Prayer to the Spirit of the Starlit Sea

Your presence drifts across my horizon
like a phantom of innocence,
the innocence of night.
Like the hanging garments of the Spirit
who spread wings of light
over the nameless seas of old,
breaking the mirror-stillness and arousing alike
the tempest and the calm which have forever
wooed the hearts of men, so you stir
unfathomed depths within my soul.
You whose light casts shadows, whose love stirs
our loneliness, whose day makes bitter the night
and whose rest makes vain pursuit of many toils,
make desire of you unmet
sweeter than any other fulfilled.

Waiting for you on a winter night

I long for you like
night longs for sunrise.
I sit by a dying fire in
a dark room, an old
flannel quilt, half-torn,
thrown over my bare
shoulders. The darkness,
signifying emptiness–
the kind of emptiness
which can fill your whole
mind–reminds me of
you.

You are daybreak, stepping
across the threshold with
the sun in your arms,
singing some old threshing song
that peasants used to sing at harvest,
when being human was
simpler and grander, a song
full of jolly nonsense
signifying the full radiance
of a well-lived life. You
thunder down the stairs,
and ask me to come
to breakfast.

The day I lost the charade

I remember when love
used to be a charade:
It was a card we played
when the chips were down.
I remember when love
was that thing longed for
above all other things;
A thing once had,
would redeem all.
It was a kind of dream
lullying the lonely to sleep;
a sheild from the pain
of unshared aspirations,
an aspiration of a spectral
city hovering high-but
not too high-in the clouds.
It was a great, white curtain
blocking from our view
of the gaping hole drilled
through the world's heart
and the heart of every man.

The day I lost the charade,
I knew that love was a kind of death,
and I knew that death
was the only way to live.

Love is not the expectance
of a gift coming on silver wings
from a gold horizon.
It is not the charging heartbeat
in two lovers' bosems.
No, love is a kind of death,
the kind we must die every day,
when we realize that all the things
we most long for we must
throw away before we can have.
Love is not a thing to collect
in a box, the crown jewel
among our treasures.
Seize it, and it withers in our grasp,
Fly our flag upon it, and it rebels,
love only it, and it hates you.
No, love is a kind of death;
a trail of tears and blood,
the kind someone made
long ago in a muddy street
under the weight of his own
wooden cross.

The day I lost the charade,
I knew that love was a kind of death,
and knowing it, my life began.



Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Matthew 16:24-25

My Passion

You are the fire of a thousand stars,
you are the rivers of the earth.
You are the tears of Samson’s blind eyes,
you are cathedral spires in rainy London.

Your heart bleeds dark with silent love;
it sprinkles slivered glass–no more seen
than raindrops, and no less felt–
memoirs of pain catching the sun’s rays,
and shimmering light through your eyes,
and into your long night.

You are the creaking of the boughs
In deep winter, crisp and laden.
You are the cry on Jeptha’s lips,
You are the blood on Zion’s streets.
You are my root and spire,
my dagger and my shield,
my thorn and my crown,.
You are joy and sorrow,
Mixing in this cosmic bowl,
giving laughter and silence to all.

Forgive me

Oh world, for all my faults I beg thy pardon,
for all my foolish talk and petty pride,
for all my ill-borne rage and misplaced sorrow;
that for a word mispoken I beat my breast,
and for a child forgotten, beat not an eye,
that at my inner fool I snarl,
while at tyrants laugh and shrug.
Oh world, pray, do not despise
to bear so mean a soul!
Forgive me, as thou I would forgive,
for all thy misplaced loves and barren dreams
and kind words spoken from an empty heart,
for these, as much as yours, are mine,
in all their putrid, crimson truth
that stains your hand and my heart,
that stains a cross of divine love,
and let us celebrate as fools,
as weeds, as dust, as men,
and trust in yet a greater man
who bears all sorrow and guilt, for having none.

Sonnet XV

O flame that burns so bright within,
why do you hesitate to tell
that wisdom which thou know so well,
as though our eyes alone possess
the strength to truth from error win!
Wilt thou, inner eye, confess
to be as blind, though inward dwell?
Among deaf ears and silent tongues,
and eyes, though seeing, sightless be,
art thou, O heart, from nonsense free;
alone that sense which truth percieves?
Stand thou but on higher rungs
of that same form, which lacking, grieves
that light, though there, he cannot see.

On my other blog, I included this poem as the introduction to a rather dry essay on epistemology. Yet this poem doesn't presume to answer such heavy questions, but merely to sound a note of questioning the trustworthiness of our internal ways of knowing. I wrote it without any particular point in mind; it is really no more than a musing in verse form, although I do make the rather pessimistic conclusion that the heart, as part of fallen humanity, cannot have perfect knowledge. But that, I expect, should be taken as obvious.