings —
But we, how shall we turn to little things
And listen to the birds and winds and streams
Made holy by their dreams,
Nor feel the heartbreak in the heart of things?
-Wilfred Wilson Gibson
KIRKYARD
A silent conquering army,
The island dead.
Column on column, each with a stone banner
Raised over his head.
A green wave full of fish
Drifted far
In wavering westering ebb-drawn shoals beyond
Sinker or star.
A labyrinth of celled
And waxen pain.
Yet I come to the honeycomb often, to sip the finished
Fragrance of men.
-George Mackay Brown
The Dark Horse journal is really too erudite for me, but I happened to look into this current issue that is wholly dedicated to the writer George Mackay Brown, whom I knew nothing about before. What I read made me curious, and prompted me to find a whole book, a selection of his poems, which are fruits of his life in the Orkney Islands, and from which I picked this one.
Tomorrow on Veterans Day some of us will gather for prayers at a nearby cemetery, where we are remembering our archpriest who resposed several years ago, whose name day was this week, and who also had been a military chaplain before he became a parish priest. I’m looking forward to visiting that place where my goddaughter is also resting in her grave; these images of soldiers, fish and honeycomb are already enriching my own experience as I anticipate being where I might catch that unique “kirkyard” scent of heaven. Memory eternal!
VETERANS’ CEMETERYThe ceremonies of the day have ceased,Abandoned to the ragged crow’s parade.The flags unravel in the caterpillar’s feast.The wreaths collapse onto the stones they shade.How quietly doves gather by the gateLike souls who have no heaven and no hell.The patient grass reclaims its lost estateWhere one stone angel stands as sentinel.The voices whispering in the burning leaves,Faint and inhuman, what can they desireWhen every season feeds upon the past,And summer’s green ignites the autumn’s fire?The afternoon’s a single thread of lightSewn through the tatters of a leafless willow,As one by one the branches fade from sight,And time curls up like paper turning yellow.— Dana Gioia
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| Golden Gate National Cemetery |
Gladsome Lights 