Cummings

if up's the word;and a world grows greener
minute by second and most by more--
if death is the loser and life is the winner
(and beggars are rich but misers are poor)
--let's touch the sky:
                              with a to and fro
(and a here there where)and away we go

in even the laziest creature among us
a wisdom no knowledge can kill is astir--
now dull eyes are keen and now keen eyes are keener
(for young is the year;for young is the year)
--let's touch the sky:
                              with a great(and a gay
and a steep)deep rush through amazing day

it's brains without hearts have set saint against sinner;
put gain over gladness and joy under care--
let's do as an earth which can never do wrong does
(minute by second and most by more)
--let's touch the sky:
                              with a strange(and a true)
and a climbing fall into far near blue

if beggars are rich(and a robin will sing his
robin a song)but misers are poor--
let's love until noone could quite be(and young is
the year,dear)as living as i'm and as you're
--let's touch the sky:
                              with a you and a me
and an every(who's any who's some)one who's we

What do we mean when we say that a picture is "admirable"? We certainly don't mean that it is admired (that's as may be) for bad work is admired by thousands and good work may be ignored. Nor that it "deserves" admiration in the sense in which a candidate "deserves" a high mark from the examiners -- i.e., that a human being will have suffered injustice if it is not awarded. The sense in which the picture "deserves" or "demands" admiration is rather this; that admiration is the correct, adequate or appropriate, response to it, that, if paid, admiration will not be "thrown away", and that if we do not admire we shall be stupid, insensible, and great losers, we shall have missed something. In that way many objects both in Nature and in Art may be said to deserve, or merit, or demand, admiration. It was from this end, which will seem to some irreverent, that I found it best to approach the idea that God "demands" praise. He is that Object to admire which (or, if you like, to appreciate which) is simply to be awake, to have entered the real world; not to appreciate which is to have lost the greatest experience, and in the end to have lost all. The incomplete and crippled lives of those who are tone deaf, have never been in love, never known true friendship, never cared for a good book, never enjoyed the feel of the morning air on their cheeks, never (I am one of these) enjoyed football, are faint images of it.

C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, p. 92

Now they watch him and cringe.
Who are they? Who is he?

We decided to fly Chinese.
The food wasn't that good.

And oh Erwin did I tell you
that man -- the one -- I didn't

know if I was supposed to or not.
He crawled back listlessly,

holding a bunch of divas.

John Ashbery, from "As Umbrellas Follow Rain"

Bring on the aromatherapy
boys there's a job to get done

John Ashbery, from "Intricate Fasting"

Two bumper stickers
on the same car

EMBRACE LOVE

KEEP ABORTION LEGAL

[...] how constantly Our Lord repeated, reinforced, continued, refined, and sublimated, the Judaic ethics, how very seldom he introduced a novelty. This of course was perfectly well-known -- was indeed axiomatic -- to millions of unlearned Christians as long as Bible-reading was habitual. Nowadays it seems to be so forgotten that people think they have somehow discredited Our Lord if they can show that some pre-Christian document (or what they take to be pre-Christian) such as the Dead Sea Scrolls has "anticipated" Him. As if we supposed Him to be a cheapjack like Nietzsche inventing a new ethics! Every good teacher, within Judaism as without, has anticipated Him. The whole religious history of the pre-Christian world, on its better side, anticipates Him. It could not be otherwise. The Light which has lightened every man from the beginning may shine more clearly but cannot change. The Origin cannot suddenly start being, in the popular sense of the word, "original".

C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1958), pp. 26-27

"You obviously have a wonderful economy with words, Gloria. I look forward to your next syllable with great eagerness."

Sir John Gielgud, who played Hobson in Arthur, was born 104 years ago today.

Happy 69th birthday ...

... to Seamus Heaney!

Quiz

via Oblique House

You Are a Hazelnut

You are very unique and distinct. You may even freak some people out. Most people don't really know how to interact with you. You get along best with anyone who is super sweet. But you really do get along with almost anyone. You just need a chance to wow them.

What Nut Are You?

Cummings

darling!because my blood can sing
and dance(and does with each your least
your any most very amazing now
or here)let pitiless fear play host
to every isn't that's under the spring
--but if a look should april me,
down isn't's own isn't go ghostly they

doubting can turn men's see to stare
their faith to how their joy to why
their stride and breathing to limp and prove
--but if a look should april me,
some thousand million hundred more
bright worlds than merely by doubting have
darkly themselves unmade makes love

armies(than hate itself and no
meanness unsmaller)armies can
immensely meet for centuries
and(except nothing)nothing's won
--but if a look should april me
for half a when,whatever is less
alive than never begins to yes

but if a look should april me
(though such as perfect hope can feel
only despair completely strikes
forests of mind,mountains of soul)
quite at the hugest which of his who
death is killed dead. Hills jump with brooks:
trees tumble out of twigs and sticks;

It seems to me that the Church was actually resisting conformity to this world in her practice of ordaining only certain of her baptized men to the presbyteral/episcopal office. The societies in which the Church lived, in both the old and new covenants, certainly knew female leadership. Israel itself had women judges and queens, as did the empires and nations in which Christianity developed and reigned as the "official religion." But even in times when women ruled empires and were consecrated by the [Orthodox] Church for this purpose and were canonized saints by the same Church for their successful service, there were no women priests or bishops in the Church. The question is, why not? And the answer, it seems to me, can only be because the Church has theological and spiritual reasons for her actions, which are intended to preserve, and not to deny, her eschatological character.

The Church exists in the world to proclaim and preserve a vision of God and the world, and a vision of men and women, within the fallen conditions of this age whose form is passing away (1 Co 7:31). Essential to this vision is the conviction that human nature images the nature of God within the conditions of creation in two forms: masculine and feminine. It insists that men and women are essentially identical in their humanity, but are not interchangeable in their completion and perfection of it. And it holds that there must be in the Church, since it does not always exist in the world, the clear expression of the distinction of the sexes in their mutual fulfilment through communion in love, which has nothing to do with privilege, power, prestige and authority. It is therefore the sign of the Church's ultimate resistance to this world -- her calling not to be "conformed to this world" but to be "transformed by the renewal of ... mind" in order to demonstrate "what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect" (Rm 12:2) -- that the Church has not ordained women to her priestly and episcopal ranks.

Thomas Hopko, "Women and the Priesthood: Reflections," in Women and the Priesthood (SVS Press, 1983 edition), pp. 188-9

I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life -- tall, slim, auburn hair, uptilted nose, lovely mouth and the most enormous grey eyes I had ever seen. It really happened the way it does when written by the worst lady novelists. ... I goggled. I had difficulty swallowing and had champagne in my knees.

David Niven, describing his first encounter with his second wife, in The Moon's A Balloon

via Wikipedia

We must not shut our hearts against desire, but learn how to desire rightly, so that our whole wanting apparatus can be healed, so that eventually it will find its full satisfaction in him who alone can satisfy us. We cannot learn to love God by learning not to love. If we kill off in ourselves the faculty we have for desire, then we shall paralyze our faculty for loving God. [...] God is not just the policeman trying to keep us in order, or the examiner waiting to see our papers; he is also the great seducer, wooing us into his paradise of delights, so that his own joy may be in us, and our joy may be full.

Simon Tugwell, OP, from Prayer: Living with God (Templegate, 1975), pp. 43-44

via Magnificat, May 2008

Smith & Hawken

A park bench by the Belvedere. The Pocket Book of Modern Verse.

58 degrees

The loathsome sun, the mute inglorious mud. The glorious clouds, celestial teeming earth.

The scampering ram

and endless tankards of ale, or pitchers of Diet Coke. Recovering reliability.

Am feeling

quite expended. Will continue.

Neptune is a road

on the east side, on the blue line. Princeton is a street, and Eagle is a square.

Let noon, let midday

come today at five past eleven, at fifty-four minutes till twelve.

Post

your poems soon. They are strange and quiet and merciful.

Line from a journal, September 1997

the fractional magnificence of a dream ...

A package of mythology

A packet of bliss.

2003

Tardy reveille

On a Saturday.
Rain in the big bean.
April's endless pour.
Coffee's second mug.
Sommeil évanoui.
Sit we, do not stride.
Vigil Mass at four.
Several hours away.
Wood and dust and books.
Bending low, desk-lamp.
Icon smiles upon
Our inchoate words.

Greetings to moptop!

2003

Ashberyana

flowers in the packet-boat
tulips from Utrecht

*

vintage nineteen ninety-eight
syrupy splotches

*

bleak patois of mercredi
fourth cup of coffee

*

homeboys sipping Montrachet
in the bee-loud glade

*

newly-minted reveries
drams of nostalgia

*

like a flummoxed kitty-cat
on the mantelpiece

*

in the gloaming happy schmucks
brave a morris-dance

*

staining prim South Hadley's lawns
with their drips and streaks

*

haply the widow'd songster
pours his plaint, selah

*

common reasons sway the herd
into buoyancy

*

where busboys traipse, there traipse I
in a cowslip's bell

*

dribble from the chandelier
woozy drops of light

2003

phos hilaron updated

with a reading from St Ephrem the Syrian

Oh, definitely tomorrow

Pat Buchanan chops meat! Film at 11.

Postprandial

Seurat's mustard. Pointillism of the chemise. Adding a yellow dab to the shirt's pale blue.

Old age should burn and rave at close of day

and the period between youth and middle age yawns, and ponders the wisdom of a cup of tea, at forty minutes before sunset on a Sunday evening in late April.

Prediction

I think I know who'll be throwing out the first pitch at Fenway today. The Red Sox higher-ups are keeping it a secret, and will say only "it'll give you goosebumps." I think I've got it figured out.

She's seven years old.

Will update you if my prediction is accurate or not.

Update, Wednesday: I was wrong. See comment box.

Welcome!

According to the newly installed ClustrMap, this blog has recently had visitors from Brazil, Japan, and Belgium (or was that northern France?). Canada, Hawaii, wherever you're from ... welcome!

Discovered

An online selection of Emily Dickinson's poems.

To all souls that love God, to all true Christians, there shall come a first month of the year, as the month of April, a day of resurrection.

from the Homilies of St Macarius

And now for something completely different ...

Amazing Grace, 2007. By a new artist!

Joss Stone
née Joscelyn Eve Stoker

"Son of a Preacher Man," 2006:



The dress is a little too short.

Dusty Springfield
née Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien

"Son of a Preacher Man," 1968:

One year

Today marks the anniversary of my return to "regular" blogging! That is, if 5-10 posts a week can be called "regular" when compared to the 50+ posts per week of five years ago.

Well, here's the post that (re)started it all, one of my favorite passages from the Book of Wisdom.

Realism, modified

On the night after Patrick met Patrick, to joust with their gladsome épées, Felix awoke (and rushed toward the coffee-pot, because his body believed the sunrise to be imminent) at 3:04 am.

O fortunate Felix, who can re-read Caelica as the sparrows sleep and the airplanes murmur sweet nothings! O happy city, in which haikus are crowed at the drop of dawn!

Secret enclave : wistful.

Corners of porches. Corners of libraries.

Ensconced in yesterday. Sheltered from sun.

Poignancy and trees. Sky shuttered out.

Storage of memories. Old houses best.

Jamaica Plain backyard. Fences and neighbors.

Autumn all year. Even in April.

Temperature

Crickets chirp in Celsius,
sparrows Fahrenheit.

News items

Bulletin : Pencil-sharpeners are hungry for what is blunt.

Bulletin : Possible Downtown Crossing explorations & the scampering ram.

Bulletin : Time to get the Scrabble partner's watch fixed.

Bulletin : Importance is vital. Write that down.

Bulletin : Seasons are changing. Blossomings burgeon. Trees get an A-plus in creativity. Too rambunctious for the A in conduct.

Bulletin : Teachers don't teach trees how to grow and rejoice. Unless they're poets & do so in November.

Bulletin : Martin's daughter-in-law still shines like any star, at the age of twoscore something.

Bulletin : Blind gondoliers travel canals that are (what else?) Venetian!

Bulletin : Pack-rats indulge in schemes to resurrect literature.

And today's weather : A chance of audacity, hampered by clouds, assisted by them rather.

Surrealism

There are two ways of having a cup of tea. Carefully and cautiously. Paying heed to the steep prices, and the bleeding bag of leaves.

A cup of tea is a simile. So went the meanings. Here we abrade with the sound of abrupt.

When we write a villanelle, it is in the realm of such. Of such and of suchlike. The governor is swift and Wyoming is compared to the Pyrenees.

Innocent can mean unwedded. Les noces parfaites. Have we glanced at the etymologies for "hectic" and "fettle." Have we collaborated with our choice rejoicer.

Scripture and Holy Tradition [...] give us no grounds for supposing that, through a steady advance in "civilization", the world will grow gradually better and better until mankind succeeds in establishing God's kingdom on earth. The Christian view of world history is entirely opposed to this kind of evolutionary optimism.

Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, p. 134

Jussive

The rive-gauche mafia's jussive cries
for help and collegiality
thunder faintly down profligate corridors
of panache and decentralization.

Whose palazzo is it anyway?
We are chirpy, chirpier, chirpiest
choristers addicted to life.
We are known as a place of welcome,
so stay away
if you're not one of us.

Where are the lispers and traipsers of yesteryear? Or yesternight
    even?
Huddled in a bunker, knocking back the bubbly?
Such froth! Such frippery! Oh, you ...

you rascal,
with your lissome repartee
and your bodacious "fear of same."

2003

Five poems

Wine, guitars, blue bulls, red sun,
outmoded whispers --

*

The haiku of blue
by Kobayashi-Rimbaud
shines like jolie lune ...

*

Ashberyana:
traceries of yestermorn,
forgeries of night

*

Hoosegow bumpkin strums
on mauve mandolin

*

Weighing grey, rehearsing sound,
eccola! Spring rain
drops like light

2003

Realism, modified

The stone is dreaming of Vienna. Bowie plays Doha.

If all else fails

Write about all the proper themes
Write about bridge-builders and icon-makers
Write about massacres and resolute measures
Write about popular music and cultureslaves
Write about the Book of Common Prayer
Write about the grousings of overpaid first-basemen
Write about formality and decorum
Write about sartorial splendor
Write about religion and discount prophecy
Write about the whited sepulchres
Write about September 16th on Hampden Street
Write about ethics in journalism
Write about the President of the United States
Write about the burning issues of the day

Write about all the wrong things
Write about Silver Lake New Hampshire
Write about the death of American poetry
Write about nihilism and prenatal infanticide
Write about the sparrows 30 minutes before sunrise
Write about Hildegarde of Bingen
Write about an appointment at 2:45 pm
Write about the drunk who met His Eminence
Write about women who make the city heaven
Write about Westminster and Windmill Hill
Write about the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Write about sinners and dense theologians
Write about the mysteries of life
Write about taboos and kinks and addictions

Write about things you don't know about
Write about people and places you haven't met or seen
Write about mediocrities and blithe spirits
Write about the second cup of coffee
Write about Dutch waitresses who pretend to be Irish
Write about serious things like Hollywood marriages
Write about the contemporary scene with detached irony
Write about the French because somebody has to
Write about Saint Monica who prayed for her son
Write about cappuccino at the Kendall Square Cinema
Write about dashed hopes and broken promises
Write about red leaves in late August
Write about variety being the spice of life
Write about a sturdy hammock in suburban shade

And if all else fails be silent
Because silence never makes mistakes

1997

Emily Dickinson
from a letter

The Sailor cannot see the North --
but knows the Needle can --

poem

about the retreat to the Trappist abbey sixteen years ago ...

Commonwealth Avenue Mall

Sparrow, fierce extortionist!
I have no more crumbs.

2003

To a Trappist

Oh, to be he, with snakes in the jakes!
Cistercian Merton, in his hermitage of icons,
in his dream-den where Proverb sings a secret ageless wisdom,
yes, the monk of hopeful phone-calls to hospitals of love.
Cistercian Merton, left of center, marginal in the rusted trailer,
patron of my fringe existence, pray for me
with your edifying cables, your sensational times,
your blind-lion tears between loblolly pines,
your vanishing trails to the stone Buddhas of unforeseen heaven,
your vow of silent conversation, prosing haiku pictures
of the cloistered farm, of nature's wreckage,
of the ramshackle glory of things as they are,
your coffee on cold mornings, your dexterous calligraphies,
your ephemeral Zen monuments of anguish and joy,
your sinful-saintly standing watch as the world does its work,
your searing psalmody, your soaring liturgies, your telling beads of
      heartbreak,
your sighs to the hills and frosted nightstars
of a distant immortal Kentucky.

2003

call it what you will

1

leaf-life blighted by the smoke
from a passing bus

2

treble tolls of bleak dismay
drab rodomontade

3

the morning of the poem
jazzy drops of rain

4

and the dulcet bumblebees
murmuring their gripes

5

lemon-scented buttercups
lisp their odes to spring

6

canopied boulangeries
rambunctious churches

2003

Surrealism

The ecumenical python lunged at the scrumptious daisy, causing paroxysms of havoc, maniacal fits of glee, in the community of Anglo-Catholic tumbleweeds.

Here endeth the lesson.

16 years ago this week

I was making a retreat at a Trappist monastery. The monks were very kind. A cherished memory.

Poem

I have tried to hold you in my heart; 
You will not accept this grasp and clutch.
(Days turn into years: shall I forget
Her whose face and voice I loved so much?)
Splendid, gentle, proud, defiant one,
Dwell within me like an inner sun:
Warm the places lacking love and light.

Speak to me of peace, O sainted soul:
Mercy must be born again in me.
Come, beloved, teach a prattling fool
Ways of hope and faith and charity.
Smile upon my sorrow; banish fear;
Cleanse me from the sins of yesteryear:
Live within my life and make me whole.


1999

Cummings

if everything happens that can't be done
(and anything's righter
than books
could plan)
the stupidest teacher will almost guess
(with a run
skip
around we go yes)
there's nothing as something as one

one hasn't a why or because or although
(and buds know better
than books
don't grow)
one's anything old being everything new
(with a what
which
around we come who)
one's everyanything so

so world is a leaf so a tree is a bough
(and birds sing sweeter
than books
tell how)
so here is away and so your is a my
(with a down
up
around again fly)
forever was never till now

now i love you and you love me
(and books are shuter
than books
can be)
and deep in the high that does nothing but fall
(with a shout
each
around we go all)
there's somebody calling who's we

we're anything brighter than even the sun
(we're everything greater
than books
might mean)
we're everyanything more than believe
(with a spin
leap
alive we're alive)
we're wonderful one times one

44 tomorrow!

Happy birthday to Tracy Chapman. Here she is as she was 20 years ago ...

Perché là dov'è il tuo tesoro, sarà anche il tuo cuore.

Matteo 6:21

The Christian is the one who has brothers and sisters. He belongs to a family -- the family of the Church.

Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, p. 108

Easter reflections

from John Henry Newman at Apologia, and from Romano Guardini at the Daily Eudemon.

Easter
by Eric Milner-White (1884-1963)

THOU ART RISEN, O LORD!
Let the gospel trumpets speak,
and the news as of holy fire,
burning and flaming and inextinguishable,
run to the ends of the earth.

THOU ART RISEN, O LORD!
Let all creation greet the good tidings
with jubilant shout;
for its redemption has come,
the long night is past, the Saviour lives!
and rides and reigns in triumph
now and unto the ages of ages.

THOU ART RISEN, O LORD!
Let the quiet Altar dazzle with light;
let us haste to thy Presence
wondering, incredulous for joy;
and partake of thy Risen Life.

THOU ART RISEN, MY LORD AND MY GOD!
Rise up, my heart, give thanks, rejoice!
And do thou, O Lord, deign to enter it
despite the shut doors.
Shew me thy hands and thy side,
that it is thou thyself.
Send me about thy business,
servant of the living King, the King of kings;
and hide my life in thine
for ever and ever.

From My God, My Glory : Aspirations, acts, and prayers on the desire for God, ed. Joyce Huggett (Triangle/SPCK, 1994), p. 69.

from Easter Sermon of St John Chrysostom

Let all then enter the joy of our Lord!

Both the first and the last and those who come after, enjoy your reward!

Rich and poor, dance with one another, sober and slothful, celebrate the day.

Those who have kept the fast and those who have not, rejoice today, for the table is richly spread.

Fare royally upon it -- the calf is a fatted one.

Let no one go away hungry.

All of you, enjoy the banquet of faith!

All enjoy the riches of his goodness.

Let no one cry over his poverty, for the universal Kingdom has appeared!

Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again, for forgiveness has risen from the grave.

Let no one fear death, for the death of our Savior has set us free.

He has destroyed it by enduring it.

He spoiled the power of hell when he descended thereto.

Isaiah foretold this when he cried, Death has been frustrated in meeting him below!

It is frustrated, for it is destroyed.

It is frustrated, for it is annihilated.

It is frustrated, for now it is made captive.

For it grabbed a body and discovered God.

It took earth and behold! it encountered heaven.

It took what was visible, and was overcome by what was invisible.

O Death, where is your sting?

O Death, where is your victory?

Christ is risen,
and the demons are cast down.

Christ is risen,
and life is set free.

Christ is risen,
and the tomb is emptied of the dead.

For Christ, having risen from the dead, is become the first-fruits of those who sleep.

To him be glory and power forever and ever!

Amen. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

This is a Night above all nights, when
keeping watch at Your grave
we are the Church.
This is the night of strife
when hope and despair do battle within us.
This strife overlays all our past struggles,
filling them all to their depths.
(Do they lose their sense then, or gain it?)
This is the Night, when the earth's ritual attains its beginning.
A thousand years is like one night:
the night keeping watch
at Your grave.

-- Karol Wojtyla, "Easter Vigil, 1966"

The Agony

by George Herbert (1593-1633); found at Mere Comments.

Attributed to "Michael Angelo"

From the Library of World Poetry, intro. W. C. Bryant (orig. publ. 1871, republished 1987 by Chatham River Press), p. 43.


The might of one fair face sublimes my love,
For it hath weaned my heart from low desires;
Nor death I heed, nor purgatorial fires.
Thy beauty, antepast of joys above,
Instructs me in the bliss that saints approve;
For O, how good, how beautiful must be
The God that made so good a thing as thee,
So fair an image of the heavenly Dove!

Forgive me if I cannot turn away
From those sweet eyes that are my earthly heaven,
For they are guiding stars, benignly given
To tempt my footsteps to the upward way;
And if I dwell too fondly in thy sight,
I live and love in God's peculiar light.

Cummings

there are possibly 2½ or impossibly 3
individuals every several fat
thousand years. Expecting more would be
neither fantastic nor pathological but

dumb. The number of times a wheel turns
doesn't determine its roundness:if swallows tryst
in your barn be glad;nobody ever earns
anything,everthing little looks big in a mist

and if(by Him Whose blood was for us spilled)
than all mankind something more small occurs
or something more distorting than socalled
civilization i'll kiss a stalinist arse

in hitler's window on Wednesday next at 1
E.S.T. bring the kiddies let's all have fun

Cummings

when faces called flowers float out of the ground
and breathing is wishing and wishing is having--
but keeping is downward and doubting and never
--it's april(yes,april;my darling)it's spring!
yes the pretty birds frolic as spry as can fly
yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be
(yes the mountains are dancing together)

when every leaf opens without any sound
and wishing is having and having is giving--
but keeping is doting and nothing and nonsense
--alive;we're alive,dear:it's(kiss me now)spring!
now the pretty birds hover so she and so he
now the little fish quiver so you and so i
(now the mountains are dancing,the mountains)

when more than was lost has been found has been found
and having is giving and giving is living--
but keeping is darkness and winter and cringing
--it's spring(all our night becomes day)o,it's spring!
all the pretty birds dive to the heart of the sky
all the little fish climb through the mind of the sea
(all the mountains are dancing;are dancing)

Cummings

hate blows a bubble of despair into
hugeness world system universe and bang
--fear buries a tomorrow under woe
and up comes yesterday most green and young

pleasure and pain are merely surfaces
(one itself showing,itself hiding one)
life's only and true value neither is
love makes the little thickness of the coin

comes here a man would have from madame death
neverless now and without winter spring?
she'll spin that spirit her own fingers with
and give him nothing(if he should not sing)

how much more than enough for both of us
darling. And if i sing you are my voice,