Richard Wilbur's "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World"

Love Calls Us to the Things of This World

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,

And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul   

Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple   

As false dawn.

                     Outside the open window   

The morning air is all awash with angels.

    Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,   

Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.   

Now they are rising together in calm swells   

Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear   

With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;

    Now they are flying in place, conveying

The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving   

And staying like white water; and now of a sudden   

They swoon down into so rapt a quiet

That nobody seems to be there.

                                             The soul shrinks

    From all that it is about to remember,

From the punctual rape of every blessèd day,

And cries,

               “Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,   

Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam

And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.”

    Yet, as the sun acknowledges

With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,   

The soul descends once more in bitter love   

To accept the waking body, saying now

In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,   

    “Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;

Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;   

Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,   

And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating   

Of dark habits,

                      keeping their difficult balance.”

Emily Dickinson's "Life -- is what we make of it --"

Life — is what we make of it –
Death — we do not know –
Christ’s acquaintance with Him
Justify Him — though –
He — would trust no stranger –
Other — could betray –
Just His own endorsement –
That — sufficeth Me –
All the other Distance
He hath traversed first –
No New Mile remaineth –
Far as Paradise –
His sure foot preceding –
Tender Pioneer –
Base must be the Coward
Dare not venture — now –

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī's "Ghazal 636" (3 translations)

Ghazal 636

Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone
suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You're covered with a thick cloud.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you've died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.

The speechless full moon
comes out now.

 Ghazal 636

Go and die, go and die,
in this love, go and die.
Once you've died in this love,
you shall become a holy spirit.

Go and die, go and die,
don't  fear death, go and die.
Go and leave this dusty earth,
go fly high towards the sky.

Go and die, go and die,
go cut loose from your ego.
Your selfish ego is the shackles
holding you captive forever.

Go pick up a hammer,
go dig a huge hole into the prison of your own being.
Once you've torn down your prison,
you shall become a prince or king.

Go and die, go and die,
go die in front of your Beautiful King.
Once you've died for your Beautiful King,
you shall become  a royalty or celebrity.

Go and die, go and die,
go rise up high above your own darkest clouds.
Once you've risen above those clouds,
you shall become a brightly shining  moon.

Be silent, be silent,
Because silence is the very breath of death.
But silence is also the breath of life,
so don't moan or complain about silence.

Ghazal 636

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself in this love.
When you lose yourself in this love,
you will find everything.

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself.
Do not fear this loss,
For you will rise from the earth
and embrace the endless heavens.

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself.
Escape from this earthly form,
For this body is a chain
and you are its prisoner.
Smash through the prison wall
and walk outside with the kings and princes.

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself at the foot of the glorious King.
When you lose yourself
before the King
you will become the King.

Lose yourself,
Lose yourself.
Escape from the black cloud
that surrounds you.
Then you will see your own light
as radiant as the full moon.

Now enter that silence.
This is the surest way
to lose yourself....

What is your life about, anyway? -
Nothing but a struggle to be someone,
Nothing but a running from your own silence.

Robert Frost's "After Apple Picking"

After Apple Picking

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still.
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples; I am drowsing off.
I cannot shake the shimmer from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the water-trough,
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and reappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
And I keep hearing from the cellar-bin
That rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking; I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall,
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised, or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

Hail, Autumnal Equinox!

October is Poetry Appreciation Month, Says I

Beginning October 1st, I will imbibe one poem a day, and post it here. I shall read it, memorize it, lectio it, talk about, let it steep into my soul. It's the only proper way to hail the Autumnal Equinox. After all, Christmas is coming, and my 1st annual Advent fast will not be very meaningful if I don't slow down and steady myself before it begins.

Here is some Hopkins, as appropriate, to begin.

Hurrahing in Harvest

SUMMER ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,	5
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?
And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic—as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!—	10
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.

 Divert my eyes from toys and trinkets, invigorate me on the pilgrim way.

The Giving Tree

Listening to the Pride & Prejudice soundtrack at the day's end with my hairpins removed makes me feel so spiritual. I'm sitting here, trying to write honestly. Right now,  I feel the lack of God's presence in my life. This week I've felt so. . .heavy laden. My soul feels as though it has been tied up in knots, twisted and gnarled, my psyche is suffering from Indian burn.

In moments like these, days like these, I see how hard it is for me to be even superficially pleasant. I don't know what makes me feel so badly, and I am aware, almost every moment, of my own inability to live a life of love. At work, one of the instructors read the book "The Giving Tree" by Shel Silverstein. She asked all of the students, and some of the staff, to choose one thing they would like to give others throughout the school year. I decided that I would give love, because that is the best gift I could think of, and the most costly. That gift mocks me every day, as I sit in my classroom looking at the Mother Theresa prayer for those serving the sick pinned to the bottom left corner of my bulletin board. It's hard to love, I tell you! But sometimes it's hard merely to want to love.

Today I feel full of despair again. It's so hard, sometimes, to believe that righteousness is possible. It's very easy to believe that the road to happiness is getting my own way, or the removal of every difficulty: it isn't though. When I pray, it feels like I'm begging an indifferent passerby on the street for sacks of gems. I don't expect anything, because I feel like a) I don't deserve it, and b) giving is not in the nature of the one I am beseeching. This is a lie of course, well, not the first part. I don't deserve anything beautiful, true, or good, but I'm expected to expect these things anyway. It's so hard to pray for joy when I feel like it never comes. It's so hard to pray for faith when you don't believe anything. It's impossible to believe that God is happy when I am so miserable. Or is it?

I need to be re-taught that God is a giving tree, that he hears us, hears me, when we pray, that he gives benevolently out of the overflowing goodness of his own excellent nature. But I doubt it; I doubt.

God is a giving tree. He gives conditionally, in that he gives us what is good even when this is not what we have desired. He gives conditionally, in that he gives when he ask according to his will. Is God deaf to my prayers? Have I sinned against him in a way that would cause him to stop-up his ears? Oh, God, grant what you command, and command what you will.

I have been thinking a lot about St. Augustine, Dante, George MacDonald, John Donne, Plato--everyone who writes about ordinate love and the beatific vision. It is so easy to love inordinately. 

"If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee." 

It's hard to be good. Part of the difficulty of being good is believing that God will make you good when you ask.

But God is a giving tree, he loves to give, to bless. He gives pain and he gives great joy.

Oh, I wanted to relate this back to George MacDonald. I'm re-reading At the Back of the North Wind, and I'm re-remembering (again) all that MacDonald says about being at the still point. Do you remember the still point? The still point harkens back to Boethius, to Dante, to lots of people. The point is this: at the center of the universe is God, a Being supremely perfect and happy. Evil happens around him, and he uses the good and the bad to shape human events while he himself remains wholly uncontaminated and unchanged. If I keep myself at the still point, where God is, I will not be shaken by the things in this life, small or great, that threaten to tie knots in my soul. I need to understand this because it is so easy to tie a knot in my soul. I am derailed by weather changes.

But God is a giving tree. He is a giving tree, and he loves us. He loves us. O! How he loves us!




Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things, and give me life in your ways.

The Valley of Vision: On Desire

O Thou that hearest prayer,

Teach me to pray.

         I confess that in religious exercises

the language of my lips and the feelings

of my heart have not always agreed,

that I have frequently taken carelessly upon

my tongue a name never pronounced above

without reverence and humility,

that I have often desired things which would

have injured me,

that I have depreciated some of my chief mercies,

that I have erred both on the side of my hopes

and also of my fears,

that I am unfit to choose for myself,

for it is not in me to direct my steps.

Let thy Spirit help my infirmities,

for I know not what to pray for as I ought.

Let him produce in me wise desires by which

I may ask right things,

then I shall know thou hearest me.

May I never be importunate for temporal blessings,

but always refer them to thy fatherly goodness,

for thou knowest what I need before I ask;

May I never think I prosper unless my soul prospers,

or that I am rich unless rich toward thee,

or that I am wise unless wise unto salvation.

May I seek first thy kingdom and its righteousness.

May I value things in relation to eternity.

May my spiritual welfare be my chief solicitude.

May I be poor, afflicted, despised and have

thy blessing,

rather than be successful in enterprise,

or have more than my heart can wish,

or be admired by my fellow-men,

if thereby these things make me forget thee.

May I regard the world as dreams, lies, vanities,

vexation of spirit,

and desire to depart from it.

And may I seek my happiness in thy favour,

image, presence, service.