stinging epiphany

The Part of the Bee’s Body Embedded in the Flesh                                                        

     The bee-boy, merops apiaster, on sultry thundery days
      filled his bosom between his coarse shirt and his skin
                    with bees—his every meal wild honey.
     He had no apprehension of their stings or didn’t mind
and gave himself—his palate, the soft tissues of his throat—
               what Rubens gave to the sun’s illumination
               stealing his fingers across a woman’s thigh
                  and Van Gogh’s brushwork heightened.
                Whatever it means, why not say it hurts—
             the mind’s raw, gold coiling whirled against
             air currents, want, beauty? I will say beauty.

                     carol frost

.

requiem

     AT EVERGREEN CEMETERY                                                                      

The still grey face and withered body:
without resistance winter enters in,
as if she were a stone or fallen tree,
her temperature the same as the landscape's —
How she would have complained about that,
the indignity of finally being without heat,
an insult from the particular god she believed in,
and worse than the fall that killed her —
Now a thought flies into the cemetery
from Vancouver, another from Edmonton,
- and fade in the January day like fireflies.
I suppose relatives are a little slower
getting the evening meal because of that —
perhaps late for next day's appointments,
the tight schedule of seconds overturned,
everything set a little back or ahead,
the junctures of time moving and still:
settling finally into a new pattern,
by which lovers, hurrying towards each other
on streetcorners, do not fail to meet —
Myself, having the sense of something going
on without my knowledge, changes taking place
that I should be concerned with,
sit motionless in the black car behind the hearse,
waiting to re-enter a different world.

                                    Al Purdy

.......

always in season

                                              






                                                         Passion          

I

Your voice speaks to my soul:
    Be not afraid of my golden garments, have no fear of
    the rays of my candles,
For they are all but veils of my love, they are all but as
    tender hands covering my secret.
I will draw them away, weeping soul, that you may see I am
     no stranger to you.
How should a mother not resemble her child?
All your sorrows are in me.
I am born out of suffering, I have bloomed out of five
     holy wounds.
I grew on the tree of humiliation, I found strength in the
     bitter wine of tears.
I am a white rose in a chalice full of blood.
I live on suffering, I am the strength out of suffering, I am
     glory out of suffering:
Come to my soul and find your home.

II

And your voice speaks:

     I know of your shuddering at joy, I know how you go

     pale before the hours that are clad in purple.

I know your terror before the beakers of fullness,

I know too how you tremble before the soul of the best

     beloved!

For your depths are wounded by gladness; it reaches down

     into you with cold hands,

It quenches all your desires like a great hesitation.

It sinks on your senses like stones of guilt.  It falls on your 

     soul like the reek of wilted herbs.

It wraps you in pain from head to foot, then you are

     sheltered from joy by joy-

Then all your grief becomes eternal.

III

And your voice speaks:

     I will read the secret of your sorrow, O tender one,

     timid one, kin to my soul, beloved:

It is I who weep in the depths of you!

I have fashioned you for a thousand years and longer, I 

     blessed all your fathers and mothers with the cross.

You have cost me griefs and wounds, among thorns have I

     released your hands from the world.

You have cost me solitude, you have cost me dark silence

     through many generations.

You have cost me goods and chattels, you have cost me the

     ground under my feet, you have cost me a whole

     world!

You have grown subtle, soul, you have become like a 

     silky flax that it has taken long to spin:

You have become like a thread, so fine that it no longer

     holds.

See, you float away lightly over the meadows of life, you

     float away over the flowering lands,

But not one of them can hold you, homeless one, wandering

     soul of my sorrow.

IV

And your voice speaks:

     I will sing a Gloria that shall fill the top of my towers

     with the clangour of their bells.

Praise the Lord all sorrow of the earth!

Let the impoverished praise Him, and those who are in exile,

     let the disappointed praise Him, and the disinherited,

     let Him be praised by all whom nothing satisfies.

Be he praised by the bright torment of the spirit, and by

     the dark torment of nature.

Be He praised by the holy torment of love.

Be He praised by the solitude of the soul and by the soul's 

     captivity.

Be He praised by the sorrow of sin and by the woe that

     all things perish,

Be He praised also by the bitter anguish of death.

See, I strip my altars of all adornment, all their fine linen

     must fade like the loveliness of flowering fields.

All the images on them must hide their faces.

I will take away my last consolation, I will remove the

     Lord's Body, that my soul may become deep night.

For the sorrow of the world has become blessed, because it

     has been loved.

Behold the wood of the Cross on which hung the

     Salvation of the world.

                                  Gertrud von Le Fort
                                           ( 1876 - 1971 )

odd and bloody sentiments

A DUBLIN BALLAD: 1916                                            








O WRITE it up above your hearth
And troll it out to sun and moon,

To all true Irishmen on earth
Arrest and death come late or soon.
Some boy-o whistled ninety-eight
One Sunday night in College Green,
And such a broth of love and hate
Was stirred ere Monday morn was late
As Dublin town had never seen.

And god-like forces shocked and shook
Through Irish hearts that lively day,
And hope it seemed no ill could brook.
Christ! for that liberty they took
There was the ancient deuce of pay!

The deuce in all his bravery,
His girth and gall grown no whit less,
He swarmed in from the fatal sea
With pomp of huge artillery
And brass and copper haughtiness.

He cracked up all the town with guns
That roared loud psalms to fire and death,
And houses hailed down granite tons
To smash our wounded underneath.

And when at last the golden bell
Of liberty was silenced — then
He learned to shoot extremely well
At unarmed Irish gentlemen!

Ah! where was Michael and gold Moll
And Seumas and my drowsy self?
Why did fate blot us from the scroll?
Why were we left upon the shelf,

Fooling with trifles in the dark
When the light struck us wild and hard?
Sure our hearts were as good a mark
For Tommies up before the lark
At rifle practice in the yard!

Well, the last fire is trodden down,
Our dead are rotting fast in lime,
We all can sneak back into town,
Stravague about as in old time,

And stare at gaps of grey and blue
Where Lower Mount Street used to be,
And where flies hum round muck we knew
As Abbey Street and Eden Quay.

And when the devil made us wise
Each in his own peculiar hell,
With desert hearts and drunken eyes
We're free to sentimentalize
By corners where the martyrs fell




                          Dermot O'Byrne


                            aka:  Arnold Bax






















.....

there are those

There are those who would deal

   in the darkness of life;

There are those who would tear down the sun.

And though most men are ruthless,

Some will still weep
When the gifts we were given are gone.






                                   David Mallett














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