You say I see the world as monochrome – No texture and without tonality. The truth for you grows wild: reality Springs forth, connected, plural, as rhizome. Perhaps it’s true; I’d rather be at home Within the comfort of fixed certainty, For here amidst truth’s many pleats I see The wholeness seen across each moving zone. Life’s essence, irreducibly complex, Must stretch and test the bounds of our abode. To each their own; we all have our penchants And you, it’s true, leave space for life to flex. But threefold truth converges at one road And that, for me, has made the différence.
Being (After Denise Levertov’s “Flickering Mind”)
Well, November is running away from us and so far I’ve only managed one poem for my 12 Poets Project this month. So it’s time for another one, this one inspired by Denise Levertov’s wondering “Flickering Mind”, one of the best poetic expressions I have read of the human mind’s struggle with religious devotion. You can read Levertov’s poem here. Levertov’s poetic form is quite fluid, so I have gone with a looser interpretation of it here than I usually do. Happy reading!
Being (After “Flickering Mind”)
In this multiplicity,
this many-stranded, fragmentary
fold of life, I run
and fly
and flee from You, my God,
who Are
the constant in the changing whole.
I am absent, You are
firm,
the still point in this constant blur,
the first thought and the final Word.
I sit
and yet I seldom sit. Martha-movement
takes my sight
and I evade Your searching eyes.
To stop,
to rest, to be before You,
this is costly; nonetheless
I live not if not
within You.
Your Love Is Loud
Your love is loud: it shatters drums And bursts the walls; it shakes, benumbs The membranes and the tubes and nerves. It races through canals and swerves With swimming, soaring ocean thrum. In majesty it overcomes The orchestra, the endless hum Of all that mind and ear preserve: Your love is loud. Now listen as it swoops and plumbs; Into its rhythm, death succumbs. Triumphant over minor thirds, Still throbbing through all twists and curves, O, all’s made deaf now as it comes: Your love is loud.
Apologetic
You’ve heard, of course, how Blaise Pascal played dice – An arbitrary way to find the truth, As though the logic, weighed up in a trice (A coin tossed in the air), could render proof Redundant. Can eternity be found In such impulsive propositions? We Feel that faith should demand much surer ground. All the same, cast your eyes about you; see The endless space of universe and how Your eyes cannot contain, nor can your mind, The start or end of anything. Well now: Trust your instinct, trust the facts you find; Either way, your trust’s a game of chance, But God pursues us in this fretful dance.
Remembrance
These tragedies that war upon the screen, These day-to-day reminders that all’s sick: They cut into our vision as we dream And lie within stale hearts. The silent prick Of death we can repress, but not the waves That fight like foes upon our passive shores, Waging war where war was not. The graves That time forgot and life always ignores Call out for us to hear them; yet our towns Lie sleepy in the certainty that fate Always befalls another (volume down, Lest we remember; best that we forget). Were men to blame when Siloam’s tower fell? In this: our hearts have helped to fashion Hell.
Voices in the Garden (After Denise Levertov’s “On a Theme by Thomas Merton”)
"Who told you that you were naked?" His voice Cuts through the trees and fig-leaves. Naked, you stand, glory shattered, Illusion broken, image disconnected, Heart unsure now how to beat. "Did you eat the fruit from the tree?" His voice Asks yet does not need to be told: Your lips stink to heaven and the stain Of falsely bought wisdom's on your teeth, Image disconnected from the lies you breathe. What now? No sense in deceit. His voice Knows the depths and the heights, The stars, the chasms of your heart. Naked, you stand, wisdom disconnected; Swallow your pride and breathe truth.
Sonnet for the Mad Philosophers
Of course they all had their own complexes: Excessive longings of the silent heart And disorders of the solar plexus. Guilt too played its nagging, primal part: That drive which came from God-knows-where to minds Now smart enough to fear but not to change. Plato jumped at shadows behind the blinds; Descartes saw lying demons lurk backstage. Trapped in language, poor Ludwig Wittgenstein Had only propositions to his name And gave his children ladder-lies to climb While Bertie Russell disavowed his fame. Thank God that truth is given unto babes And makes itself known through our hazy shades.
12 Poets #8: Denise Levertov
Well, the calendar year is coming to an end, and my year of writing about Christian poets is also well under way. We’re up to our eighth poet now, and this month we are going to be looking at American poet Denise Levertov, a Catholic poet and activist whose meditations on faith have been a big influence for me recently. Few poets inhabit a Biblical story or character quite like Levertov does. I hope you enjoy looking at her work as much as I will.
Post-Cup Fatigue
This morning you looked nice, I understand, Just like a groom on his proud way to church, But now your tie's undone and you can't stand Unless the lamp-post guides you as you as you lurch. Your partner calls and indicates the way, But legs - unsteady things at best - have schemes That thwart the rules of sense or gravity. I start and stumble like this in my dreams, And on this day dreams meet reality - Or so they tell me in the glossy mags. I placed no bets and won no sort of race; Perhaps you're better off, disheveled rags The signs that you dreamt once. I play it safe And keep my clothes in tact. You walk on air And yet you cannot walk now as I stare.
Operation Jazz
Who comes here? They have grey hair mostly, to Complement these grey wristbands. The weekend Set aside for jazz, I suppose they hail, Like us, from the city - a pause taken At the very busiest time of year. For some, no time off is needed, it's true. Others, though, must pause their schedules right when The workload and the pollen counts prevail. Smooth tunes and scattered words relieve some tears, But weren't these once the sounds of urgency? No-one here has freedom which depends Upon how well they improvise in C, Slaves only to the violent winds which scatter From near and far, to here in Wangaratta.
The Consolations of Writing 