Readings and Thoughts on Poetry, Faith & The Imagination.

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A Villanelle for Easter Day by Malcolm Guite

As though some heavy stone were rolled away,
You find an open door where all was closed,
Wide as an empty tomb on Easter Day.

Lost in your own dark wood, alone, astray,
You pause, as though some secret were disclosed,
As though some heavy stone were rolled away.

You glimpse the sky above you, wan and grey,
Wide through those shadowed branches interposed,
Wide as an empty tomb on Easter Day.

Perhaps there’s light enough to find your way,
For now the tangled wood feels less enclosed,
As though some heavy stone were rolled away.

You lift your feet out of the miry clay
And seek the light in which you once reposed,
Wide as an empty tomb on Easter Day.

And then Love calls your name, you hear Him say:
The way is open, death has been deposed,
As though some heavy stone were rolled away,
And you are free at last on Easter Day.

Readings and Thoughts on Poetry, Faith & The Imagination.

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O Sapientia

I cannot think unless I have been thought,

Nor can I speak unless I have been spoken.

I cannot teach except as I am taught,

Or break the bread except as I am broken.

O Mind behind the mind through which I seek,

O Light within the light by which I see,

O Word beneath the words with which I speak,

O founding, unfound Wisdom, finding me,

O sounding Song whose depth is sounding me,

O Memory of time, reminding me,

My Ground of Being, always grounding me,

My Maker’s Bounding Line, defining me,

Come, hidden Wisdom, come with all you bring,

Come to me now, disguised as everything.

- Malcolm Guite

Readings and Thoughts on Poetry, Faith & The Imagination.

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The Road by Dana Gioia

He sometimes felt that he had missed his life
By being far too busy looking for it.
Searching the distance, he often turned to find
That he had passed some milestone unaware,
And someone else was walking next to him,
First friends, then lovers, now children and a wife.
They were good company–generous, kind,
But equally bewildered to be there.

He noticed then that no one chose the way—
All seemed to drift by some collective will.
The path grew easier with each passing day,
Since it was worn and mostly sloped downhill.
The road ahead seemed hazy in the gloom.
Where was it he had meant to go, and with whom?

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Death of a Dream

Oh Christ, in whom the final fulfillment of all hope is held and secure,

I bring to you now the weathered

fragments of my former dreams,

the rent patches of hopes worn thin,

the shards of some shattered image of

life as I once thought it would be.

What I so wanted

has not come to pass,

I invested my hopes in desires

that returned only sorrow and frustration. Those dreams,

like glimmering faerie feasts,

could not sustain me,

and in my head I know that you

are sovereign even over this--

over my tears, my confusion,

and my disappointment.

But I still feel,

in this moment,

as if I have been abandoned,

as if you do not care that these hopes

have collapsed to rubble.

And yet I know this is not so.

You are the sovereign of my sorrow.

You apprehended a wider sweep with wiser eyes

than mine. My history hears the fingerprints of grace.

You were always faithful, though I could not always trace quick evidence of your presence in my pain,
yet did you remain at work,

lurking in the wings, sifting all my

splinterings for bright embers that might

be breathed into more eternal dreams.

I have seen so oft in retrospect, how

you had not neglected me, but had, with a

master's care, flared my desire like silver in

a crucible to burn away some lesser longing,

and bring about your better vision.

So let me remain tender now, to how

you would teach me. My disappointments

reveal so much about my own agenda

for my life, and the ways I quietly demand

that it should play out: free of conflict,

free of pain, free of want.

My dreams are all so small.

Your bigger purpose has always been

for my greatest good, that I would

day-to-day be fashioned into a more fit vessel

for the indwelling of your Spirit,

and molded into a more compassionate

emissary of your coming Kingdom.

And you, in love, will use all means to shape

my heart into those perfect forms.

So let this disappointment do its work.

My truest hopes have never failed,

they have merely been buried

beneath the shoveled muck of disillusion,

or encased in a carapace of self-serving

desire. It is only false hopes that are brittle,

shattering like shells of thin glass, to reveal the

diamond hardness of the unshakeable eternal

hopes within. So shake and shatter

all that hinder my growth, O God.

Unmask all false hopes,

that my one true hope might shine out

unclouded and undimmed.

So let me be tutored by this new

disappointment.

Let me listen to its holy whisper,

that I may release at last these lesser dreams.

That I might embrace the better dreams you

dream for me, and for your people,

and for your kingdom, and for your creation.

Let me join myself to these, investing all hope

in the one hope that will never come undone

or betray those who place their trust in it.

Teach me to hope, O Lord,

always and only in you.

You are the King of my collapse.

You answer not what I demand,

but what I do not even know what to ask.

Now take this dream, this husk,

this chaff of my desire, and give it back

reformed and remade according to

your better vision,

or do not give it back at all.

Here in the ruins of my wrecked

expectation, let me make this confession:

Not my dreams, O Lord,

not my dreams,

but yours, be done.

Amen.

Source: Every Moment Holy (Douglas Kaine McKelvey)

Readings and Thoughts on Poetry, Faith & The Imagination.

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The Darkling Thrush

BY THOMAS HARDY

I leant upon a coppice gate

When Frost was spectre-grey,

And Winter's dregs made desolate

The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be

The Century's corpse outleant,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among

The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings

Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

And I was unaware.

Readings and Thoughts on Poetry, Faith & The Imagination.

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A Psalm of Life

BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each to-morrow

Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,

In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!

Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act,— act in the living Present!

Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait.