Category: Poetry

Digging

On By JonathanIn Nature, PoetryLeave a comment

To-day I think
Only with scents- scents dead leaves yield,
And bracken, and wild carrot’s seed,
And the square mustard field;

Odours that rise
When the spade wounds the root of tree,
Rose, currant, raspberry, or goutweed,
Rhubarb or celery;

The smoke’s smell, too,
Flowing from where a bonfire burns
The dead, the waste, the dangerous,
And all to sweetness turns.

It is enough
To smell, the crumble, the dark earth,
While the robin sings over again
Sad songs of Autumn mirth.

Edward Thomas (1878-1917), ‘Digging’

We Name You a Paradise

On By JonathanIn East & West, Gospel, History, Orthodoxy, Poetry, PrayerLeave a comment

Blessed Virgin, Elected One,
We name you a Paradise in which the perfumed tree is planted.
We name you the Fountain, from which gushes forth the water of life.
We name you the Land, which bore the apple fruit.
We name you the Bush which was enwrapped in fire.
We name you the Rod which budded forth a shoot.
We name you the Pole which bore the cluster of grapes.
We name you the Fleece which was covered in dew.
We name you the Tent of Dwelling, which was covered in glory.
We name you the Ark, covered with the Mercy Seat.
We name you the Cloud which rained down food.
We name you the Dove, whose sides were covered with red hued gold.
We name you the Turtle Dove whose wings stretch over her chickens.
We name you the Ship laden with riches.
We name you the Harbor, that calms the heaving sea.
We name you the Land that gives a rich crop.
We name you a Heaven [who contained Him the heavens could not contain].
[We name you the Throne] and the Cherubim bear you up.
O Virgin, your glory is deeper than the Abyss, and higher than the heavenly heights;
There is no human tongue which can exhaust your praise.
Now I pray to you with fervent request, incomparable Queen,
Protect me in your majesty; grant me your clemency.
Gentle Lady, to whom revenge is wholly foreign,
Gird me about with your righteousness and endow me with courage.
My spirit calls upon you; in you my heart has put its trust.
May your mercy follow me all the days of my life.

From the Ethiopian Orthodox hymn to the Theotokos the Enzira Sehbat, trans. John A. McGuckin

He Will Set Your Fields on Fire

On By JonathanIn Poetry2 Comments

He will set your fields on fire. He will
Tie the first fire on the tails
Of the little foxes we have caught-
Yet even that vineyard must go.
Only when all the fuel is spent,
In all the spaces of the heart’s creases,
Will the Flame have done its work,
And the distances all obliterated.
Only when your bones have passed
Into the unform of the flaming ether
When His fire has consumed
The very moment of consumption,
And your ash is burned up,
Your weeds and your wheat,
The stubble and the harvest:
Then there remains the single flame in
The vast fields of your heart,
The rows declining to this one point:
Your flesh is
Become His field, and
His flesh is yours
And you are your Beloved’s, and He
Is yours. But the burning comes first.

But Keep Them With Repining Restlesnesse

On By JonathanIn PoetryLeave a comment

When God at first made man,
Having a glasse of blessings standing by;
Let us (said he) poure on him all we can:
Let the worlds riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.

So strength first made a way;
Then beautie flow’d, then wisdome, honour, pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone of all his treasure
Rest in the bottome lay.

For if I should (said he)
Bestow this jewell also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts in stead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:
So both should losers be.

Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlesnesse:
Let him be rich and wearie, that at least,
If goodnesse leade him not, yet wearinesse
May tosse him to my breast.

George Herbert, “The Pulley”

*

You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.

St. Augustine, The Confessions

Smashing Your Idols and Forgetting Your Prayers

On By JonathanIn Arabic, East & West, History, Islam, PoetryLeave a comment

These short texts are excerpts from two medieval Sufi texts, one by the important formative-period Sufi author and biographer al-Sulami; the other by an early-thirteenth century, and rather less known, Sufi writer named al-Ardabili. The poetry by al-Shibli is from al-Sulami’s biography (in his Tabaqat al-Sufiyya) of that early Sufi master; the second is from a brief work of al-Ardabili’s titled Kitab al-Futuwwa, the Book of Futuwwa (virtuous youngmanliness is one possible translation of this rather amorphous complex of values and practices). The second text especially struck me as an illuminating and succinct example of early Sufi ‘allegorical’ (or perhaps more aptly, ‘typological’) use of scripture.

*

Today I forget my prayers because of my impassioned love-
I do not know my morning from my evening-
Remembrance of You, my Lord, is my food, my drink,
And Your face, if I see, is the cure of my disease.

– al-Shibli

*

Ja’afar bin Nasīr al-Khladi said: The virtuous young man (al-fatā) is he who slays the enemy of the Beloved, for the sake of the Beloved, and on account of this He spoke of Ibrahim- upon him be peace- when he turned the idols into tiny pieces (ja’ala al-asnām jadhādhan) and broke them. They said: ‘We heard a young man (fatā) called Ibrahim mention them.’ (Q. 21.60) And the idol of every one is his nafs [the lower, passionate ‘self’] and his passions, and when he smashes his nafs and is at enmity with his passions, he is worthy of the name of futuwwa.

Al-Hārith al-Muhāsbī said: Futuwwa is that one acts justly yet does not demand justice [for himself], and expends freely yet does not take.

– al-Ardabili

For the Good Turf. Digging.

On By JonathanIn Poetry1 Comment

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

Seamus Heaney, ‘Digging’

Blessed Is She

On By JonathanIn Gospel, Orthodoxy, Patristics, PoetryLeave a comment

Blessed is she in whose small and barren womb dwelt the Great One by whom the heavens are filled and are too small for Him.

Blessed is she who bore that Ancient one who generated Adam, and by whom are made new all creatures who have become old.

Blessed is she who gave drops of milk from her members to that One at whose command the waves of the great sea gushed forth.

Blessed is that one who carried, embraced and caressed like a child God might for evermore, by whose hidden power the world is carried.

Blessed is she from whom the Savior appeared to the captives; in His zeal He bound the captor and reconciled the earth.

Blessed is she who placed her pure mouth on the lips of that One, from whose fire, the Seraphim of fire hide themselves.

Blessed is she who nourished as a babe with pure milk the great breast from which the worlds suck life.

Blessed is she whose Son calls blessed all the blessed!

Blessed is that One who solemnly appeared to us from your purity!

Jacob of Serug, Homily Concerning the Blessed Virgin Mother of God, Mary

Returning

On By JonathanIn PoetryLeave a comment

I was walking in a dark valley
and above me the tops of the hills
had caught the morning light.
I heard the light singing as it went out
among the grassblades and the leaves
I waded upward through the shadow
until my head emerged,
my shoulders were mantled with the light,
and my whole body came up
out of the darkness, and stood
on the new shore of the day.
Where I had come was home,
for my own house stood white
where the dark river wore the earth.
The sheen of bounty was on the grass,
and the spring of the year had come.

Wendell Berry

A Rowan Like A Lipsticked Girl

On By JonathanIn PoetryLeave a comment

A rowan like a lipsticked girl.
Between the by-road and the main road
Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance
Stand off among the rushes.

There are the mud-flowers of dialect
And the immortelles of perfect pitch
And that moment when the bird sings very close
To the music of what happens.

“Song,” Seamus Heaney