Poetry

He Giveth His Beloved Sleep

The long day passes with its load of sorrow:
In slumber deep
I lay me down to rest until tomorrow —
Thank God for sleep.
Thank God for all respite from weary toiling,
From cares that creep
Across our lives like evil shadows, spoiling
God’s kindly sleep.

We plough and sow, and, as the hours grow later,
We strive to reap,
And build our barns, and hope to build them greater
Before we sleep.

We toil and strain and strive with one another
In hopes to heap
Some greater share of profit than our brother
Before we sleep.

What will it profit that with tears or laughter
Our watch we keep?
Beyond it all there lies the Great Hereafter!
Thank God for sleep!

For, at the last, beseeching Christ to save us
We turn with deep
Heartfelt thanksgiving unto God, who gave us
The Gift of Sleep.

A B Banjo Paterson, ‘He Giveth His Beloved Sleep’, 1902

A Bush Christening

 

On the outer Barcoo where the churches are few,
And men of religion are scanty,
On a road never cross’d ‘cept by folk that are lost,
One Michael Magee had a shanty.
Now this Mike was the dad of a ten year old lad,
Plump, healthy, and stoutly conditioned;
He was strong as the best, but poor Mike had no rest
For the youngster had never been christened.

And his wife used to cry, `If the darlin’ should die
Saint Peter would not recognise him.’
But by luck he survived till a preacher arrived,
Who agreed straightaway to baptise him.

Now the artful young rogue, while they held their collogue,
With his ear to the keyhole was listenin’,
And he muttered in fright, while his features turned white,
`What the divil and all is this christenin’?’

He was none of your dolts, he had seen them brand colts,
And it seemed to his small understanding,
If the man in the frock made him one of the flock,
It must mean something very like branding.

So away with a rush he set off for the bush,
While the tears in his eyelids they glistened —
`’Tis outrageous,’ says he, `to brand youngsters like me,
I’ll be dashed if I’ll stop to be christened!’

Like a young native dog he ran into a log,
And his father with language uncivil,
Never heeding the `praste’ cried aloud in his haste,
`Come out and be christened, you divil!’

But he lay there as snug as a bug in a rug,
And his parents in vain might reprove him,
Till his reverence spoke (he was fond of a joke)
`I’ve a notion,’ says he, `that’ll move him.’

`Poke a stick up the log, give the spalpeen a prog;
Poke him aisy — don’t hurt him or maim him,
‘Tis not long that he’ll stand, I’ve the water at hand,
As he rushes out this end I’ll name him.

`Here he comes, and for shame! ye’ve forgotten the name —
Is it Patsy or Michael or Dinnis?’
Here the youngster ran out, and the priest gave a shout —
`Take your chance, anyhow, wid `Maginnis’!’

As the howling young cub ran away to the scrub
Where he knew that pursuit would be risky,
The priest, as he fled, flung a flask at his head
That was labelled `MAGINNIS’S WHISKY’!

And Maginnis Magee has been made a J.P.,
And the one thing he hates more than sin is
To be asked by the folk, who have heard of the joke,
How he came to be christened `Maginnis’!

 

(A B Banjo Paterson, ‘A Bush Christening’, 1893)

Rembrandt: David and Uriah

Uriah has risen from the table
At which they have been talking.
He is beginning to walk away.

His right hand is laid across his breast
The way a Diva might take a bow.
Or the President salute the flag
His left hand clasps his belt,
A soldier’s grip.

Like everything else in Rembrandt
It is the moving moment he conveys,
The motif of motion: happening action.
And this, the moment, is fissile.

‘I was this morning early at your door
While sleep still held you unawares…’

But now he knows his heart
Has been inundated, his dreams
Are couriers to nightmare.

The moment is turning hard,
And the moment slowly
Astonishes his heart,
Slowly, inexorably, as coral.

David Broadbridge (HT: The Liberal)

Flowering Eucalypt in Autumn

That slim creek out of the sky
the dried-blood western gum tree
is all stir in its high reaches:

its strung haze-blue foliage is dancing
points down in breezy mobs, swapping
pace and place in an all-over sway

retarded en masse by crimson blossom.
Bees still at work up there tack
around their exploded furry likeness

and the lawn underneath’s a napped rug
of eyelash drift, of blooms flared
like a sneeze in a redhaired nostril,

minute urns, pinch-sized rockets
knocked down by winds, by night-creaking
fig-squirting bats, or the daily

parrot gang with green pocketknife wings.
Bristling food tough delicate
raucous life, each flower comes

as a spray in its own turned vase,
a taut starbust, honeyed model
of the tree’s fragrance crisping in your head.

When the japanese plum tree
was shedding in spring, we speculated
there among the drizzling petals

what kind of exquisitely precious
artistic bloom might be gendered
in a pure ethereal compost

of petals potted as they fell.
From unpetalled gun-debris
we know what is grown continually,

a tower of fabulous swish tatters,
a map hoisted upright, a crusted
riverbed with up-country show towns.

Les Murray, ‘Flowering Eucalypt in Autumn’, in The People’s Otherworld (Sydney: Angus & Robertson), 1983.

Sometimes parenting is like raking leaves

Sometimes parenting is like raking leaves.

Sometimes the forces are with you;

Sometimes the forces are against you;

Sometimes the forces seem neutral.

Sometimes parenting is like raking leaves.

Sometimes living at home with the parents is like raking leaves.

Sometimes the forces are with you;

Sometimes the forces are against you;

Sometimes the forces seem neutral.

Sometimes living at home with the parents is like raking leaves.

Sometimes life is like raking leaves …

≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈

28 July 2007. This poem was inspired by an episode this morning with my 15-month old daughter. I was trying to move the plastic fruit from the big basket into the small tub. She was trying to move the plastic fruit from the small tub into the big basket. Sometimes life is like raking leaves …

‘East Coker’, Part IV – T. S. Eliot

I’ve been thinking (and writing) of late about Forsyth’s contention concerning the ongoing judgement of the cross in history – a judgement borne out of the very tetelestai of this supreme act of God’s grace and which finds ongoing reverberation in the human experience. Thus I was excited when I came across this poem by T. S. Eliot from his Four Quartets from the East Coker series. It just had to be blogged.

The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer’s art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam’s curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

One Kneeling, One Looking Down

Part of my meditation on this Good Friday has been focused around a poem by Australian poet Les Murray. The poem, One Kneeling, One Looking Down, was inspired by an aboriginal legend in which a man was killed, and then raised from the dead by his two wives. In order for this ‘resurrection’ to happen, both wives had to agree on it. Murray’s poem depicts a moment of engagement between the two wives: the older wife wanting to have her husband back and the younger one resisting. Apart from the obvious echoes of the Easter narrative (not least the two women, the many impossibilities, freedom through death, etc), Murray’s piece also invites the reader to experience something of the fear and hope, sense of betrayal and renewed possibilities, that the Easter narrative explores. Of course, one does not want to push the echoes too far. Part of my meditation today was on ‘seeing’, even re-writing, the poem’s episodes as a Trinitarian event in the life of God. In this, we not only have one kneeling (in faithful obedience) and one looking down (in pained delight), but also one holding him up in that kneeling posture. But again, one does not want to push the echoes too far …

Anyway, here’s the poem:

ONE KNEELING. ONE LOOKING DOWN

Half-buried timbers chained in corduroy
lead out into the sand
which bare feet wincing Crutch and Crotch
spurn for the summer surf’s embroidery
and insects stay up on the land.

A storm engrossing half the sky
in broccoli and seething drab
and standing on one foot over the country
burrs like a lit torch. Lightning
turns air to elixir at every grab

but the ocean sky is troubled blue
everywhere. Its storm rolls below:
sand clouds raining on sacred country
drowned a hundred lifetimes under sea.
In the ruins of a hill, channels flow,

and people, like a scant palisade
driven in the surf, jump or sway
or drag its white netting to the tide line
where a big man lies with his limbs splayed,
fingers and toes and a forehead-shine

as if he’d fallen off the flag.
Only two women seem aware of him.
One says But this frees us. I’d be a fool –
Say it with me, says the other. For him to revive
we must both say it. Say Be alive. –

But it was our own friends who got
him with a brave shot, a clever shot. –
Those are our equals: we scorn them
for being no more than ourselves.
Say it with me. Say Be alive. –

Elder sister, it is impossible. –
Life was once impossible. And flight. And speech.
It was impossible to visit the moon.
The impossible’s our summoning dimension.
Say it with me. Say Be alive again. –

The young wavers. She won’t leave
nor stop being furious. The sea’s vast
catchment of light sends ashore a roughcast
that melts off every swimmer who can stand.
Glaring through slits, the storm moves inland.

The younger sister, wavering, shouts Stay dead!
She knows how impossibility
is the only door that opens.
She pities his fall, leg under one knee
but her power is his death, and can’t be dignified.

From Les Murray, New Collected Poems (Manchester: Carcanet, 2003), 450-1.

Wrath Averted

Cascades of wrath descend on me.
Have done so all my life.
In the midst of life there was death—
Your hot breath upon me.
In the midst of my sin and guilt,
The fire of your love was my torture:
Cascades of wrath always upon me.

Now I cannot escape you,
Your eyes fixed upon me,
Warning of love that is a deeper torture
Than angry hate. Such hate you have not.
Your love is wrathful at my evil
And I cannot say you, ‘Nay!’
Nor raise a protest for my own protection.

If your wrath ceases then I am done.
I am a worm shrivelled, a creature burdened,
With no future love. I am lost
In the futility of your rejection,
Your refusal to honour me
With the fire of your wrath,
The cascades of burning zeal
That must tell me eternally
That you love this soul of mine.

How, Lord shall I escape?
How shall I emerge from the torment
Of your ceaseless love? How shall I regain
The pristine purity of spirit
In which you once created me?
Your wrath—my guilt—I surely know,
But how shall I escape, escape, escape?

Here in my Cross you must come—
Here when the crowd mocks maniacally
And calls this the judgment of my Father
To strike in fury at my mind and heart—
You must come and hide within me.
Be crucified with me, be one with me
For I have myself wholly to be
One with you. Hide in me
For the wrath is now cascading
Out of His heart of love.
All guilt and pain, all sorrow, heaviness,
Confusion of spirit, and foulness of pollution–
These are His wrath you feel.
Contempt and broken pride, sheer loneliness
That knows no loving friend—
These are the things of wrath
That burn within your conscience.

Ah, strong cascades that empty from
The Eternal Bosom, fall upon
The Son He loves, the beloved Son.
He bears that wrath since he is one with me
And all my dread and sorrow cease
In the wrath of love that bears on him
In place of me. Ah, blessed love
Of Father and of Son that shelter me
From wrath that’s truly mine,
The wrath I should endure.

Who can endure such wrath, O Man?
Be still whilst I endure.
See all your sins, your guilts and shames
Dissolve in my love, that love that bears for you
Its holy due. Cascades of human blood
Or blood of beasts cannot erase the shame
Of all the human race. There is no power
But this the holy love that hides you full
Whilst wrath’s full fires expend themselves
Upon my holy Self. Crucified you are with me
And risen in peerless purity
For all eternity. That’s love!

(Geoffrey Bingham)

Hounds, lions and casuistry

It’s been a day of gathering loose ends. I completed a draft of a short paper on Forsyth and Ibsen that I will read at the FEET conference in August. I have been transferring various scribbles made on scrap paper kept next to my pillow into a more user-friendly form. I have been reading Thielicke’s The Freedom of a Christian Man. His chapter on casuistry is great. Thielicke notes that one of the reasons for Protestantism’s emphatic rejection of casuistry is because of the evangelical doctrine of justification and its polemic against the law, or, more specifically, its anti-legalistic understanding of righteousness. The same ought to be said for Protestantism’s rejection of perfectionism. Certainly Forsyth was keen to divorce perfection from any idea of law keeping. Standing well within the Reformation tradition, Forsyth’s thinking here was in line with Romans 3:28, ‘For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law’.

What I haven’t done is tidy up a very messy desk … though that seems more like a Friday job anyway.

I’ve also been reflecting over recent days on the poem ‘Hound of Heaven’ by Francis Thompson (1859-1907), who was familiar to Forsyth. Indeed, Forsyth picked up the phrase in the title as one of his descriptions of grace. It reminds me of Vincent Donavan’s rich image of God as a lion who hunts us down, used in Christianity Rediscovered – one of my favourite books. For those unfamiliar with Thompson’s poem, you can read it all here. Here’s a bit as a taster though:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat — and a voice beat
More instant than the Feet —
“All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”

Finally come the poets

Burmese students from Pegu College in lower central Burma who had been arrested and detained by authorities for writing and distributing a poem titled Daung Man (The Might of the Fighting Peacock), were released this week (10 April). How and why nobody knows. Hnin Wint Wint Soe, May Su Su Win, Ne Linn Kyaw, (Kyaw) Thet Oo, Win Min Htut, (M)aung (M)aung Oo, and Zeya Aung – were arrested on 29 March. Zeya Aung, son of U Aung, the proprietor of King Star teashop in Pegu, was detained in the border town Myawaddy in eastern Burma on 29 March with copies of Daung Man poem. Aung Aung Oo, proprietor of A2O Desktop Publishing Business in Pegu was also arrested for printing the poem. The important thing though is that this 2,500 year old civilisation continues to pack in the toursists who come in their plane load to see that promised rich and vibrant cultural heritage, great natural beauty, magnificent temples and of course, the welcoming and hospitable people. Did I mentioned that these welcoming and hospitable people live in fear. If only there was oil in Burma. If only the poets poeted … If only …

In his engaging book, Finally Comes the Poet, Walter Brueggemann, writes:

“The cry of the helpless, if they have a voice, will mobilize God to act …It is the same in the presence of Jesus. Bartimaeus, the blind man daringly initiates interaction with Jesus. He cries out saying, ‘Son of David, have mercy’ (Mark 10:47). Remarkably, the people around him try to silence him, to drive him back to his muteness (verse 48). In an act of urgent hope, however, the beggar cries out all the more. Jesus hears. Jesus heals and concludes, ‘Your faith has made you well’ (verse 52). A capacity to cry out the pain has caused health to come. The pain of the world, embodied in the largely silent congregation of ancient Israel and in the silence of this blind beggar, is the stuff out of which new life comes. Newness, however, requires faith in order to speak the pain. Out of voiced pain, Bartimaeus is permitted a new life. ‘Immediately he received his sight and followed him on the way’ (verse 54). Had he not cried out in pain, he never would have come to a new life of discipleship.”

May those who have eyes to hear, hear. And those with ears to see, see. And may those who dare to write, write.

Conscience – a poem by Grant Thorpe

Ah conscience tutored in the ways of
Rightness
Practised in the ways of
Rectitude
Raging still until each aberration
Is made good
And raging too until
Each thought is
Pure and steady

Ah conscience never satisfied
Working on until
The flesh is limp and
Mind exhausted
Urging on to kingdoms that will
Compensate and camouflage
The lack that still remains

Ah conscience
Meet your Master
Even God
Not with face all stern
And whip in hand
But in the face of Christ
Sin bearer

See there the
Thefts, adulteries and murders
And many lesser crimes
All lovingly embraced and borne
Before the Father’s holy love
Not one wild deed
Omitted
All atoned, all washed
Not one thing left to lurk or spoil
The reconciliation

Conscience
Meet your Maker
Who decreed that love
His love
Be motive all alone
Enough
To move the race to duty
And to zeal.

Make me acknowledge only
My great need of
Love
Exposure to the very heart of God
Pulsating with affections
Great and tender
Tell me when I err
In this respect alone

Do not
Stir up to
Greater deeds to
Compensate, annul or
Catch up with the past
It is against my God
I sin
‘Gainst him alone
And sin against
His loving me
And ‘tis to move against his love
To look for other
Things to change

Ah crime of deepest import
Ah deed of greatest shame
To have thought his love austere
His pleasure hard to gain
And to have turned
To idols
Enamoured so with idols
That his love laid
Unreceived

Tell me of this
Alert me at first sign
And turn your vigilance to
Any wandering from grace

Ah conscience
Be you tutored by the cross
Of Christ
Do not presume to have
A charter outside this
Call sin what God calls sin
That sin to death
Which spurns his grace

Alert me then alone
To seek outpourings of
That love—none else
What business do I have
With deeds which merely satisfy
Convention
Or my longing for
Relationships—patched up and thin
With no true love?
Require of me alone that
I ask, receive, be thankful for, and give
His love.

© Grant Thorpe, July 1991, August 2002

For P. T. Forsyth 1848–1921

Eternal God, supreme in holiness,
whom all our self-made goodness must betray:
from your great majesty
pour out your light, expose our emptiness
and by your judgement, snatching pride away,
give us humility.

What but your holy love’s stupendous grace,
Which knew the outcome, could have left us free,
in disobedience,
to break away, to turn from your embrace,
and choose the shackles of sin’s slavery,
the death of innocence?

Your holy love condemns us all, it slays
the self-claimed virtue that insults your name,
the worthless pride we wear;
your holy love alone has power to raise
our self-inflicted souls from death and shame,
to save us from despair.

Christ, lifted on the Cross for us, you died
to bear the judgement of love’s holiness;
there, having heard Love’s call.
you offered up, in being crucified,
Love’s sacrifice of true obedience,
That would redeem us all.

The unspoiled bliss of Eden could not lift
the heart so high as these dead souls you raise,
nor could we ever grow
to reach the holiness we have as gift,
in which we share a depth of joy and praise
that angels never know.

– Alan Gaunt, May 1997

The Killing Tree

Arms bare
bloodied sap,
stripped of all pretense,
simplicity giving way to strange beauty.
Alone, yet koinoniaed
Violence, yet concord
No form to desire this ugly tree
yet satisfied
the satisfaction of misplacement.
Its white crooked limbs stretch laboriously upward,
Longing …

A germ so long ago planted
out of season, yet for a time.
Once being about a business
Now being about a business … aching
forlorn and isolated,
rootedness in desiccated ground … and waiting …
Will it spring again?

© Jason Goroncy, 3 March 2006. (NB. The first stanza of this poem is a reworked version of an awesome piece at http://trinitarianlife.blogspot.com/).