A Door Into the Dark

Not Waving, But Drowning

Not Waving but Drowning By Stevie Smith Nobody heard him, the dead man,    But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought    And not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he’s dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,    They said. Oh, no no no, it was too cold always    (Still the dead one lay moaning)    I was much too far out all my life    And not waving but drowning. Perhaps you are walking around this Christmas with a happy mask - but you are actually much to far out all your life, and not waving but drowning.  Then I have a piece of poetry for you.

As Though Some Heavy Stone Were Rolled Away

Readings and Thoughts on Poetry, Faith & The Imagination. ------------------------------- 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.

The Spirit under the Surfaces

Readings and Thoughts on Poetry, Faith & The Imagination.  ------------------------------- 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

No One Chose the Way

Readings and Thoughts on Poetry, Faith & The Imagination. ------------------------------- 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? ----------------- 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)

The Darkling Thrush

Readings and Thoughts on Poetry, Faith & The Imagination.  ------------------------------- The Darkling Thrush BY THOMAS HARDY [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/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.