OLD AGE

The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er;
So calm are we when passions are no more.
For then we know how vain it was to boast
Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal that emptiness which age descries.

The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,
Lets in new light through chinks that Time hath made:
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become
As they draw near to their eternal home.
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view
That stand upon the threshold of the new.



                                   Edmund Waller








...

a poem with no title by madeleine delbrel

It is at this point we ought to recall that
God has not created us for human loving
but for that eternal awesome love 
 with which he loves 
everything that he has created.

We should also accept this love 
not as a large-hearted magnificent partner
but as the idiot beneficiary of it that we are,
devoid both of charm and basic loyalty.

And in this adventure of Mercy
we are asked to give whatever we can
until we have nothing left. 

We are even asked to laugh
when the gift that we make is defective
whether because of failure, filth, or impurity.

But we are asked also to be full of wonder
with tears of thanksgiving and joy
before this inexhaustible treasure
 that flows into us from God’s heart.

It is at this intersection of laughter and joy
 that we find a peace beyond all confusion









...

like walking into self-awareness

               turned                                                                                            














A notch at
 the top of the mountain—                    


the eye
without a thought threads the sky through.                    


How hours take the stain of hours
and hold beneath their glare
these things arranged to resemble a season.                    


Summer’s hum and lag.                    
To walk into it—                    
breathe the frequencies that knot the air,


another animal
baffled to be an animal.






                                    William Massey
















....

nocturne

SURE ON THIS SHINING NIGHT

Sure on this shining night
Of star made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.
The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wand'ring far
alone
Of shadows on the stars.

                                                  James Agee

.....

spring may be possible

Clinging to the bell,
he dozes so peacefully,
this new butterfly








                             Buson
















,

just a thought along the road

LOTHROP,  MONTANA                                                          










The cottonwoods, the boy-trees,
Imberbe  — the clean, green, central bodies
Standing apart, freely, freely, but trammeled;
With the branches inter-resting — for support,
Never for caressing, except the wind blow.
And yet, leaning so fearfully into one another,
The leaves so pensile, so tremulous!y hung, as they lean
Unable to strain farther into one another
And be a part:
Held back where in the earth them secret roots
Wrap one about another, interstruggle and knot; the vital
Writhing in struggle; heavy, fibrous, underearthen life,
From which the sap mounts filling those trembling leaves
Of the boy-trees, the cottonwoods




                                                    Whittaker Chambers




















....

not just your average eucharist

      Mass at Dawn                                         




I dropped my sail and dried my dripping seines
Where the white quay is chequered by cool planes
In whose great branches, always out of sight,
The nightingales are singing day and night.
Though all was grey beneath the moon’s grey beam,
My boat in her new paint shone like a bride,
And silver in my baskets shone the bream:
My arms were tired and I was heavy-eyed,
But when with food and drink, at morning-light,
The children met me at the water-side,
Never was wine so red or bread so white.








                                            Roy Campbell






















...