Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto knowledge of the truth

It's been years since I last posted this little discursus by Luci Shaw, so here it is again. Merry Christmas, dear readers. God bless you and yours unto life everlasting.

It’s as if the infancy were the whole of the incarnation.

One time of the year

the new-born child
is everywhere,
planted in madonnas’ arms
hay mows, stables,
in palaces or farms,
or quaintly, under snowed gables,
gothic angular or baroque plump,
naked or elaborately swathed,
encircled by Della Robbia wreaths,
garnished with whimsical
partridges and pears,
drummers and drums,
lit by oversize stars,
partnered with lambs,
peace doves, sugar plums,
bells, plastic camels in sets of three
as if these were what we need for eternity.

But Jesus the Man is not to be seen.
We are to be wary, these days,
of beards and sandaled feet.

Yet if we celebrate, let it be
that He
has invaded our lives with purpose,
striding over our picturesque traditions,
our shallow sentiment,
overturning our cash registers,
wielding His peace like a sword,
rescuing us into reality,
demanding much more
than the milk and softness
and the mother warmth
of the baby in the storefront creche,
(Only the Man would ask
all, of each of us)
reaching out
always, urgently, with strong
effective love
(only the Man would give
His life and live
again for love of us).

Oh come, let us adore Him--
Christ--the Lord.

What I remember from high school

Sheesh, I've been looking for this poem on the internets for years. Finally found it here. Thought you should know.

BLINDMAN'S BUFF

Peter Viereck

Night-watchmen think of dawn and things auroral.

Clerks wistful for Bermudas think of coral.

The poet in New York still thinks of laurel.

(But lovers think of death and touch each other

As if to prove that love is still alive.)

The Martian space-crew, in an Earthward dive,

Think of their sweet unearthly earth Up There,

Where darling monsters romp in airless air.

(Two lovers think of death and touch each other,

Fearing that day when only one's alive.)

We think of cash, but cash does not arrive.

We think of fun, but fate will not connive.

We never mention death. Do we survive?

(The lovers think of death and touch each other

To live their love while love is yet alive.)

Prize-winners are so avid when they strive;

They race so far; they pile their toys so high

Only a cad would trip them. Yet they die.

(The lovers think of death and touch each other;

Of all who live, these are the most alive.)

Plump creatures smack their lips and think they thrive;

The hibernating bear, but half alive,

Dreams of free honey in a stingless hive.

He thinks of life at every lifeless breath.

(The lovers think of death.)

Teach us to care and not to care

I think I missed posting this last year, but it's still a tradition here:

from T.S. Eliot's Ash Wednesday

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

...

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

...

Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will

And this is your brain on pregnancy

Though a poem about aging and its toils, this gem from Billy Collins nonetheless resonated with me, given the ongoing deterioration of what perspicacity I ever possessed. Collins is one serious, funny dude.

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go

followed obediently by the title, the plot,

the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel

which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never

even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor

decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,

to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye

and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,

and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,

the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember

it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,

not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river

whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,

well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those

who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a

bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night

to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.

No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted

out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Per Pacem Ad Lucem

by Adelaide A. Procter

I DO not ask, O Lord, that life may be
A pleasant road;
I do not ask that Thou wouldst take from me
Aught of its load;

I do not ask that flowers should always spring
Beneath my feet;
I know too well the poison and the sting
Of things too sweet.

For one thing only, Lord, dear Lord, I plead,
Lead me aright—
Though strength should falter, and though heart should bleed—
Through Peace to Light.

I do not ask, O Lord, that thou shouldst shed
Full radiance here;
Give but a ray of peace, that I may tread
Without a fear.

I do not ask my cross to understand,
My way to see;
Better in darkness just to feel Thy hand
And follow Thee.

Joy is like restless day; but peace divine
Like quiet night:
Lead me, O Lord,—till perfect Day shall shine,
Through Peace to Light.

HT: Starck's Prayer Book

Fa la la la la! La la la BLAT!

Another poem for the season:

A mighty creature is the germ,
Though smaller than the pachyderm.
His customary dwelling place
Is deep within the human race.
His childish pride he often pleases
By giving people strange diseases.
Do you, my poppet, feel infirm?
You probably contain a germ.

--Ogden Nash

I really hope you, dear reader, are having a far less messy week than I.

A simple something for your Adventide

I heard a bird sing

In the dark of December.

A magical thing

And sweet to remember:

"We are nearer to spring

Than we were in September,"

I heard a bird sing

In the dark of December.

--Oliver Herford

Sing it, Mom. Sing it every day. Christ is coming! He is coming soon!

And everything you do in the meantime matters.

(With apologies to Gauntlets)

The Unborn
by Sharon Olds

Sometimes I can almost see, around our heads,
Like gnats around a streetlight in summer,
The children we could have,
The glimmer of them.

Sometimes I feel them waiting, dozing
In some antechamber - servants, half-
Listening for the bell

Sometimes I see them lying like love letters
In the Dead Letter Office

And sometimes, like tonight, by some black
Second sight I can feel just one of them
Standing on the edge of a cliff by the sea
In the dark, stretching its arms out
Desperately to me.

From a 14th child

Tradition, thou art for suckling children,
Thou art the enlivening milk for babes;
But no meat for men is in thee.
Then --
But, alas, we all are babes.

Stephen Crane

Toilet training

her wry face blooms red
lo! roots! Dark and thick--
the corner; forbidden soil.

D

BabyBoy pulled Mornings like This (Annie Dillard's book of found poems) off the shelf this morning. Of course I was unable to resist flipping through it before replacing it. The following, which Dillard culled from Charles H. Cugle's 1936 Practical Navigation, seems appropriate to the day:

Signals at sea

(If the flags in A's hoist cannot be made out, B keeps her answering pennant at the "Dip" and hoists the signal "OWL" or "WCX.")

CXL Do not abandon me.
A I am undergoing a speed trial.
D Keep clear of me--I am maneuvering with difficulty.
F I am disabled. Communicate with me.
G I require a pilot.

P Your lights are out, or burning badly.
U You are standing into danger.
X Stop carrying out your intentions.
K You should stop your vessel instantly.
L You should stop. I have something important to communicate.

R You may feel your way past me.

Can you hear me now?

Annunciation

Salvation to all that will is nigh;
That All, which always is All everywhere,
Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,
Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,
So, faithful Virgin, yields himself to lie
In prison, in thy womb; and though he there
Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet he'll wear
Taken from thence, flesh, which death's force may try.
Ere by the spheres time was created, thou
Wast in his mind, who is thy Son and Brother;
Whom thou conceiv'st, conceiv'd; yea, thou art now
Thy Maker's maker, and thy Father's mother;
Thou hast light in dark, and shut'st in little room
Immensity, cloistered in thy dear womb.

(John Donne, 1572-1631)

Saints Perpetua and Felicity

To live is Christ and to die is gain, but it is more than life that the martyrs count as loss. God grant us and all Christian mothers the faithfulness of his saints Perpetua and Felicity.

All praise for Saint Felicity, whose pains the crowd distressed
Who trusted her sweet infant to her true Mother's breast
All praise for Saint Perpetua, who arrogated not
Her precious child, but clung to Christ and won the life He bought.

Because it's a tradition now

from T.S. Eliot's Ash Wednesday

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

...

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

...

Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will

Um, did everybody see this?

In my distress I called upon the LORD; to my God I cried for help.

From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears.

Then the earth reeled and rocked; the foundations also of the mountains trembled and quaked, because he was angry. Smoke went up from his nostrils, and devouring fire from his mouth; glowing coals flamed forth from him. He bowed the heavens and came down; thick darkness was under his feet. He rode on a cherub and flew; he came swiftly on the wings of the wind. He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him, thick clouds dark with water. Out of the brightness before him hailstones and coals of fire broke through his clouds.

The LORD also thundered in the heavens, and the Most High uttered his voice, hailstones and coals of fire. And he sent out his arrows and scattered them; he flashed forth lightnings and routed them. Then the channels of the sea were seen, and the foundations of the world were laid bare at your rebuke, O LORD, at the blast of the breath of your nostrils.

He sent from on high, he took me; he drew me out of many waters. He rescued me from my strong enemy and from those who hated me, for they were too mighty for me. They confronted me in the day of my calamity, but the LORD was my support.

He brought me out into a broad place; he rescued me, because he delighted in me.

(Ps 18:6-19)

My head, my heart, mine Eyes, my life, nay more

I like Anne Bradstreet. When her husband felt called to do Stuff on the other side of the ocean, she packed up and went with the dude, exchanging a cozily predictable existence in England for adventures unknown in the Wild New World. She somehow managed to pull off being a genuine writer while also being the mother of eight.

There are in fact many reasons to like Anne Bradstreet, and one of my favorites is the way she flummoxes the feminist critics: She was the First Real American Poet! A Woman! Wo-man! HOOAH! But wait a minute…what’s this? She wrote all this stuff about her husband and her kids, like she was actually….fulfilled…by that slavish domestic stuff. Poor oppressed thing didn’t know any better! Sounds like she might’ve even believed her husband to be her head?! Oh! Now what do we do with her? Wait—look at this—I believe this here is subversive! Yes, subversive! One of our very favorite literary terms! In fact one of our only literary terms!

And so on, as they co-opt her for their cause. But I digress. Gauntlets’ Penelope post tangentially put me in mind of Bradstreet’s “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent Upon Public Employment.” So I thought I might as well put you in mind of it too. If freshman English is but a distant door down the crowded corridors of your mind, go read it again. You can even feel subversive if you want.

Sharable sharings

For my ice-bound friend, something to read. :) I liked the Writer's Almanac this morning, mostly due to the poem:

Having Confessed, by Patrick Kavanagh

Having confessed he feels
That he should go down on his knees and pray
For forgiveness for his pride, for having
Dared to view his soul from the outside.
Lie at the heart of the emotion, time
Has its own work to do. We must not anticipate
Or awaken for a moment. God cannot catch us
Unless we stay in the unconscious room
Of our hearts. We must be nothing,
Nothing that God may make us something.
We must not touch the immortal material
We must not daydream to-morrow's judgment—
God must be allowed to surprise us.
We have sinned, sinned like Lucifer
By this anticipation. Let us lie down again
Deep in anonymous humility and God
May find us worthy material for His hand.

There's much to say about this, but the babies are all screaming at the moment so I'll just let you draw your own conclusions.

In the meantime, a reminder:

O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind? --Percy Bysshe Shelley ;)

Original CSPP-LSB literature, hot off the presses

Found poetry: an intriguing literary exercise.
Today's sampling: CSPP adventures in LSB, direct from the trenches of this morning’s pews.

Lord, have mercy
when the wild tempests rave:
Cure your children’s warring madness.
Take my life and let it be.

Guarding with watchful eye
Lo, the hosts of evil round us,
A countless throng,
Your sin deplore!

Receive our prayer:
For the facing of this hour,
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
Save us from weak resignation.

For the facing of this hour,
the evils we deplore,
To Thee aloud we cry:
Have mercy on us!

For the facing of this hour,
Lord, to whom shall we go?
On Him we wait,
‘Cuz it sure seems like a lot longer than an hour today.

Nonsense of the Day

Since we're on the topic of poetry:

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
And the Monkeys all say Boo!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots Jibber Jabber Joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang!
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So it's Ning Nang Nong!
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning!
Trees go Ping!
The mice go Clang!
What a noisy place to belong,
Is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!

--Spike Mulligan

Now, there are doubtless those who will unjustly accuse me of posting this because it's stuck in my head and I want you to be stuck with it too. But give it a chance: read it aloud a few times, and see if you don't rather start to like it, especially when your two-year-old wanders about the house enthusiastically reciting his own version of it.

Hard-hitting lit? Um, not so much. But occasional silly poems and songs that feature a lively rhythm and foster a love of language? Hey, I'm cool with that. Keep those recommendations coming.

[Source: I came across this in a recent library snag, The Usborne Book of Poems for Young Children. (Book, moderately recommended: It's got some nice RL Stevenson and the like, but also some freaky ones like one about Queen Nefertiti's ghost haunting the town, which I personally find rather too frightening.)]

Toothpaste

A forgotten basin whispers
of primitive shenanigans:

Around the clogged center
blue globules nuzzle in
slick, primordial dance,
sparkles winking, as they
threaten to evolve.