Three Hymns - T. Crunk
2. Orphan Song
Look, mother. New souls are flashing in the river.
- Only a handful of minnows, the color of copper.
Look, mother. Petals of darkness, clenched at our waists.
- Only our shadows floating on the surface.
Look, father. The hand in the water, still beckoning.
- Only a leaf from the sweet gum Now another.
Listen. The sound of graves bursting.
- One by one, we are crossing into Beulah-land.
(from Living in the Resurrection)
Confession, #2
(a Tanka)
2.
Meet me here at dawn.
Bring your fastest pirogue, bait,
A long cane pole, string,
A cooler full of root beer,
the blood and an old shovel.
“The Two Trees” - by William Butler Yeats
BELOVED, gaze in thine own heart,
The holy tree is growing there;
From joy the holy branches start
And all the trembling flowers they bear.
The changing colours of its fruit
Have dowered the stars with merry light;
The surety of its hidden root
Has planted quiet in the night;
The shaking of its leafy head
Has given the waves their melody,
And made my lips and music wed,
Murmuring a wizard song for thee.
There the Loves a circle go,
The flaming circle of our days,
Gyring, spiring to and fro
In those great ignorant leafy ways;
Remembering all that shaken hair
And how the wingèd sandals dart,
Thine eyes grow full of tender care:
Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.
Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile,
Lift up before us when they pass,
Or only gaze a little while;
For there a fatal image grows
That the stormy night receives,
Roots half hidden under snows,
Broken boughs and blackened leaves.
For all things turn to barrenness
In the dim glass the demons hold,
The glass of outer weariness,
Made when God slept in times of old.
There, through the broken branches, go
The ravens of unresting thought;
Flying, crying, to and fro,
Cruel claw and hungry throat,
Or else they stand and sniff the wind,
And shake their ragged wings; alas!
Thy tender eyes grow all unkind:
Gaze no more in the bitter glass.
A Poem By Thomas Merton
O SWEET IRRATIONAL WORSHIP
Wind and the bobwhite
And the afternoon sun.
By ceasing to question the sun
I have become light,
Bird and wind.
My leaves sing.
I am earth, earth
All these lighted things
Grow from my heart.
A tall, spare pine
Stands like the initial of my first
Name when I had one.
When I had a spirit,
When I was on fire
When this vallley was
Made out of fresh air
You spoke my name
In naming Your silence:
O sweet, irrational worship!
I am earth, earth
My heart’s love
Bursts with hay and flowers.
I am a lake of blue air
In which my appointed place
Field and valley
Stand reflected.
I am earth, earth.
Out of my grass heart
Rises the bobwhite.
Out of my nameless weeds
His foolish worship.
