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8/14/2019 Christianity; a contemporary view
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BETWEEN THE TIMES
What can we sing in the city, you or I,
where arrogant chimneys bruise the sky
and birches are black in the white rain?
Sing in the temples of priests
who conjure ghosts into juice, and prey to a Peter Pan God,
and preach his social concerns, and briskly shake our hands?
The creative is gone from here,
the priests intone like valves in the wind,
there is only estrangement from earth and the blood.
Or sing in the office,
martinis and memos for lunch,
and speak of creative machines, or soaps that redeem?
Sing of this, and stand on the rooftops of Harlem,
and feel the shuddering subways of greed,
and feel the thudding of pain
the mutter of mobs, the sobs of a child
that show the creative shut and abused.
No, we can only sing in the nights,
for all your gods are dismembered and dead,
our bones are estranged from mystery and power,
and deep in our blood, we ache for freedom of nights.
The city dons her diamonds of light,
the avenues flam with electric marquees,
and downward we enter the dark discotheque.
The air is throbbed with neons of song,
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the flesh is warm as Neanderthal fires
we sense our creative from drums and guitar,
and trust in this, and let our bodies go wild.
Then all night, the dark creative happens in us,
rippling and throbbing in dialogue dance,
signing a Christmas in bones and the blood
our veins remade, and crimsoned with light.
We sing our creative and dance it to drums,
and time dissolves; the night is riven with power: There,
we see a new city, its towers tall in the sun,
their every roof a garden of trees
where children play in the wide winds of the day.
The avenues flourish with laughter of men
who lunch with wine, and speak the service of man,
and lovers twine in the parks, unafraid
there is no fear, nor blindness of gin,
for men at last had left Peter Pan,
and owned his blood, and sag as it shined.
Then, he created machines for serving his kin,
and built the city of man, and loves the Creator as lord.
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WHEN WE WERE NEW
FOR A NEW LOVE
MY APRIL GIRL
I love the sweetness of your sweat
a hairlines breath beneath you curls
and kiss the tenderness of need,
then downward to the gentle [softer] hollow
to taste your sweet tween girlish breasts
and I grow dizzy, for now in loving
the all of you by special partsand tingle brain to toes until
I plunge, so gathering to explode.
for now
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THE END OF THE WORLD
Quite suddenly, unexpected by all
But a few, as Mr. and Mrs. were watching
The television huckster sell beer and child
Was crying over his heaped fragments of toys,
While massed brains behind glass panes
Were developing the latest deodorant and
The typist was writing the last letter in a rush
Order for plaster, quite suddenly then
God blew the whistle on it all.
Blast on blast of light surprised the eyes,
And there, there where cold suns had spun,
The shepherding Christ walked down
The flaming skies; the living and dead
Were one, with lifted faces that started
Amazed by the white silence of His light.
published in The Christian Century, November 13, 1957
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SPEAKING JESUSWISE
If Christ should come today, we would
Not crucify, not curse or praise
Nor stand aghast. We would instead
Shave him clean and go to Brooks,
Fit him with a hat from Knox,
Buy him shirts by Hathaway,
Equip him with best advice
And script, then put him on TV
Hed find a sponsor soon, and after
Tea he might provoke a sigh;
Indeed, why should we crucify?
published in The Christian Century, May 2, 1958
composed in early 1957
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FROM MARS HILL
ATHENS: APRIL, 1959
Grass, and a white wind singing
Of blue Aegean mermaids. The gods
Mutter still in colonnades
And old Achilles storm to war
I near believe in ghosts today.
Zeus in the thin thunder, and VenusStrewing broken flowers. She models
For trinkets two epochs after Paul
Preached until their ears fell off
And loosed the running fire of God.
Now peddlers trade in ruins, and grass
Attest the ever-greening will
That split the galaxy and makes
The dust of gods to praise Him still.
Published in Christian Century, January 24, 1962
Published in His Magazine, April 1963
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SUMMER BURNED OUT
Summer burned out in a blaze of surf
Children ran on the castled sand
The season splits on a trembling leaf
A brown wind scurries in the browning land
And gulls
Walk the white air of the littoral
Seeking debris of my summer self
With yellow beaks pleading a carrion song.
They slide upwind in soaring stealth
While I
Wingless, chill to seawater rising
In veins. I fold my picnicking basket,
Bury the papers of summer-swift day.
The birds verge into scarlet sundown
And the long
Roar of waves is scouring sand.
Winter-bent, I seek the cloistering town,
Picking for firewood in leaf-fall shadow.
A brown wind stings this browning land.
published in Mutiny Press, fall-winter issue, 1961-62
composed early September 1959 after a day at Jones Beach
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IN SUBURBIA
Go pot yourself in split-level peace
And pull petunias around your ears,
Go carve your deity like pie
And shed your dead in perfumed flowers;
But I
In land of bland exhaust shall heed
The bitter blowing out of bones.
Where women etherize for birth,
Prune the child, and chirping men
Lime the earth
Of redding leaf and greening bud,
Here I have lain awake to know
The groan of God in the black trees,
Divorced my car and shot a hole
In my TV.
Now prowling like a tramp for trash
I praise the Lord for busted eggs,
My bodys end. Quietly camped
I hunker by the pre-dawn coals
In dewfall damp
And share the joke of me with God,
This humpty-dumpty selfish served
By automatic milk. He
Has a fine eye for the absurd,
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The Easter lily
Blooming from a bilious bulb,
And laughs me into warmth. We
Laugh deep; one does, you know. The rose
Fire of sunup spills on the hills;
I rise
To walk in wind of cobalt day.
No more afraid,
For snap of God has entered my toes,
Imbued my veins and ascended my brain
And speaks from my fingers a greener year.
Published in Mutiny, Summer, 1961
composed in Teaneck, NJ, winter 1960
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LOVE LETTER
O MY LOVE, what can I write?
Say
That night slides like a damp cat
That splits at corners in the streets of Cleveland
And elevators shut with steel precision
By rowed desks of my pink hotel?
I would
Scorn the mails and spin a bridge
To leap the airlines and quilted haylands
And span the winking island cities
Where autos wander in trickling neon
Id hang
The cables from the moon, and then
Swing lightly in the bedroom window,
See you curled with sleeptime book,
And kiss you til your hair lights up.
published in The Christian Century, March 14, 1962
composed in late May, 1960
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NORTHLAND SPRING
A river crack broke my repose,
And now I walk the stream at dawn
Where tested ice has split in floes
That slam relentlessly to sea.
My God, the iceit suddenly
Split in sleep, and salmon spawn
In madness, swimming free
Up white cascades where April calls
Until the strongest find the falls.
Beyond, I know, one cannot leap.
Here they must leave their young and all
Plunge gratefully downstream to die.
These waters sing but terrify,
And yet this northbound spring Ill keep
Like any river man, though I
Know it runs through deeper sleep.
published in The Literary Review, summer 1962, Poets Under Forty Number
composed about 1957
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A MOMENT OF WILD GEESE
I grope the path in woodland haze,
Seeking seaward, and pause in fright
A rustling, keener wing: I stare
As a higher rush compels my gaze
Aloft. The geese soar, bold as light
On instinct wings that ply the air
To greenest seas. O swift as time,
Like angels splitting clouds afar,
Can you direct my Bleeding climb,
or heed me in your pride of stars?
You blaze across the bare rods
Of tallest oaks, lean down the sky
Youre gone, trailing talk that leads
The wind, like chortling of the gods.
The path is clearer now, through I
Must walk in wintered woods, and bleed,
Beating through the brambled trees
Until I break to the green seas.
published in The Husk, October 1964
composed years before
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IN SEARCH OF THE BEAST
Go praise your April, June, your festal
Noon of high July, go lover
To maidens careless-warm, the natal
Impulse of the year; but I
Am loose beneath the winter sky
To track the beast that prints the cover
Of windy white where vultures cry,
Trees stand like lines in Dantes Hell
And growls from ruined bushes tell
That she of noon now rides a broom.
Oh, once I loved her only, and well
I know: I almost died of gout,
But rose to curse a prayer and shout
Old bones to dying year. The moon
Lit pilgrim paths for me, turned lout
Of cunning mind a ragged clothes
Who tracks the greedy beast that goes
Before like shifting shadowI heard
It double back across the snows
Beyond my reach, but strewing near
The shards of men. Yet I dont fear
For Ive survived somehow, absurd
As lily that toils nor spins. The year
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Will turn upon this hunt and bring
The final solstice of the spring.
For I shall find the beast that ravins
Man, shall track the fields and sing
Old hunting songs in icy caverns;
By god, Ill hunt the beast to lair
And face my own reflection there.
Published in The American Scholar, winter 1959-60
composed spring 1958
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SNOWFLAKES
A FLAKE declines from the blind wind
And jewels uniquely on my sleeve,
A galaxy a breath away
Matchlessly reflecting light.
The whitened night
Roars in the naked frieze of trees
Bemused, I find myself implied
In random flake that imitates
A wizard breathes in elements
And suddenly
Amazed to be, amazed to stride
Upright in storm and lift my arms
In praise I praise
The Lord, whose breath has fashioned me.
published in The Christian Century, April 20, 1960
composed in Teaneck, NJ, Late winter 1960
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KELP
LONG and umber, this plant was torn
By currents that scour the rippling seas
And flung flat on sun-burn reach,
As Cain was fished to judgment sands.
The mineral yields from leaf, and gray
Flesh of leaf dissolves near breakers
While sun dissects the stem, the torn
Roots. Each day uprooted bodies
Rid the waves to blaze beach
As though some deepest flow demands
To search each crannys worth. You may
Deny this beach and breast the breakers,
Beating moonward on the seas
They fold us in, and evermore
Surge implacably to shore.
published in The Christian Century, May 2, 1962
composed in late April, 1960
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EASTER COMES FOR WALTER MCTAVISH
I.
The ocean blossoms sprays of cloud,bunching black the city
with sparkling rain and thundered fires
shimmering my copper eyes.
Then can I find some dim hotel,
or prowl the bars for gin and girls?
The sky collapses; shifting rain
walks the streets like angels ghosting,gliding grayblow my windows in
Ill seal the doors! A screeching cat,
blown from cornice, is falling twenty floors.
My mind, riven, flicks from lightning,
and rain is prying crumbled walls.
Its fingers slide the broken stairs,
plunge
where I have seen the smirking devil
tune his saw across my nerves
and whistle soot between my glands.
Then I, cross-hatched upon a bed,
my spine a broken railroad
where locomotives shudderedI
put on a smile, faced the mirror,
and saw the smoke blow out my ears.
Now, the rain
sluices down the falling stairs.
The iron city flows; the straws
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of splayed umbrellas, shattered ladders
and tattered news are swirled and flung
in gutters striking down my mind,
pryingwhat are these living hands?
Ill call my analyst at tea,
or telephone to Daddy God!
But see
a childs fire struck, called hope,
which sirened once in magic rescues,
careen the flooded gutter, battered
with iron, rags, and bloated dogs.
The houses sag, their basements fold:
the tendril rain has pried the city
loose
the building shed their wire hair,
their steel is thinning in the rain,
etched by yellow leaves of lightning,
and twisting inward, collapseyield:
I tumble with the seaward street
where bridges, rails and towers crumbled,
and flail down in circling torrent
that twists us like a pythons tail;
and all is plunged in thunder tide.
II.
The girls play on misty sand,
the bells recede along the shore,
tolling, tolling ocean time,
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time that stretches past the stars
and roots in deeper sea, spinning
down
where flows of streets and tumble bones
drift in oyster beds, in seaward
trees that grope the empty rooms.
The window eyes are popping pearls,
the ruins sea-change in falling sea,
startled, like bracken water turned
to wine, rent with sinewed current
plunging:
the motion hardens into form
the tendril streets and spouting towers
the city hold the precipice
where life refracts to lives and days.
Heres Venus, blooming from a shell,
and Zeus unfolding from the leaves.
Then spinning-tail Siva spawns
the devil, who dons his spiney angel
wings of mortal hope. Resigned,
I fall
the tendril streets to deeper light.
The angel fish strip mortal flesh,
and mermaids come, with flowing hair,
to lave and polish clean my bones.
Then I am hollowed for the kill.
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III.
At city, center, the domed skull,
where lucid mind delaminates,
the man is formed upon the tree
the prism man, savior of gods,
hardening and refracting love
we meet, and do the ritual,
the spiking of his arms, which nails
mine:
Nail, shatter wings of hope.
Nail, shatter brain and sex.
Nail, shatter want for life.
Nail, shatter care for death,
and spiked with him upon the vine,
Im cancelled out of time, erased
and dying to the Center, being
z
e
r
o
The skull disintegrates to light.
The tides
drift sunward where the seas were born.
The stars diffuse
flicker
vanish
and I am zeroed into brilliance,
to unlighted light, source of all songs,
inscrutable One who opens the many,
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to everywhere Center, deepness of space
who fountains the stars as visible cells,
the always of being, deepness of time
who spirals the nebulae, veining the skies,
throbbing, chanting, all life and our days:
and nothinged, Im pulsed in the rockering heart
of the God.
riven with brilliance, opened and opened,
hammering, hammering,
borne on implacable rhythming rise,
created and budding from unpreaching vine,
my cells rekindled with unlighted light,
boned, nerved, limbed, skulled, fleshed,
hearted and hammering radiant blood,
fingers outspreading
1 2 3 4 5,
6 7 8 9 10,
timespaceworldlife,
Christ,
the dawnlight brims the rising city,
in towers thrust from tinkling seas,
boned with humming life, bird-flashing.
The houses ride the morning tide
and root beside the verdant streets.
The trees are greening in the wind.
I fling the window up, and hum
an ancient chanty of sun:
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chant with Zeus,
old Daddy sky
who helps the sun along.
Chant with Venus,
saucy girl
who strolls the lawn with suntan thighs.
Chant with mind remade of God,
hilled and veined with solid light.
published in Motive, April 1965
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MY HAUNTED HOME
What, you still alive? The most
Debonair, persistent ghost
That stalked a man. Scream, you sudden
Spirit that smiles across my den,
You old deceita father image
Tom from boyhood love and rage.
You mock my order with April song.
But dont presume upon those long
Hours of butts and dishpan gray
When cigarettes seemed gritty days
Gone stale. Then I cursed and called
Your name, and you, you scorched my walls,
Gaily shifted books around,
Made shutters split and doors fall down.
Now look, youve come in whispered sun
And down the dagger rain you run
Besides my arm in the black streets.
Tonight at work I swore to keep
Your chaos out, and here I find
My careful files smashed and lined
In startled joy, their new array
Absorb as Lazarus recalled to day.
So go before Im mad. You gently
Shake your flamed-like head at me
And please stay back! But glowing bright
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As sun you smile at my fright.
And come with brilliant gaze. I hear
The tramp of men from graves and clear
Fields marching to your song
Newborn or risen dead? They throng
Before my eyes, I grasp and turning
Cringe in awe as you come burning,
Burn my walls with splendid light
Until Im naked in your sight
And ask for Christsake please accept
And change my lethal madnessI kept
Presuming I had finished you
That day beneath the thunder blue
When jeering triumph, loss,
We splayed your body on the Cross.
Published in Motive, April 1963
(Composed 1959-60)
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TRAVELER AT CHRISTMAS
OVER chained bays and neon grid
Where highways ram to outer dark
A single star descants a birth
To earth of littered straw where donkeys
Kneel, breath streaming white in innyards,
And Christ is born behind the gas pumps
Outside a blue motel. The men
Alight from diesels to pay him homage,
And all is rolled into the quatrain:
Birth in blood and soon the road,
A grassing near Gethsemane,
And ever the tangled earth must yield
Life redeemed from bones. My map
Has gone insane, all roads to Podunk
Come spinning here from Bethlehem
And onward to Emmaus. The lid
Has slipped from sky, the spine of time
Is snapped; we move around a new
Dimensionknowing, as children know
The rapture of a carousel,
That Christ is here, the Christ is here.
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Published in The Christian Century, Dec 21, 1960
(Composed from Dec 1959 to Oct 1960)
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CHRISTMAS ENCAMPMENT
THE last leaves lie in the lash
Of firelight, and the blue wolves float
Lightfooted near our encampment. Now
The forage is bad, the wolves grow bold;
We watch each other in fear. Next week
Man begins to eat man. Christmas
Is here. We have prepared the cross.
What man can brave the hooded wolf,
Our hands can dare to tear our blindfolds
Off? The night contracts: a cry
Declares our God has breached to life,
His hands the size of hummingbirds.
The sunrise comes in fires of ice,
The lightfooted wolves depart to hunt
This newer prey. We break our camp,
Free to movestrange, how the wolves
Went to stalk the child. Strange,
The crossed clouds that loom in the east.
Published in The Christian Century, Dec 20, 1961
(composed Jan 1961)
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THE GNU
Oh gnu, drowsing in the zoo,
Who is mocking who? Now you
Seem antelope and lamb, with slow
Winking eyes that brown from deeps
Like pools that warm from primal springs
Content with sun and rain. Your face
Rests from appetites that reach
No further than your food. Our gaze
Flicks to yours and strays; we smile
And lip your name beneath the leaves
That fret the sun, between the hymns
And levering of soap and bombs
Which wont suffice, and shrug away
Before you question us the cost
Of wiser ways, oh blessed gnu,
With which we shut you in the zoo.
Published in Treasures of Parnassus: Best Poems of 1962
(composed autumn, 1961)
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LINES FOR GOOD FRIDAY
FIVE POEMS BY STANLEY ROWLAND
A Roman Soldier
Strange, this warming fire and wine
Wont dim the day. You know they chose
Barabbasthey understood him, see?
He simply stole and killed. But not
This fellow Jesus. He flamed their minds
With God and talk of grace, his healingSabbath dayshe had a gift.
Theyre queer, these Jews, to kill or die
For faith, yet bend beneath our lash,
Groaning like a pregnant beast
About to bear. Well, they give
Us Jesus Yes, Ill have more breadAnd wine. They jeered him for faking
King, and started stoning. We
Put a stop to that. These Jews should learn
Religions made for playits not
A killing thing. Or else its all.
He thought it that, and scorned his chance
With Pilate. Stubborn! It made me wince
To watch him stand, head high, then take
The cross. We made the hill of skulls
Before the storm, and nailed the three
To crosses. Dive the spikes, and I
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Slammed them through his hands. It isnt
Natural not to scream, though I
Saw his flinching palms spurt blood,
Neck wrenched and tendons jerking stiff
When we dropped the cross to socket.
Ye gods, Ive hung enough of them,
But never quite like this. I felt
Sickened with is blood, as if
I were nailed, and should have been.
I only did a soldiers duty!
This he seemed to know. There was
His blessing gaze, his sudden prayer
Yes, he prayed for me: My God,
Forgive the menthey dont know what
They are doing. I knew, or thought I did.
But now I cant be sure. Tonight
I doubt all gods and men. Who
Was he? I think he was the son
Of God, or else the greatest fool.
Caesars blood, we had a storm!
Here, bring another flagon.
Its not a night for sleep. I fear
My dreams. Ill wait the hours, for dawn.
Mary
My son, my son, O Jesus son,
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My loins were aching at your birth,
The road became all hills that day,
And only straw to make our bed,
Yet I did bless the Lord, my son.
You pressed to life with a glad cry
And suckled warmly at my breast,
Soft and firm as heavens voice
Speaking in the gardenthat sudden
Joy, unraveled into blood.
That night, there was a star, the skies
Sang with light; then kings came.
The Lord seemed good, you grew with Joseph,
Muscles rippling as you sawed
Or sanded yokes. The others speak
Your miracles, but I remember
Your coming in with tunic torn
From tumbling in the field. They say
You spoke more wisely than the prophets
Words! No words can stop your blood
Or touch the unknown heart of God,
O Jesus! At supper, I remember
You wiped the sawdust from your brow
With a lean forearm, and liked the tender
Lamb when years were good. All these
Are real things. The angel, kings,
And rabble crowds seem distant stones
That clatter down the hilly years,
My promised son, they slew you high
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In sight of Godyou called Him Father
And urged our love. How can I love
This God who pledged to show Himself
In you, but let our sneering mob
Hang and ravish you? The skies
Are spitting a cold rain. What hope
Can breed on such a night? Joseph
Tends a weary fire, my bones
Are cold as deatho Jesus, son.
Joseph
I cannot reach her, locked in grief
For him, her primal passion, joy.
Now thunder speaks across the hill
Where he is slainmessiah born?
God will judge, but I cannot.
He was a straight lad, and quick
To learn. Hed sand a roughened yoke
To sunlight softness, shapes its curves
To give a natural, easy fit
That made the burden light. He
Was singular with wood and tools
A chisel, sayseemed always new
To him, each task as fresh as dawn,
Through practiced past a fault. His face
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Would bend above his chisel cut
Along a beam, his eyes would fasten
To curling chips, his lips a breath
Apart. If wood and iron were live
Id swear he loved them. He made the finest
Yokesthe ox of Zechariah
Could pull all day without a bruise.
At ten he had a dignity
Of innocencehow shall I say?
He seemed to live outside himself,
In work, in larking fields, at temple.
We knew wed lose himdrawn, he seemed,
To learn the ways of God. Our people
Beckoned to his preaching. He
Refused their sword and hewed to love
Singular, as always. Years
Of festered hate at Roman bondage
Sprang at him, my son, and fell
Blooding him, and now the sky
Yells its rage in light and rain
At us. It is a night to keep
Close, and tell our grief to God.
Peter
O master, what can I know or prey?
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A cross and jeering shame have slashed
Your life and our deliverance.
Still we sweat in Roman yoke.
Our children breed in foreign ways,
And now were hunted men, just
When you had seemed like Moses, spoke
Of sacrifice in breaking bread
I felt an end had come, a new
Beginning. God would draw us out.
But then you grew quiet, and prayed
Among the trees as in grief.
When Judas brought the black police
You scorned my offered sword, and I
Denied you, turned, and fled aimless
Through the angry town, and wander
Now in rainy night. The footprints
Cross and blend in muddy streets
Grown still, the houses shuttered. You
Fulfilled Elijah and the prophets,
Healed and taught a straighter way,
Sowed Israel with hopethe seed
Pledged to Abraham, that all
Nations would be blessed in us,
And thousands strewed their palms and praise.
You bathed our feet and taught our hearts
To singyour yoke was our release.
I even saw you speak with God,
O glad redeemermy great, dead,
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Jesus. You said we couldnt follow,
Yet we shall end as you. O master,
You are Israel, and slain,
And I am lost in strange streets,
While every morn the brainless rooster
Will wakes the nos I gave you.
This sin, my master, I pray you could
Live to blot, and make me new.
Gabriel
Tonight
Man must fight the dark angel
Of death beside a moonless sea,
And all must yield to the blind
Do-nothing of impotent grief
In men:
Mary, wondered like a shot drove,
Flutters in the angry anguish of loss.
Joseph becomes like the dry wood
Of the cross, grieving son and wife,
Peter rattles like a riven reed,
Lost in silence after thunder,
Despairing grace and cursing roosters.
Each who saw his truth, as spring
Wakens to the warm sky,
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Must be plowed open to the core
To receive the seeds of greater truth.
The infidel must also break,
Cringing from the nailed lightning of grace,
And doubting the idols of a doomed age.
The death
Must be complete, the dark angel
Win and raven man, or else
The long, exultant shaft of God,
Like a golden shout breathed through time
To touch the still heart with birth,
And the roaring galaxy split with love
That yokes mankind to endless life,
Would seem a childs tale. So men,
Open the absolute splendor of God.
Published in Presbyterian Life, April 1, 1963
Composed Feb 1962
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STATE HOUSEENUGU, NIGERIA
The flag is limp, the sentry stilled
This heat could etherize your brains.
Yet gardened, glassed, pillared, the house
serenely stands astride the hill.
By lilies wide as bloody mouths
the lizards dinosaur their hunt,
and trick along the garden paths.
We watch, and smile, from shady tea.
Fires evaporate the grass,
redding up the thicket ridge
they burn the bush, they kill the rat,
the soldier says, and bugles taps.
The notes define the wooded valley,
and lights, like anchored fireflies,
ignite and stay. A timeless people
now build their roads and cook their meals
by State House time. Its window lights
are beaconing the sullen night
where once the dancers raged the moon.
Instead of drums, a muted gong
orders us to linen dinner.
A panther, carved in ebony,
holds Aristotle on the bookcase.
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We bow; the Governor pronounced grace.
Published in NEW, 1964
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BUT GOD, YOU LAUGH
at me your faithful man, who walks
the June cement with frying shoes,
a stinking cold with a garbage nose,
fallen arches, a smoky headache,
and tired to my splitting toes,
and you laugh? Yes, and louder,
as though Im looking for Godot
to rescue me because I merely
got drunk, overweight, and sickly tired
from never going to bed at nights.
And mamma Godot has never come.
So for Christ sake God, please laugh
good and loud so I can join.
published in The Christian Century, Sept 18, 1963
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PRAYER FOR ASH WEDNESDAY
Creating God,
guide me into keeping Lent
cleansed of bitter bones, free
of snickering by cocktail fires
with stale words and sticky hands.
I confess
Ive lied, have roistered with my pay,
and junked my thinking with TV,
til Im a noisy gong, a clunking cymbal.
So God,
send a leanness in my body
and warming toughness in my mind.
O hammer me with anvil grace,
and polish me for joyous use.
published in The Christian Century, Feb 12, 1964
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AT A GRAVE ON EASTER
Earth wayfares through the spangled void,
Drifts like stars and the strewn birds
That curve in the long throbs of instinct,
Turning to the lucid instant of God
He is
Transfixing dust and the fool rain
That rattles on my childs grave,
Age three and slain with cancer, He was
Projected like a star from me,
A quickened body swirled to flesh
And shred, like Jesus screaming sides.
Nor can the worlds gravel tears
Return his flesh or cancel life
He is gone
And women sorrow to the tomb
to find the linen thrown aside,
The stench of death replaced, the grave
Still like the held breath of God
He is gone
They stole his broken flesh, and only
The strange gardener walks the morning:
Mary, why are you weeping now?
Mary, whom seek you in a grave?
And lightning splits to her nerve ends
Yet he lives
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Mary ragtimes through the streets,
The bonnet ladies peer and fluster,
And even the fool fly can hear
Her cry that stones the firmament,
That rolls the dawn into a ball
And hurls it flaming down the wind
He is risen
At Emmaus breaking bread
And smashing through the doors of time,
He strides the nights and sandy days,
Born before the world congealed,
A quickened body swirled to blood
And killed for being flesh and God,
Slain into a new dimension
He is risen, and here
Walking in the dawn of cool rain.
The body lives in different forms;
If flesh can rise, then fleshless body
As time is cracked for newer time
And bursting suns must keep his pace:
I shall not judge the galaxy.
I go in peace. The child lives.
published in The Christian Century, March 29, 1961
reprinted frequently
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THE BROADWAY CHRIST
walks the rivering of lights,
mutely in the millioned night,
where neon people pillage life:
they nail him in streets and bars
with whiskied talk, with tinsel strife,
with jeering shows, with hired cars
the yellow flame of taxi wing
flys the drive of Central Park
(where lovers littler budding sighs)
and dumps the drinkers in a ring
of China, Harlem, Spain and Denmark
jiving joints that cries.
They subway home in stale cars
and taste the waste of burn-out days.
Their covered cries, unleashed, flare
their winged need against the bars
of thought, habit, pride, mazed
doubt: each trapped, unless he dares
confront who he has crucified:
then in his heart the Christ can rise.
published in Creative Art, December 1966
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OUR LOVING GOD
fails to dust our frequent loves
alive in us, he thrashes lives
that dance before the supple thighs
of Venus, dressing her with stars
(desert the skies and rush to nestle
in your eyes its magic) and stars
and stripes forever as bugles bustle
Uncle Zeus along the street
tootle-de-doo. Our passions heat
these loves to Jealous Gods: Venus
screams at us for mink chemises,
while bloated Zeus bestrides the cities,
drumming on our childrens brains.
We serve them till we split our bellies,
and call it fate and sniff the drains,
and stagger as our temples, reared
Like Babel, collapse to dust and tears.
Still, insists his love in lovers
his rhythms tambourine from deeper
realms of space and timewe sing
praise the Lord and pass the wine.
True lovers are the clowns of living;
they heal our tootle-de-wounds, or wind
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their arms around the comic girl;
for man was swirled too free, too filled of
God to laud a lesser love.
published in Creative Art, December 1966
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THE JET
is not as easy
as it looks from earth.
It soars up
too heavily, seems
to hesitate above the marsh,
then whispers into the clouds,
de-bump bump bump.
Im reminded of the devil
asking Christ to throw himself down,
He said no
absolutely;
the jet says no
as best it can:
Our safety is relative. We sip our tea,
riding on the engines wind,
and wink at death from the skys sea.
published in Creative Art, December 1966