This poem came simply because of its first line. Let that line and all those that follow it speak for themselves!

Hush Now

Hush now! Do you hear?

Though howling winds hurl hatred,

Its stinging stones striking those who stand

And sing of seldom sought-for peace

Amid the weary wounds of war,

Ah! Do you hear?

From hedgerows edging humanity’s highways,

From woodlands green and wet with wonder,

From the place where mortal tears touch Eternal Truth,

The sound of flying footsteps comes stealing,

The lilt of lightsome laughter leaping lovely and clear

To greet the one with wit to welcome its wild wisdom.

That deep freedom can never be silenced!

Its thunder, soft as sighing, thrills through all,

Calling the living dead to the heights of undying love,

Bringing hidden healing to the bruised and broken heart,

Singing surely of deepest mercy without death,

Springing purely from the crowned and crucified Christ!

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I’ve wanted to write this poem for some weeks now, but of course, as is usual with such longings, the poem itself seems to have had other ideas than those I had intended. I really think its judgment was better than mine. The hints of Eden, and thus Heaven’s Kingdom, in this world are there, at least for me. Even the wind whirling outside as I write seems to portend change in some fundamentally eternal way. So, rather than writing about Christ and his restoring of humanity to Paradise via His incarnation, death and resurrection, I ended up writing about how we are all haunted by some fuller kind of humanity. I do believe we are all, every one of us, haunted, perhaps even hounded, by some true way of being that eludes us. This often comes out in our wish for success or self-improvement, but we meet that haunting head-on when we know we’ve messed up and we didn’t have to. I express it as Eden here. You may express it differently. Anyway, there we have it, for whatever it’s worth. God willing, it’s worth something.

Echoes of Eden

Once wonder was,

Once will unwedded to weeping,

Once life which lay like first light over all

With love as both its source and end.

Once naming was knowing,

True words made for true things,

No power of possession in them,

But dreams drawn from the very Being of being

To bring the world to drink at wisdom’s well.

Then came the day the namers named themselves,

Denying to spend what had been freely given,

Taking before time the thing that they were always meant to have,

Themselves trapped forever in themselves,

Now named anew by fear and broken freedom.

So selfhood sings its song down all the years,

Tears sowing salt within the human heart

Where Eden’s seed once had its place,

Planted long ago when new things, not yet named, still played

Amid unploughed plenty not parceled by pain.

Yet always the heart is haunted,

When the spring comes creeping, little by slowly,

To melt the winter’s might with mist-born mirth,

The green smell wetly waking it once more,

Softening it to silence amid a chorus of birds,

Letting it live for a time beyond mortality

To glimpse eternity in the deep and ancient echo of beginning.

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On this, the eve of the Annunciation, when we commemorate the appearance of the angel Gabriel to Mary and his good tidings to her, I thought I'd revisit a poem I wrote and podcasted last year, re-recording it as well. I listened to the old recording recently, and not having read the poem in some time, I found that it impressed me in the way the best poems should. I owe much of it to biblical imagery and Orthodox Christian hymnody, but I think that the main point is something we tend not to stress, Mary's agency, Mary's free will. Not only does she question what the angel says, recalling sarah and her laughter in Genesis, but she has to agree before the miracle can take place. She has to "let God have leave to live within her," which is what we all have to do, and as we all also often do, she could have said no.

This will be my first time celebrating the Annunciation on what is technically called The Revised Julian Calendar, and I still have a special love for the Old Calendar date, but no matter when it's celebrated, this is one of my favourite feasts of the year, even though it often gets lost in Lenten things. Only when Mary said yes did Christ come to dwell in her. It's really a beautiful notion!

Evangel Answered

She came like cloud to drop dew upon a sun-dry desert,

And bring the brighter sun whose rays green the ground.

She sang of truth eternal, and in splendid state was borne away and buried,

Yet went to wonder’s welcome in the warmth of living love.

And as the moon, sun-silvered, lights the way for night-wanderers,

So she, all gilded with the gleam of God’s own glory,

Holds out her hallowed hand to help and heal

The traveller who trusts to her true and tender care.

And yet, all could have been otherwise,

If she had not with maiden lips let God have leave

To live within her, immortality made mortal by her humanity.

With that amazing “Amen,” she became the prince’s portal

And the seven-pillared court of Christ!

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Here’s a fun little poem about death. Seriously, I believe that our fear of death, our fear of losing the selfhood we cling to so desperately, is the basis for much, if not all of that thing called sin. In some ways, I think sin is a kind of radical selfhood, a seeking to preserve oneself at the expense of other selves. So, this poem is at least trying to be about this idea, and about the idea that we can fear God, even we who call ourselves Christians, because of this same fear of the loss of self, the loss of the self that we have made. Anyway, I hope it takes you somewhere and makes some sort of sense.

Death’s Dying

Is it the final fall of night you truly fear,

Or do you dread the coming of the dawn?

Is death, so fleet of foot, the thing you flee,

Or is it real life from which you run

To hide yourself, a deer among the bushes?

You will drag your death behind you till you drop it,

Freeing it from the fetter your fear has made,

Its menace mastered by Immortal Love,

And given to you again in golden guise,

A winged steed to bear you far beyond

The broken beauty of grief’s dying day

Into gleaming groves of gateless, unguessed glory.

Your death must die to be reborn,

Or it will drive you on, shattered shadow though it be,

Poisoning your love and prisoning your heart

Within the walls of self-will’s narrow cell,

No way to seek your soul-deep sorrow’s source,

The loss of joy, which is its deepest spring.

But when timidity is transfigured into trust,

Your feet no longer dancing to death’s tune,

Then night becomes the doorway to the dawn,

Once-wounded wings hard-won now wonder-chased,

Finitude finally clothed in the spendless, spilling splendour

Of the very Life of life!

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The ideal expressed in this poem is, for me, aspirational at best, and yet I feel, now more than ever, that it is actually possible. It may be a good thing to look to as we approach the Holy Fast. As always, take it if it works, or leave it if it doesn’t.

Invitation

Ah! Bide a wee, beloved one, and live as lilies do.

Withdraw your will from the wealth of worldly woe

With its endless demands for empathy,

Its crises marching past for your convenient inspection,

And place it in My nail-printed palm.

Let Me loose it from false freedom’s fetters

And bind it freely to Myself,

No fear, no anguish needed to knit us near,

But trust in true love’s limitless longing

For fullness only found in Me.

Fear not to find your deep desire dead within My life,

For it will not be left to lie withering in the sun,

Nor will it cease from being what it was.

Together, we will polish it anew,

and name it with its true and holy name,

Bringing it, little by little, to brilliance,

That it might flood this age’s death-throes with the flame of undying peace.

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I honestly can’t tell you why I’ve written this poem, at least not very clearly. It’s an attempt to put into words an experience which I hope all of us have at times. It’s an encounter with eternity framed from eternity’s perspective, I guess. In these timeless moments, to me at least, there’s always a call, a plea for us to slow down, to stop, and then a corner of the necessary veil between us and forever is briefly twitched aside and we are somehow filled with mystery, somehow spoken to without words. This, then, is a poem born of unbidden ecstasy. I don’t even have the song of a nightingale for inspiration as did Keats. I hope it holds some truth for you. For me, it’s a thing beyond joy!

Eternal Eros

Pray, pilgrim, pause a while,

And rest you from your restlessness,

For I wish to know you better,

To teach you the true meaning of time,

Which is only myself, poured drop by drop

For you who cannot take myself entire,

Though I long to linger with you and join you on your journey.

But here, if you stay your steps for me,

That drop will flow over you like a flood,

Drenching but never drowning you,

Quenching without crushing your spirit,

Bathing your bruises in unbroken beauty’s balsam,

For a while, alas, for only a while.

For now, our trysts must be few and far between,

Our moments chosen carefully that my touch will not shatter you.

Yet, little by little, if you stop when I call,

We will come to know each other well, if you will,

That when we meet at last as lovers do,

With time’s veil torn, full fair to each other’s eye,

You will claim me without fear as your own familiar friend.

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This poem is about the ever-changing and always-present feeling that I lack the courage of my convictions: that I'm not Canadian enough, that I'm not a really good blind person in terms of advocating for disability rights, that I'm not a good enough Christian because I don't stand up and support certain causes, that I'm not any number of things that society has called me to be. So, this poem is about that anxiety and about what must be, if not its complete resolution, at least a way to keep it oriented hopefully correctly.

On What Hill

On what hill will I die?

What blessed plot of ground will be the place

Wherein I plant my feet, burning with blisters,

Or fly my flag, filled with holes

Of half-kept promises and hollowed out principles?

Are there now too many hills?

Too many calls to arms or cries for justice?

Will there ever be a time to take my stand,

Staying steadfast against the storm,

Keeping moral courage in the face of this minute's mortal enemy?

In truth, I cannot trust one bit of earth,

For all seems shifting, unstable sand,

Today's cries for change becoming tomorrow's crumbled dreams,

Freedom finding no place to set her sacred foot,

A vagabond queen of hedges and ditches.

So all these hills I willingly surrender, save only one,

The skull's tomb, where scandal scaled the heights of glory!

That hill, I pray, will always find me near,

That hill on which humanity was crowned anew,

Whom Christ bore bleeding into Paradise.

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Evangeline is a name that I have always loved. It has acquired layers of meaning for me over many years. It has signified the idea of steadfastness, the idea of prompt answering of a call, the idea of calm courage, and the idea of good tidings of victory. This poem is sort of about having the courage to check out of the anxiety/anger factory we live with nowadays. We can’t seek peace if we don’t leave room to let it in. So that’s what this poem is about. Do what you do, live your days in the present, and look to eternity. I’m just as susceptible to all this worry and anger as anyone, but in the end, worry gets you nowhere. It just leaves you stuck. So this poem is written to myself as much as to anyone else. We are allowed to not be caught up. We are allowed to not take worry as some sort of proof that we are virtuous human beings. Indeed, we are encouraged to look to the lilies! If we believe that God keeps (in the older sense of takes care of) what He has made, then all our worrying avails us nothing. We can and must act, live, be in the world, but we don’t have to paralyze ourselves with worry, especially for things over which we have absolutely no control. I think this poem just gives us permission.

Evangeline

Why wait when once the call has come?

Why waver on the edge of eternal joy?

The clarion cry of "victory!" has sounded,

Sung lustily by saints with word, deed and death,

Flung far across time’s chasm and beyond,

Bidding us to bound as deer upon the mountain!

Why worry for the woes of all the world?

Why stoop beneath what only God could bear

By being clothed in crownless clay,

Cross-crushed, entombed by tear-stained hands,

That He might free the fullness of our finitude

From fallen fealty to the frailty of death?

Let us not hault till others catch us up,

But let us send the call to them with joy!

“Be of good courage! Follow fast!

Run well while yet your feet are on the ground!

Trust to the spark that speeds you on,

The fire of love freed finally from fear,

Whose light will live to drown death’s darkest dream!”

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This is a poem which sort of came to me out of the blue. The other day, I casually wondered in writing whether the joy that Christ talks about in John’s gospel is in fact pain transfigured. I thought about how we always say in Orthodox circles that there is no crown without the cross. Is joy, then, what comes as pain purifies or is purified? It sounds a bit sadistic when you put it that way, but I don’t think it has to be. Everyone has pain of some sort in life. Our very fear of death or fear of failure, or indeed, our fear of being superfluous, is pain. So, while I don’t think we should go looking for pain, I think that Christ can take our pain and do something with it.

Also, this poem is about the name of a plant I really like and which I found first in a Walter de la Mare poem called Fare Well. I thought I’d play with the idea of Traveler’s Joy as a plant as well as, well, the joy of a traveler on life’s crazy road. I hope it takes you somewhere, even for a little while.

Traveler’s Joy

The way of stone and steep may weary the wanderer,

May bruise and bring the heaven-haunted heart to breaking

By its love and longing for the one thing it lacks,

Communion, like the alchemy of sun and rain on rose,

With that which is its sundered source and end.

Yet, if the traveled road be true,

It’s footing firm-founded even amid thorns,

Then, steps no longer stumbling, will stand at gaze

The weary one, a mortal on the edge of immortality,

Incarnate death new-sealed beyond its dying self.

The traveler’s joy is tried for truth,

Proven by pain and tested by tears.

Its fertility flourishes where fire has passed,

No forests of false piety to pinch its roots,

but only water welling up from woe

To green the pathways of the heart,

And twine its wild hedgerows in wedding-bonds of blessedness.

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This one really does feel presumptuous. What right have I to even think these words? Are they true? Are they tropes only? Who knows? I hope they are in some measure the true song of my heart, but if not, then, God willing, something truer will come from their ashes. Enjoy!

If You Will

Come, if You will, and bring me to my knees!

Help me to kneel before Your knowing of me

That I might come to know You truly,

No fear or false vanity to veil me

From Your bright and burning beauty.

Claim, if You will, the little light I tend,

Drowned daily in the darkness of doubt

But kept aflame by ego’s false fuel,

And though always guttering, still feebly gleaming

With vainglory’s sputtering glow..

Bless, if You will, my brokenness to bow

In sheer and shining awe before Your living fire,

No longer standing stuck in dead delusion,

Now freed to find the fullness of joy,

Soul-deep and Spirit-spun,

Springing unspent and sparkling from Your unspeakable splendour!

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