Epiphany (After Peter Steele’s “Madonna and Child”)

8730##S.jpg.248x605_q85Tomorrow is Epiphany Sunday, and so I’ve chosen to begin my month of looking at Peter Steele’s poetry with this response to his poem “Madonna and Child”. Steele’s poem is an ekphrastic poem, meaning that it has come “out of” another art work, Justin O’Brien’s intriguing “Madonna and Child” (image from http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/8730/). I’ve followed Steele’s Shakespearean sonnet structure and have responded myself to the painting.

But more important than any of these works is the truth of Epiphany, the revelation of God’s glory in Jesus Christ. No art-work or poem can do justice to this truth.

Epiphany (After “Madonna and Child”)

It’s not His face that makes His glory known,
And yet we do our best. See how refined,
Complete He is: His mother stern, enthroned,
Her gaze towards us, His towards the side,
His right hand raised, as though to warn us how
The scars will find their way into His palm.
Behind them: grey squares and diamonds, no glow,
Only a crimson-tinted chair. How calm
He stands upon His mother’s knees, how vacant
Her gaze! If swords will pierce through souls, she seems
To take it well, her stoic eyes aslant,
Almost – it looks – on brink of hazy dreams.
Yet He appears to stare straight at the Tree,
The unseen throne of this epiphany.

Madonna and Child - Peter Steele

He might have just come from the barber, unless
She keeps razor and scissors bright in a jar
To smarten him up on Fridays. There's finesse
In the gowns' fall, the boy's bearing, the scar
That pinks each hand and foot, the woman's gaze
Towards you and beyond, the nailed-up throne
To house the poet's 'heaven in paraphrase',
The haunting grown the stranger, being sown.
And here's the thing: among those out to see,
Young as they are, what he and she can tell
Of all time's blessings and its piracy,
The tolling or the spiring of a bell,
Guess as they do at the soured wine and the lance,
The feet are poised forever towards a dance.

(From Peter Steele, White Knight with Beebox: New and 
Selected Poems, John Leonard Press, 2008)

Exultavit cor meum (1 Samuel 2:1-10)

Did she walk away singing, joy in heart?
The knowledge sang within her, of the Rock
From whom all water flowed, and this exchange
In fortunes – rich brought low and poor made high.
Yet richest gifts demand the largest part;
Though free, as she went home, from those who’d mock,
Such height, such grace, could not but rearrange
The substance of her heart, and magnify
That grace which gave, that love which taught to love.
Her heart exulted, yet it must exalt
Another who was higher and whose strength
Gave strength most to those with the least thereof,
Exultant yet without: the swift assault
Of mercy beyond measure, beyond length.

12 Poets #10: Peter Steele

Fr-Steele_300Well, the new year is here and it is time for a new poet. This month is very personally significant for me. Peter Steel SJ was an Australian poet and academic who taught me poetry in my fourth year of Literature at the University of Melbourne and had a deep influence upon my love of poetry. It is a great joy for me to share some of his poetry and my responses to it with you all this month.

Thanksgiving

This year I wrote a poem for my birthday called “Thanksgiving“, based around Psalm 116. In response to a request from one of my readers, I ended up setting the poem to music and recently recorded it with my friend Dave doing vocals. On this second last day of the year it seems a fitting way to finish a year that has been full of unexpected blessings from a God who is far, far better than we could ever deserve.

Earth’s Carol (After Luci Shaw’s “Some Christmas Stars”)

One final poem for Advent, this one inspired by Luci Shaw’s “Some Christmas Stars“. Merry Christmas everyone. May it be a blessed time remembering the wonder of God made flesh.

Earth's Carol

The stars make songs in silent sway,
The roosters wait for newborn day,
And I in brokenness make way

To sing the songs of broken bones
Kneeling at the newborn's throne,
The Godhead's second part, alone.

The angels cannot sing enough
To praise His name. King Herod's bluff
Fools no-one fast. Earth's dusty stuff

Becomes His throne. Thorns, soon His crown,
Entangle round His bed. The sound
Of broken praise echoes around.

Descend, Ascend (After Luci Shaw’s “Made Flesh”)

As Advent draws frighteningly close to its festive conclusion, it’s time to catch up on the December poems for my 12 Poets Project. Today we enter another of Luci Shaw’s reflections on the Christmas story, the beautiful “Made Flesh” which was the inspiration for my next poem.

Descend, Ascend (After Luci Shaw's "Made Flesh")

Now, as the angel's greeting shimmers,
Mary trembles.
The Maker of the stars and spheres
Becomes impossibly
Small: a zygote, an idea,
A point of debate.
The giver of life clings on
For life, umbelical-bound,
Co-dependent, finite, weak,
And then,
As though the insult weren't enough:
The smell of hay, the taste of dust;
Darkness greets the Light of Life,
Cows draw near to see the scene,
Shepherds sing.
Can it be? Son of David, Sun of Dawn,
Pushing out through flesh, now flesh?
How low can such majesty descend,
How high can we reach for answers?
Yet I too, made of flesh,
Need not feel ashamed;
The taste of dust, I know it well -
And it,
Made precious by his hands,
His feet, the knees that crawled in it,
Declares that I am made of him,
Born to his flesh,
His hands, his feet,
Lifted as he is brought low,
And I will rise like him.

Pageant Part 10: The End

The best that Kim and Craig could work out was that Braydon had somehow come detached from the tree, which had fallen on top of Second and Third Sheep, which in turn had fallen onto Tayla. Kassie, unharmed physically but having experienced too many traumas with her brother that week, vindicated in her warnings yet feeling no victory, had retreated into the corner in tears, her angelic prophecy left hanging, much like Braydon, who was swinging wildly from the harness, his right arm the worse for wear.

When he finally became coherent at the hospital, Braydon mentioned that, as he had fallen from the tree, his right arm, positioned as it was in the star shield, had bent awkwardly in response to the fall, and that he had heard something like a snap, having around that moment then lost consciousness.

“It wasn’t your fault,” said Sue.

“Yes it was,” said Grant. “You were a dickhead.”

Braydon mumbled, “I thought you told me not to swear.”

“It was necessary,” said Grant.

He held Braydon’s left hand while the doctor prepared the cast.

Much of the town was still gathered at the hall as Sue, Grant, Braydon and a slightly less teary Kassie drove back from the hospital. Parking at the hall, Grant stepped outside for a moment to say, “It’s okay. He’s broken his arm, but he’s okay.” Most just stared awkwardly at Grant, but he looked unabashed back at them. “Is something wrong?” he added. “Is my second head showing?” No-one said anything, and Grant returned to the car and drove home. He slept that night at his old house, in his old bed.

In the morning, tongues – temporarily paralysed by Grant’s unexpected confidence – were wagging once more. Some said the usual things:

“Can you believe his nerve?”

“Who did he think he was, talking to us like that?”

“Thinks he’s the normal one, does he?”

But others were rehearsing new lines.

“Maybe,” said Ethel, “the play was telling us something.”

“What?” asked May.

“I’m not sure,” said Ethel. “But I felt like it was…speaking to us.”

May said nothing, but felt somehow that Ethel was right.

Kev too felt different, and, when Rob started on his usual tirade against Grant, said, “Maybe we need to give him a chance.”

Rob, however, thought nothing of the sort, and was in the middle of covering all the reasons, from the cult in Warrnambool to the unroadworthy incident on the road to Mt Gambier when Grant himself walked into the store to buy milk.

“My ears are burning,” he said.

“Oh,” said Rob.

“Keep going,” he said. “I’m enjoying the story.”

“Nah,” said Rob. “It’s okay.”

“It’s a bit boring, though,” said Grant. “I mean, the truth was way more interesting. The bit about the Virgin Mary was way off. It was a vision of a Native American deity. I was high at the time.”

Someone shuffled their feet. Another said, “Hmph.”

“But the truth’s always weirder than the fiction. That’s what I learnt.”

The cash register stopped.

“I mean, can you imagine what I found?”

No-one imagined. No-one said anything.

“There was actually a group of people who thought something way stranger than anything I’d heard before.”

A child dropped an apple. Their mother picked the apple up and told them to shush.

“They believed that God came to earth and walked around as a human, then died, then rose again.”

The child crunched on the apple. The mother said, “Shush,” again.

“Can you believe that? It puts our town gossip to shame. I had to get in on that one.”

No-one could believe it. No-one replied.

“Got no response?” said Grant.

Nope. No response handy.

“I might just get some milk,” said Grant. Everyone stayed still. “Excuse me, Rob,” said Grant.

“Hmm?”

“The milk’s behind you, mate.”

“Oh,” said Rob.

Grant took the milk, paid and left. For a moment, the silence in the store looked set to last longer than any the town had heard before. It was broken only by Braydon appearing in the doorway, arm in a sling, calling out, “He can fly, you know.”

*

You’ll still hear differing accounts, of course. Those who still have it in for Grant will tell the story in such a way that he is entirely to blame. Those who hate Tayla’s mother – there’s a few of them – will suggest it was Tayla’s fault all along. Jordan still looks sheepish about it all, as does Third Sheep. But this conclusion, when all’s said, is the closest the town has come to unanimity about the events: that Braydon thought he could fly, that the sheep got stuck, and that Tayla, annoying though her mother is, was not really to blame for any of it.

And the sight of Grant driving around town, once again in his McKenna Electrical van, causes less stir than it did once. Most people let him into their homes to do work for them, and the word is that Sue is once again doing the books for the company. He has fewer visions of supernatural deities preventing him from concluding jobs. In fact, he has none. But he has one strange idiosyncracy, which is that, out of respect for his son, he never helps install Christmas lights. His son, it seems, has an incurable fear of Christmas trees, at least of anything balancing on top of them, and Grant says he doesn’t want to upset his son more than he has done already.

Though relatively pleased with the success of their first experiment with theatre, Kim and Craig say that they are happy not to do a Christmas play again next year. They have another event to organise, and have heard that there is a wonderful song that the children can sing together, called “Christmas is a Birthday Party”. Kim hopes that, as with all songs that the primary school kids have sung in the past, it will die quietly after they sing it and never be heard again.

Pageant Part 9

Excited though everyone was about the pageant – the first that would not consist of a mawkishly sentimental song which they would all have to pretend to enjoy – the real feature on which everyone’s anticipation was focused was the fact that Grant and Sue would be there together.
“I bet she thinks he’s changed.”
“Not likely.”
“She’s dreaming.”
“A leopard doesn’t change its stripes.”
“Spots.”
“What?”
“It doesn’t change its spots. Zebras have stripes.”
“Don’t bloody tell me about zebras. What have they got to do with it?”
And on it went, as cars drove to the hall and children on back-seats flinched and squirmed in their awkward and overheated costumes. And on it went, in muffled whispers and behind darting eyes, as families stepped from their cars and walked into the hall. And it carried on as they took children back-stage, and on into the stalls and into the rows of seats, punctuated by, “Excuse me,” and, “Which number are you?” and, “That’s my seat. Get out.”
It only stopped when the curtain stirred and on the stage stood a boy with a white robe and rat-tail whose parents had, until this moment, been convinced was playing an angel not a…what was he?
“Good evening, ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls.”
A pause. Had he forgotten his lines? His little sister squirmed empathetically. His dad turned to his mother and said, “I didn’t know he had lines.”
“Good evening, ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls,” he repeated. “Welcome to the Christmas play. The title of tonight’s play is, ‘A Scandalous Baby’.”
His mother applauded. His sister turned to the mother and said, “What’s scandalous?” Her father said, “Shut up and listen.”
“Our story starts in…”
A whisper from backstage. “Bethlehem.”
Another pause.
Another whisper: “Bethlehem.”
Then a nod of recognition.
“Our story stars in Bethlehem…where…an unexpectedly virgin is giving a baby…”
Another whisper: “Where a virgin is unexpectedly giving birth…”
A nod. “Yep. That.” Another pause.
“Come with us…”
Another nod. “Come with us to…a stable where a baby is being born.”
The curtain rose. Behind the curtain was a scene familiar to everyone who had ever been to a Christmas pageant before: a mock-agricultural setting more reminiscent of the Manchester section of a department store than the Middle East in the first century, with boys and girls in tea-towels, sheets and bathrobes, and an appropriate number dressed in cotton-wool and brown blankets with face paint suggesting the animals they were representing. In the middle of the stage, gloriously tall, was a tree, with a star on top, moving suspiciously like there was a boy behind it.
“Braydon,” whispered Grant.
Some of the boys and girls on the stage started whispering. They hesitated at times, as though their lines had only recently been learnt, but there was something unmistakeable about those lines, a quality seen all too often behind curtains, on lawns and in supermarket aisles. To Grant and Sue, the room stank of town gossip.
“I’m sorry,” said a boy, dressed slightly differently to the others, with a large, messily-written name-tag that seemed to say, “Inn-kePPer”. “We don’t have room here for your sort,” he added, disdainfully.
And so a boy and girl carrying a baby doll and with two children dressed as a donkey beside them moved clumsily around the stage, the donkey trying to avoid bumping into actors and props on the way, with little space available to differentiate between unwelcoming inn and the stable in which they finally settled.
Meanwhile, Braydon was beginning to feel quietly triumphant. He had worked out that there was a way that he could move his right leg out first, leaving his left leg securely on the platform for stability. Then, once his right leg was carefully placed against the wall, he could use that and the harness to hold himself in place while he lifted his left leg. He had already done it once without anyone noticing. Was now the time to fly? It was difficult to tell, paying as he was no attention whatsoever to the rest of the action. He replaced his knees on the platform. They were becoming a little sore.
On the stage, Joseph and Mary had successfully found a manger in which to give birth (Mary also having mustered up the courage to no longer need her mother with her), and so it was time for the shepherds to emerge. Patrick, previously First Haystack Angel, emerged as First Shepherd, with Ben and Lachlan in tow as his sheep, to the joyful applause of family.
“Go Patty!” called out his father.
The First Shepherd squinted in the direction of his father. It was difficult to see if he was happy or angry. He momentarily forgot to walk forward. Second and Third Shepherd stalled for that moment behind him. Their sheep bumped into one another.
Hearing the action pause beneath him, Braydon wondered if now was the time to fly, while on the left-hand side of the stage Kassie too was preparing for her moment. Kassie, unlike Braydon, being a little unwilling to fly, though her part seemed to call for it, Kim and Craig had had to settle for an arrangement of clouds which would appear at Stage Left and above which Kassie would slowly rise from a seated position to say Gabriel’s lines. What with the delay, however, with the sheep, the stage-hand who was supposed to help Kassie get set up behind the cloud hovered to the side, unaware that his assistance was needed. Kassie paused. Should she come out anyway, cloud or no cloud? What would happen if Gabriel didn’t herald the arrival of Jesus? What if her father never saw her say her lines?
“Jack,” whispered Craig.
Jack the stage-hand looked over at his teacher.
“Kassie’s cloud,” said Craig.
“Oh,” said Jack, running over to collect it.
The silence on stage continued. Braydon fancied it invited him to fly.
“You ready, Kassie?” said Craig.
Kassie nodded.
Braydon shifted.
Jack carried the cloud over to Kassie. Kassie hid behind it. Slowly the cloud moved forward and Kassie with it. Braydon stretched out his right leg.
The First Shepherd moved towards the cloud.
The Second and Third Shepherds began to move, but the sheep were tangled up in the tree. The tree shook.
Braydon positioned his right leg on the tree.
“Okay, Kass,” said Craig.
Kassie breathed. What was her line again?
Held in place by his right leg, Braydon began to lift his other leg towards the wall.
Second Shepherd tugged at his sheep. The base of the tree rotated a little to the right.
“Do not be afraid,” said Kassie.
Sue’s heart stirred.
The top of the tree stirred.
“I bring tidings of great joy.”
That’s my girl, thought Grant.
It’s time, thought Braydon.
He stretched out his left leg.
Third Shepherd pulled at his sheep. The sheep would not move. The manger shook slightly. Tayla, holding onto the manger, moved slightly with it.
“Today in the town of…David…a saviour…”
Go, thought Braydon.
“Come on,” muttered Third Shepherd to his sheep. “What are you doing, Danny?”
“…has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord.”
What a lot of lines Kassie had to learn, thought Sue. Braydon at least was behaving himself.
Then Tayla screamed.

Go to Part 10

Pageant Part 8

There were two more rehearsals before the day of the pageant. The children whose parts had been changed and who had new lines to learn were willing to go along with the secrecy demanded of them by Kim because they felt sufficiently special now that they had been promoted from entirely superfluous extras to speaking roles. Few of the children knew the full impact of the lines they were learning and few, therefore, felt any need to tell their parents. Kim and Craig’s plan to challenge town gossip one final time was allowed to flourish unnoticed.
Braydon, on the other hand, was slowly tiring of his part as the star. Central though it was to the set, and much though the audience’s eyes would be drawn to him, there was little to maintain their interest or his once the initial novelty had worn off. At first the sensation of being elevated by the improvised harness gave him the feeling that he imagined his father must feel on the occasions that he flew. Yet the sensation soon left him as, dangling static above the tree, he found that he could do very little apart from simply stay there.
Slowly, however, he began to experiment with the potential of his position. If, he reasoned, he actually could fly, then he could simultaneously make his father proud of him and prove to all and sundry that not only his father but in fact all the men in the family were capable of flight. Granted, his previous attempts at flight had been unsuccessful, but surely that was because his father had not been there to give him the courage or inspiration he needed. Now, finding himself able to swing a little within his position above the tree, he slowly and surreptitiously tried to stretch further. If he could find something, for instance, against which to push his feet, which, although positioned awkwardly behind him, were still free, then perhaps he could give himself a good “run-up” for taking flight. And so, while everyone else slowly rehearsed their lines (“Virgin birth? So typical of that family. Always making excuses…”), Braydon experimented with ways of swinging slowly backwards, stretching out his feet, finding just how far they could go without drawing attention to himself.
You see, the star costume worked like this. The harness went around Braydon’s chest. It held him up while his arms were stretched out in the upper points of the star. He hovered above the tree, held up by the harness, but his knees were also positioned on a platform behind the tree. His feet were resting behind him. The wall was a little less than a metre behind. It was possible, courtesy of the harness, for Braydon to remain positioned above the tree while moving his feet slightly. His legs, however, were not long. The men of the family were only medium in height, and Braydon was a late bloomer. Free though his legs were, it was a difficult process to move them backwards while keeping the star – a kind of awkwardly constricting shield – remaining above the tree.
Braydon, however, did not tend to take these kinds of factors too much to heart. He rarely thought of most factors beyond the most immediately apparent. Besides, he only needed to stay in place above the tree while he figured out how to swing. Then, once the dimensions of the space around him had been mentally calculated, it would be the perfect opportunity to fly. Anyway, the harness would keep him safe. Relative to other choices Braydon had made in his short life thus far, this was one of the more carefully managed and safe. What risk assessment Braydon conducted, limited though it was, far exceeded any he had ever done before this moment.
And, by the night of the performance, he was fairly sure he had it all figured out.
Go to Part 9