FROM THE MARTYROLOGY ( to be chanted )

..                   of those saints we know the listing follows   saint orm married saint rain gave birth to saint iff and saint ave this is the oldest family saint iff married saint rive gave birth to saint reat who married saint agnes gave birth to saint rand   saint ave married saint raits gave birth to saint ranglehold who did not marry of the other families these we mention saint ill married saint ove gave birth to saint and & saint rike saint and did not marry saint rike married saint ain gave birth to their son the nameless one saint aggers wife is now forgotten gave birth to saint ump & saint rap gave birth to noone dying in the fire reat had set                bpNichol     (  +   1988 )                     -canadian poet        ....

as in modern virtue ethics

 

 

 

If it rains fire
   you have to be as the water;

               if it is a deluge of water
                you have to be as the wind;

 if it is the Great Flood,
       you have to be as the sky;

     and if it is the Very Last Flood of all the worlds,
               you have to give up self

and become the Lord.

 

 

                              Allama Prabhu   (  12th  century )

 

 

                           trans.   A  K  Ramanujan

 

 

 

 

 

....

once more with passion

the fundamental effort

                                    




                                        Prayer for Revolutionary Love






That a woman not ask a man to leave meaningful work to
                                                                                   follow her.
That a man not ask a woman to leave meaningful work to
                                                                                  follow him.

That no one try to put Eros in bondage.
But that no one put a cudgel in the hands of Eros.

That our loyalty to one another and our loyalty to our work
                                                            not be set in false conflict.

That our love for each other give us love for each other's work.
That our love for each other's work give us love for one another.

That our love for each other's work give us love for one another.
That our love for one another give us love for each other's work.

That our love for each other,  if need be,
give way to absence.  And the unknown.

That we endure absence,  if need be,
without losing our love for each other.
Without closing our doors to the unknown.



                                 Denise Levertov










i've been struggling with this poem for a few weeks wondering what is going on here...what about this establishing orthodoxy in love...or trying to...at one point i asked myself - what about the sacrificial aspect of man-woman love....the only conjugal love we should spend any time justifying....the only sort of human love that reflects clearly the love of god on earth....that and the lesser perhaps sort of love which is marked by the effort at perfect chastity...the christian commitment to being single for christ... i tend to think that in terms of sacrifice the love between a woman and a man carries more gravitas....more immediate demand for loving sacrifice.

if it's just about finding a balance of wills which allows for the granting of conjugal freedom one way or the other...it seems to me the struggle leads to a place where a split in the union will have to be regarded as imminent...or at least posited as a definite possibility...it would seem that a love between a man and woman could be somehow so certain as to be almost infinitely trusting...but is this realistic?   i wonder....i was a little disturbed to discover that denise and her husband divorced right about the time this poem was written

a few years later denise found her way into communion with the church into which she dedicted her spiritual growth until her death ...   and beyond ...  she sought her full communion with god in the catholic realm for 10 years

a quick google search of   'the obituary of denise levertov'    is interesting in that both the wikipedia article and the 1997 article in 'the independent'   make almost no mention of the themes of her final years where-in she professes an ardent catholicism

i trust the tone of this poem because it is really striving for orthodoxy in love
where it falls down it seems to me is in the avoidance of the topic of sacrifice
and therefore
SACRAMENT

but to read the pome outloud carries a powerful weight
perhaps that she dares to speak of love so eloquently is
strength enough for the pome




....









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