The Tenderness of Stone 2

Tags

attrition, cairns, effigies, guilt, Heaven, sheepfold, tenderness

A re-blog:

 

The Tenderness of Stone

We know beggars would rather have a loaf

so, when they cry, they do not want a stone.

Too long a sacrifice can turn a heart

into one of us, as can persistence.

Children will skim us time and time again

over a still loch and troubled adults

will cast us out as far as they can see,

to drown their burdens, like a sack of cats.

We are chips off the old block, rocks, boulders,

pebbles, grains, irritants that create pearls.

We have been molten, crystallized, polished;

we have been dragged, eroded, scarified.

Attrition has been our second nature.

We have fissures, fossils, fool’s gold, dark seams.

Look at us: though we have been rejected,

we also have been chosen corner stones,

cairns, sheepfolds. Hollowed out, we became homes.

Thirsty crows dropped us, one by one, until

the water level rose to meet their beaks.

We have been used as missiles to kill men-projectiles

of their own guilt, but one Man

made a mad crowd release us to the ground,

rather than hurl us with the force of law.

We have borne words and cryptic alphabets;

we have been pillows, then piled as pillars

to mark the place where angels ascended,

descended on a heavenly ladder.

We mark time, are thresholds, lintels and sills.

Some implore that we should fall upon them;

some sense that they should fall on us and break.

We are the worn handclasp of effigies

and the spray of gravel at a shutter,

the shrapnel signal of elopers’ trysts.

The mobile statue of the petrified,

whom faithless men implore to punish them,

finds in rapprochement there’s no rebuke.

In a future world the shattered will cup

palms, to receive a stone, white as an egg,

bearing their new name. And stones will not chide.

Heaven will be in every grain of sand.

 

Lapping It Up

Tags

Book of Hours, British Library, Golf Book

(MS 24098 British Library- Golf Book of Hours)

 

Storks mating…

She’s lapping this up,

like my dog.

Temptation: a Haiku

Tags

Duc de Berry, First Sunday Lent, haiku, Limbourg, Mehun-sur-Yevre, Temptation of Christ

Most lovely

Mehun-sur-Yevre:

so tempting.

Ash Wednesday 3

Tags

Ash Wednesday, T S Eliot

The rest of my version of T S Eliot’s poem:

 

IV

I have spoken of trivial things,

in ignorance, negligence and through my own deliberate fault.

Sovegna nos.

You have restored through my bright cloud of tears

the years the locusts  have wasted

and given me a new verse to an ancient rhyme,

enabling me to redeem my dream; redeem the time.

 

V

No lost word is lost; no spent word is spent.

Your word is heard- the Word within

the world and for the world.

Your light shone in the darkness.

What has He done for me?

 

VI

I do hope to turn again;

I do hope;

I hope to turn.

I no longer waver between profit and loss,

in this brief transit in which all dreams lead to the cross:

the dream-crossed twilight between birth and dying.

I am flying with unbroken wings -seaward,

towards a granite shore.

I hear the cry of quail and whirling plover

and glimpse shining forms between the ivory gates.

This is the time of tension between dying and birth.

 

Suffer us to have a sense of irony.

Teach us to care and not to care,

nor take ourselves too seriously.

Teach us to be still;

our peace is in His will.

And I pray the spirit of the sea

shall never let me know severance,

but will let my cry come unto Thee.

Ash Wednesday 1

Tags

Cranmer, ecumenicism, Lent, Palestrina, T S Eliot

Feria Quarta Cinerum

(Image- Jennifer Balaska 2/2/12; author Oxh973)

I won’t go into all the Lenten references to words spoken over

Adam and Eve, referring to the dust to which they shall return.

I won’t go into Cranmer’s dismissal of the procedure as

‘superstitious’ nor its ecumenical resurrection in the 1970s.

What I did- prior to preparing to sing Palestrina’s Reproaches– was

re-read and listen to T S Eliot’s acclaimed poem.  I found his voice

lugubrious and the tone exhausted.  Still, he seemed to have squeezed

through the eye of the needle, in spite of his cultural baggage.

Thanks be to God!

Here’s my version.  I tried to be more positive!  And if you don’t think

I succeed, then I abhor myself in the proverbial dust and cinders and

promise to roll around in a bit of sackcloth.  But fasting?  Well, that’s

more difficult!

See following post…..

 

 

Shades of Frost

Tags

contrition, grace, maze, retrospective, Robert Frost

(Robert Frost by Fred Palumbo, World Telegram

Staff Reporter- Library of Congress, NY- Telegram

and Sun Collection.)

Two views diverged on what really took place.

I attempted to see each perspective

and tried not to mind if I lost face

and, though my friends told me not to abase

myself, I did so, in retrospective.

I felt we were lost in a foggy wood

and could not see it for looking at trees.

I endeavoured not to use the word ‘should’;

I projected myself into your mood,

but had no access, as you held the keys.

I wanted to walk down that path with you,

but, when I stretched out my hand, you had gone

and brambles and thorns restricted my view.

Pushing on, my clothing soaked with the dew,

thick darkness did not disperse with the dawn.

I’m telling this now because, with a sigh,

we may look back on our past position

and wonder how we could let ourselves die

and cover our ears to the other’s cry,

harbouring pain; stifling contrition.

Two views diverge on what really took place.

Whatever occurred, it was all so slight

and only the chance to display some grace

would have shown us the exit from the maze.

We are both lost because neither was right.

Cor Cordium Post 2

Tags

Angelus, curfew, Falls of Clyde, gargoyles, Immanence, Inglesham, Isis, Lechlade, Lycidas, Mary Shelley, Narcissus, New Inn, Severn, T L Peacock, Windsor Great Park, Wordworth

For introduction, see previous post.

(Photo: by Ballista at English Wikipedia, May 2006)

 

COR CORDIUM

(a monologue, as spoken by Mary Shelley…)

 

I remember he called me his veiled maid

and said I had a voice like his own soul.

Up what he termed the watery staircases,

we rose, emerging under a humped bridge.

Ostensibly, we sought the Isis source,

but were we really looking for the fount

of Inspiration… Imagination?

 

All the while, like Narcissus, he just stared;

reflected on the depths, till weeds choked us,

at Inglesham.  We lodged at The New Inn.

Peacock encouraged us to eat some chops.

Thus fortified, we strolled before the curfew,

through the ancient churchyard, which seemed to rouse

the Muse in him, for he became withdrawn

and it was only his echoing cough

which disturbed our tranquility.  The spire

pointed heavenward, as if to raise heads

cast down by the dejection of their pasts.

I thought of Clara- and mother also-

and dwelt awhile on my estranged father.

Well, Wordsworth was quite right- the good die first.

 

What strange visions and dreams I’d had before:

my babe resurrected, but then more deaths.

Suicides ensued.  Yet on that still night,

we watched the moon; heard the Angelus

and felt a kind of divine Immanence.

 

I wanted to drift forever on streams;

to exorcise my deep melancholy.

Harriet had threatened to prosecute:

she made his ‘atheism’ a pretext,

citing elopement and abandonment.

But he was only in love with loving:

like Augustine, he was not yet in love,

though he claimed to reject Beauty, Nature,

seeking to find full truth in a woman.

All that free love was, at times, fatiguing.

 

Why did I always have to share his love?

He even shared his father’s allowance.

We never made it to The Falls of Clyde,

for he could not produce the Severn fee

and Charles and Peacock could not contribute.

 

So, while he spoke of Lycidas and death,

I felt that I was drowning in sorrows.

Suddenly his ‘airy scheme’ seemed grounded.

I longed to return to Windsor Great Park,

but the gargoyles seemed to mock my desires.

So, what was I left with?

 

I edit work

and open the pages of ‘Adonais’,

gazing at that once strongly beating heart;

mummified now; wrapped around in white silk.

Is that all that remains of burning love?

 

No, for even among the crumbling tombs,

verse was produced on that late summer night

and his very heartbeat was metrical.

 

Now I hold the rhythms of his life- here-

not between the pages, but within them.

 

Frosty Reception (Clerihew 3)

Tags

clerihew, Donald Trump, neighbours, Robert Frost

 

My own version of a clerihew, with variation in the last line.

 

Trump may not have read Robert Frost:

particularly the poem about human relations and their cost.

Both seem convinced good neighbours are made by good walls,

but many suspect that is…not the case.

 

 

Clerihew

Tags

clerihew, couplet, Donald Trump, Matthew Francis, megalomania, Melania

My friend, the poet Matthew Francis, has reminded me of

the fun of writing a clerihew- a form originally invented by

Edmund Clerihew Bentley.

Apparently you must mention a famous person in line 1 of a

couplet. The lines must be irregular and there should be a second

couplet which completes a verse of nonsensical, or comic content.

I immediately thought of this:

Some see Donald Trump

as, frankly, a chump.

His alleged megalomania

must irritate Melania.

The Moving Garden

Tags

Advent, capitulum, conceptual art, cultigen, erhu, Five Points Calvinism, gerbera, installation, Lee Mingwei, Let Hundred Flowers Bloom, Magi, Mao, Mark Twain, Melbourne, NGV, Oscar Wilde, predestination

Lee Mingwei at the NGV, Melbourne, Dec 2016. Photo from the NGV advertisement of the exhibition.

It’s Advent and tens of thousands of gifts

are being given all over Melbourne,

anticipating the Magis and God.

There is always a risk in taking part.

Well, think of Mao’s Hundred Flowers campaign!

I am invited to choose a flower

and, before I reach my destination,

I am simply to go out of my way;

electing one beneficiary,

with a kind of Calvinistic tulip;

endowing them with puzzling graciousness.

(The recipient must be a stranger.)

Apparently, in some cultures, people

have been known to grab more than their fair share;

others tend to shun participation,

shy from disturbing the installation.

Confident ones may pluck and then re-place,

avoiding the responsibility

of bestowal; fearing to create burdens.

Out of the crowd, slightly self-conscious,

I step forward; pick a red gerbera.

I want to keep it and, like Oscar Wilde,

use it as a button-hole, or corsage;

make myself an ambulant work of art.

Mark Twain said a man can reduce his age

by several years, if he sports a bloom.

Maybe I should tuck it behind my ear?

But it’s not about gaining attention and

it would be like burying a talent.

Perhaps we will blossom in our giving?

The capitulum looks like one flower,

but botanically is hundreds of them.

One act of bounty could well mutiny.

Cultigens, cultivated by humans,

can be altered by our activities.

Hybridisation is the way to go!

For one hundred days, the artist carried

a lily with him, until it withered.

He’d planted it when his grandmother died.

Was love a burden till he released it?

So, now that I have this omnipotence,

am I involved in predestination?

Is a person’s worthiness the focus?

Should I positively discriminate?

Ought race, gender, or disability

come into it?  I think gratuity

might be fun.  All eyes seem to be on me.

A Sikh couple have no need of colour;

an erhu busker needs no distraction

and is well- acquainted with interplay.

In the hospital foyer a small girl

is disinhibited and receives it,

understanding the language of flowers,

instinctively, knowing that gerbera

stand for innocence, purity and joy.

 

• ‘ Tulip’ was the Calvinistic acronym for the’ 5 points’:
• Total depravity
• Unconditional Election
• Limited Atonement
• Immutability of God
• Perseverance of the saints

Lee Mingwei was born in Taiwan.  He produces

participatory installations and encourages strangers

to explore their self-awareness, trust and tolerance of

intimacy.  He raises awareness of the preciousness of

human connections in the brief encounters of our lives.

,