God's Grandeur

This is an old favorite. I woke up this morning to an impressive sunrise and blue sky, and within an hour, the sky clouded over, and now I'm watching snow fall over the bay... Weather can be tricky in Bellingham.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Love of Morning

This was on my mind this morning. I hope you will forgive my overzealous enthusiasm for Levertov...


The Love of Morning

It is hard sometimes to drag ourselves
back to the love of morning
after we've lain in the dark crying out
O God, save us from the horror . . . .

God has saved the world one more day
even with its leaden burden of human evil;
we wake to birdsong.
And if sunlight's gossamer lifts in its net
the weight of all that is solid,
our hearts, too, are lifted,
swung like laughing infants;

but on gray mornings,
all incident - our own hunger,
the dear tasks of continuance,
the footsteps before us in the earth's
beloved dust, leading the way - all,
is hard to love again
for we resent a summons
that disregards our sloth, and this
calls us, calls us.

Celestial Stigmata

I was reading this poem while wandering around Henderson's (used bookshop), and that idea of "celestial stigmata" stuck with me. Just let that sink in for a while... What a phenomenal image...
PS I wanted to find a picture of the sculpture this poem is based on, but I was unsuccessful.
Fun fact: Philip McCracken is from Bellingham!

Southern Cross
(After a Sculpture by Philip McCracken)

A darkness rivered, swirled, meandered
by fathomless fiery currents.
Dense abyss of planes and angles,
pinned by unblinking constellations,
celestial stigmata.
And at the core,
bright blood of the wounded wood
(not cut, riven
by secret canker
now revealed)
tardily down the rough cleft
descends and beads.

- Denise Levertov

I too am untranslatable.

This is just a bit of Whitman's famous transcendental poem of epic proportions. From "Song of Myself", in Leaves of Grass. For full effect, I recommend reading it on the top of a mountain or the edge of the ocean.

51
The past and present wilt - I have fill'd them, emptied them,
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to talk with me?

Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

52
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

Oscar Wilde

Throughout this quarter, Oscar Wilde has become a very close friend. As most of you know, I'm taking a class on Oscar Wilde this quarter. I've read his plays, fairy tales, essays, poems, stories, etc. and this week, we reached the tragic part of his life. Wilde was in his forties when he was put on trial for "Acts of Gross Indecency". (Yes, you could go to prison for that in Victorian England) His biggest offense was his relationship with Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas. Bosie's father started the downward spiral when he famously left a card for Wilde, saying, "To Oscar Wilde, posing as a Somdomite" (Yes, he spelled it wrong). Oscar's entire life was scrutinized in his trials (there were three), as well as some of his writing. The trials were, of course, highly publicized, and quite dehumanizing. He ended up in prison for two years. After a year of hard labor and solitary confinement, Wilde was allowed pen and paper. He wrote a 90 page letter to Bosie, called De Profundis ("Out of the depths"), and it's heartbreaking and magnificent. This is just a small part of it that I loved:

"Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole."

Yes. Oscar Wilde.

PS I've decided to challenge myself during Lent to post a new poem every day. I couldn't think of anything to give up, so instead, I'm adding a few things. Poetry brings such a richness to life, so I'm committing to a new poem everyday. I hope you take time to read them - don't worry, I don't usually ramble on this much...

Holocene

I believe something needs to be said about the poetics of Bon Iver. His lyrics always seem so bizarre, and it may be quite pointless to try to decode them. And I don’t think that’s the point. The sonic resonance of these lyrics is utterly beautiful regardless of meaning. Then every once in a while, a line will stand out and attach itself to your soul. I’m referring in this case to “Holocene”, which is perhaps the most beautiful song I’ve heard in a long time:

“Someway, baby, it's part of me, apart from me.”

You're laying waste to Halloween

You fucked it friend, it's on it's head, it struck the street

You're in Milwaukee, off your feet

And at once I knew I was not magnificent

Strayed above the highway aisle

Jagged vacance, thick with ice

I could see for miles, miles, miles

3rd and Lake it burnt away, the hallway

Was where we learned to celebrate

Automatic bought the years you'd talk for me

That night you played me “Lip Parade”

Not the needle, nor the thread, the lost decree

Saying nothing, that's enough for me

And at once I knew I was not magnificent

Hulled far from the highway aisle

Jagged, vacance, thick with ice

I could see for miles, miles, miles

Christmas night, it clutched the light, the hallow bright

Above my brother, I and tangled spines

We smoked the screen to make it what it was to be

Now to know it in my memory:

And at once I knew I was not magnificent

High above the highway aisle

Jagged vacance, thick with ice

I could see for miles, miles, miles

Please just sit and let that resonate for a while. I doesn’t matter what it means, and in fact, it could simultaneously mean several different things. But sometimes all we need is a little bit of beauty in our lives. “And at once I knew I was not magnificent…”