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October 2014 (October 1, 2014–September 30, 2015)/© Pavel Chichikov

GAZE AT GLORY

If I’d seen you then as now Aged by twenty years or so Would I have known what you must live That what we come to we must sow?

That once the tree of life was such, That inward in a tiny seed Was all of life contained therein Not less than destiny would need?

The seed perhaps a thought of God However such a thought may be, Perhaps a vision sweeping round From darkness to eternity

But here is where we must depart From any closer metaphor, Close the questioning as such And gaze at glory and adore

Pavel October 1, 2014

1


I AM THE DONKEY

I have seen two things that Jesus saw A young boy riding a small grey donkey A shepherd drawing a sheep with a crook

With the curved end of the staff he drew By the leg head first the stubborn sheep Step by step to where he stood

And the donkey though just large enough Bore the child and a big grain sack Slowly along an unpaved track

I am the donkey who bears God I am the slow and stubborn sheep Even so my God has known me


2


THE HEAVEN OF THE CLOWNS

There is a heaven of the clowns In which a tiny auto stops Along the curb of holy ground, Erupting many clownish cops

Pursuing the devils down a lane Heel by head and head by heel, They chase them up the path again Which makes the little devils squeal

They sweep the shadows from hills Squeeze them into cloudy sacks, Then when all the bags are filled They lay the shadows neatly back

Playful is the holy show Playful is the holy cast, Back inside the car they go And then they drive to glory fast


3


A STORY

She listened to a story About a desert planet, Heard the vicious winds Through the headphone speakers

Then shut off the power But the desert winds kept blowing From somewhere far away Across the window panes

Confined within the tale Inside a parable The shouting of the wind Booming on the glass

A windstorm that was told A windstorm that was now, A story breaking through The barricades of fiction

Glory leaves the altar Of pride inside the heart, The dead come from the tombs Quarried in the soul


4


BLAZES

Through the woods the winding crooked trail And if there were no blazes on the trees We would have lost our way beneath Lock Mountain In the dark along the Alleghenies

Oblongs painted perpendicular Wherever there’s a turning or an angle, Seldom far away or out of sight, Perceptible and comforting rectangles

On the other the trails the blazes differ, Some are true and others lead astray—Who has painted falsehoods to deceive, Confounding us to make us lose our way?

Sometimes they remove the trees themselves To mystify and take us through a maze, Apprehensive in the dusk we ask—How long is it since last you saw a blaze?


5


THE SAINTS OF HEAVEN

At Mass this morning no one came but me No priest, I cannot celebrate the Mass, The Rite had ceased

And if there were no priests at all how then Could we Prepare ourselves in faith to meet Though two or three?

I sat beneath the tabernacle Small, alone I thought, but there were others there beside the throne

Great creatures leaned above Christ’s face The cherubim Who canopy with wings the splendid grace of Him

Those who gather round Him when the Sanctus, Sung Before the consecration goes the saints among

And as the Host is elevated Angels rise And with the saints of heaven bless’d harmonize


6


SURVIVORS

Talons locked, their pinions spread The great ones spinning overhead, While in the thistle and wild rose Finch and sparrow stay enclosed

This is how the small are wise Despite the forfeit of their size, Survive despite the clash of war Return to where they lived before

While those who fight above in power Deathwatch beetles will devour, And those beneath the earth unseen Will pick their mighty bodies clean


7


WHY SHOULD THINGS MOVE?

It serves you well if you can see A blue jay launching from a tree Fold up its wings torpedo-wise As out of sight it glides, then flies

How did the blue jay start from rest, What urgency in time compressed? It is no less mysterious Then light produced in Genesis

Why should things move that might stand still? God placed creation on a hill, Then He thrust and made it roll And that which moves we call the soul


8


ALL YOU CAN AFFORD

When going on your journey You buy your ticket first, One side is a blessing The other side a curse

A line goes from the window Stretching long and curves Around a distant corner Where some are never served

The ticket that they sell you Is crumpled, smudged and scored With many a notation—It has been used before

Your name is scribbled on it And circled with a line Of mucky midnight cursive, Perhaps a cryptic sign

Then the train is ready To take you all aboard, And where the train may leave you Is all you can afford


9


ONLY FROM THE UNKNOWN

May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.—St. Therese of Lisieux

Always lonely, posted on the frontier, The country never was well guarded And the decades lapsed, the garrison grew thinner

Why was I placed here beyond my qualities Poor in love and poor in any prospect Not well endowed with any great abilities

Now we are no more of even what we were, Through shriveled strength and more infirmity We will grow weaker, older, always fewer

Here at history’s discouraged end We are so unprepared, so crippled with misgivings And soon there will be little to defend

The region on whose bulwarks we appeared Degenerates to ruin as we look No one left to heal it as the sages feared

All good morals shrivel, power grows Bends and twists the spirit into evil shapes The inner clever beast within disclosed

So that to hold the wall here meaningless We should put down our feeble weapons and disperse For nothing keeps us but our stubbornness

Where does this willful doggedness come from? From somewhere in the wilderness beyond the wall Since only from the unknown can our rescue come


10


THESE ETERNAL

This very morning I have seen The dying leaves proclaiming life, Coral, russet, gold and green

All at once before the frosts Hills below a swollen sky Interweaving life and loss

And I may ask how this can be That I was born to walk and watch The transformation of the trees

An answer I have understood Articulated by the wind: I am the record of these woods

That we are born to see and keep This memory that never dies Forever though my flesh may sleep

We are immortal, soul and mind Our memories forever more Imperishable past all time

So that what color seems as past Imprinted is in light and love, In God’s eternity will last

That for this purpose we were made To show in heaven what we see That these eternal never fade


11


INFINITY HAS ENDED

I speak to you from here So many years ago This unimagined shore—My name you do not know

You my distant friend Infinity has known, Time will have an end And you are not alone

For courage we were made, To travel on the sea, Do not be afraid Of deep eternity

I speak to you from where The Risen has ascended His glory to declare Infinity has ended


12


ALIEN

In Moscow the militia at the door: What is this inostranetz doing here? I had no proper papers to be there

Here as well I have no proper papers My eyes are not averted and I raise them To see the deep horizon and beyond

I am the alien, undocumented one And so I empathize with every alien—All we foreigners know one another

How many of us are there, who can know? We are the secret synagogue of awe The quorum that assembles in the soul

We know that our existence need not be Nor might there be a world except for this: Like some of us, an alien was He


13


STAY WARM

Stay warm this winter, we’ll be back in spring Said the woman at the farmers’ market Who sold us vegetables, home-baked cakes and dumplings

Beyond her at the bottom of the hill Lock Mountain showed a needlepoint of leaves Crimson, ochre, gilding of the maple

But April is six months away and who Can know what will be happening till then When that which falls presumably comes new

She says it is for sitting by the fire Reading books and knitting in a chair, The pastimes of the weaver and the dyer

But who can know which eyes will open then To see the light of April rising higher Such promises on which the world depends

She wished it in a lowered voice and cast Her glance aside as if we all could stand Here once again and mind the winter past


14


WE NEED SOMEONE

Set two worlds apart, Set them side by side, One of them is dying The chasm is not wide

Easy to cross over, The going over death, Between the two a passage As narrow as a breath

To one I am a stranger The other is my rest, Which should I desire? Which do you suggest?

A bridge across a chasm On which the spirits cross, Although we look behind us To leave it is no loss

But a sparrow near my window Chattered with regret, We need someone to praise us So do not leave us yet

A wind blew through the maples Scattered as it blew, We need someone to praise us And who will sing but you?


15


THREE BIG HOGS

Three big hogs in an old red trailer Parked at the curb outside our house, But where was the parking farmer?

I looked inside, a hog looked back With a yellow eye, then found its tub And mash-of-cornmeal snack

Two other hogs lay side by side At the forward end of the red trailer Somnolent, and sighed

This is the truth, I do not lie, Outside our house three hogs appeared As snug as in their natal sty

Sometimes there exists a mark Which may or may not prophesy, Improbable though it will park

Reason should at times relax Permit the soul to wander forth Into the wilderness of facts

Three hogs appeared, that I have seen Undoubtedly, so we await The devils of the Gadarenes


16


A HUNDRED KILOS

One street from a cold Gehenna, The secret prison called Lubyanka, Stands a modest Catholic church They call Saint Louis of the French

As in this world so in those streets Good and evil nearly meet, Move together side by side, Stone and ice they pass and slide

As in each soul those two exist, Like DNA they inter-twist, Good and evil, war and peace The priesthood and the state police

Meet and gaze like brother twins Exchanging blessings, curses, sins, Across a street, across a room And even maybe in the tomb

And once I saw a person haul Potatoes issued in the fall, A hundred kilos he was given Between salvation and the prison


17


WHAT YOU SAY

Who can teach a fish to swim A bat to fly when day is dim? Who will train a horse to graze, Moles to learn their digging ways?

Then some urgency provide In case a rabbit needs to hide In brambles when the fox is near—Have you fashioned faith and fear?

Then teach falsehood to be true Disintegration to be new, Perversity to be made clean, Words are what you say they mean


18


THE CHRISTENING

As God in our epiphany Raised us from the dust, I saw a priest raise God on high To manifest God’s trust

That we could hold up steadfastly The grandeur on the Cross, In semblance of the bread and wine No holiness was lost

And then the tableau shifted As if it were a kind Of life beyond the ritual, External to the mind

The priest became a celebrant Of Eucharistic love As clear and deep as time and space, Beyond it and above

As if the priest had raised for us Communion for all things And every newborn visitor At Jesus’ christening


19


THESE DAYS

These days the snakes have shed their skins And what was once a leather hood Is now pure gold and denser than The coils that looped around the wood

Heavy, sluggish, drooping heads, Tongues of ruby glittering, Eyes of bronze and hearts of lead And ribs that crush by slithering

It is the poison gland that kills Swollen just behind the jaw, Pride of poison makes it fill And sometimes it injects the law

Often I have seen it rear Around the pillars of the state And all who see it bow in fear To see the bulge of what it ate


20


MORE THE FOES, MORE THE HONOR

Bolshe vragi, bolshe chesti/How to know our enemies

We bless them and they give back curses Blaspheme God, revere themselves Love power, money, rank and fame Scorn the weak, adore the strong Fear to die and kill the lowly

Respect pretense, deceit their honor Bluff their courage, pride their code Load abuse on those who face them Charge with crimes the reverent Honor theft and blame the blameless

They are hollow, blank within Transient, their words are wind


21


THERE IS ONE

Strange the prison, strange the cell The doors unlocked, the jailers kind And yet the box was gray cement Perhaps the prison of the mind

How to wait, to pass the time Alone inside this empty place? I contemplated with dismay The waste of life that I would face

“What is my penalty?” I asked The walls were rough and sterile planes “In years the time is twenty-one” And yet the jail did not constrain

I could go in and out at will, I let myself inside the wall Closed the door behind me shut, There was no key or lock at all

I saw no other prisoners But surely they must be somewhere Beyond the near and futile walls The blank confinement of despair

A man may always flee from God And flee from people if he would But there is one he may not flee—The wise and deep have understood


22


TO ONE WHO FEARS HELL

After all the madness ceases And all the malice falls to pieces, All that’s left is how you went From love to love, an innocent

So do not mock or be afraid, There is no hell that God has made, But only hell you keep inside Where no one with a soul can hide

Then by love may be expelled This fearful visioning of hell, It is the gift of love that seals And afterward the wounding heals


23


TO HEAL THE WOUNDS

I know an incantation Which brings all love to be, Neither psalm nor sermon Nor murmur on the knee

Not by oil or vapor Emitted by the coals Of sandalwood or amber To heal the wounds of souls

It is the prayer of Jesus In dread Gethsemane, If it be Your preference To give this cup to me

If Your will O Father Is that Your wish be done, I will be Son and brother To You, these sleeping ones

To find them blood and water And flesh I will not keep That all may be together When they awake from sleep


24


$MANY WAYS

As many ways to think about Lord God As waves that cross the never-ending sea Uncountable disturbances and fallings The plunging roll and spilling down again Sliding silver crowns and frothing collars Visible until they cross horizons’ Unrepressed desire for the infinite

But now there is a shadowing below Long and dark, the beast that swallows Jonah Visible and vague beneath the surface God of depths and darknesses who rises Waiting till the soul presents itself Engulfs and keeps within the secret one Inside the sea of God within itself

Within the many-folded mysteries Beneath the waves of light we call events The undulating surfaces of God And one who was intended for Tarshish Emerges on the shoreline of Aleppo And like a madman carries on to Nineveh The odor of the sea that rolls forever


25


ODERINT DUM METUANT Caligula/

The fearsome one whom all must fear Becomes the one whom no one trusts And he the wretch whom no one trusts Wanders through his wilderness

Savage creature, sick and fearful Human frame of love decayed While from within writhe worms of rage Gnawing at his fragile spirit

Sometimes on the blackest nights He creeps around the nomad’s camp To feel the warmth of people’s chatter The warmth of trust, the warmth of fire

Should he stay, reveal himself At first his form and then his face, Or sickened with malicious envy Seek again his empty place?


26


LOOK DOWN

John says: Be pure as God is pure That you may meet Him face to face, But God is light, the perfect love He finds in me is but a trace

That trace of love must come from Him For nowhere else perfection lies, God has given from His light Of light, all else of darkness dies

Is it enough, that trace of light Within to find the light I see? My child, He said, My light relieves The dark of night that leads to Me

For if I had not wanted you To reach the tower I have set, No light would be above this road, You would be lost and looking yet

And I am waiting patiently, The honest signs you do not lack, I go before you on this path, Look down and see My bloody tracks

Pavel November 1, 2014

27


PRODIGIES

The Realm was in chaos, In Daphne of Rome A suburb of Antioch Ominous prodigy

Child with two skulls Four eyes and one mouth, Considered a sign Of disordered governance

Not so long later At Adrianople The Emperor Valens Suffered disaster

The legions defeated The Emperor killed And all of his lands At sixes and sevens

But there would be other Miscegenations Meaningful omens Vile deformations

There will be seen—Already have been—Monstrous confinements That signal disorder

Neonate millions With numerous heads But one single mouth Consuming the world

An eye at the front An eye at the back Two on each side An ear to keep track

This is an infant New of its kind One single creature With only one mind

28


That will come soon—Already prepared—Descent of the species And no one will care

Except for a few Who live alongside In the commons of love And there they will hide


29


THAT UNITY

November third, beside the road A praying mantis like a stick Frigid candle, smothered wick

Wings a fading green, the legs Brittle, angled, weak and splayed Death by hours is delayed

A short life span or one that’s long The near infinity of time Which is yours and which is mine?

We the brittle stand on sticks Contemplating from a height Feet in shadow, heads in light

None can tell you how to see The meaning hidden in plain view And those who see are always few

The living are a unity But we the conscious know by grace That all the living take their place

That when we come to what is first The flame of glory we shall see The knitting of that unity


30


FERTILE SNOW

November maple turning gold, Others turning too, the old, White without and gray within Some are shriveled more than thin

Some are rich with happiness Gold inside as they seem less, Gold with lovely charity Where blind the busy never see

Those that drop the flesh as leaves Their deaths will be no butcheries But gentle as the autumn wind Takes down the leaves, the flesh unpinned

Which then will feed the fertile snow Of death that makes the living grow


31


THE DOMINATING INSTINCT

If you watch them jostle as they feed The cardinal displaying at the sparrow The sparrows pecking others from the seed

You wonder if as Jesus contemplates The countries of the world as they compete We are to birds as He is to our states

They have only beaks with which to thrust And wings to buffet with, but not as we The power to pound cities into dust

The dominating instinct is so old It may be deeply rooted in us too Anciently created, uncontrolled

And so what was the Resurrection for If we are ruled by instinct not by sense His passion ending anyway in war?

I think we are reflections in a mirror Shadows of the battles fought above Partly Michael, partly Lucifer


32


ASTONISHMENTS

Not even at the stars or at the sea A pine cone lying on the forest floor Astonishment that anything should be

And even if the vacuum has produced Such mysteries as pine cones on a tree What instructions made it so, what use

Of my existence or your being here also, Awareness of the color of the leaf What beckons us above, and what below?

For there are many levels but one cause Instructions operational which rule Astonishments, the momentary pause


33


ALL IS ONE

The power of the pastor’s sermon Made of us a sacred building Church and people, men and women

The reading from Ezekiel The vision of the rising water Flowing downward from the Temple

Sent away from Mass, outside We saw a ruptured water main The street submerged like some flood tide

Again and again coincidence Or so they say who will not see The power of God’s resonance

The Master of comparison Speaks and all the worlds are His—All is one, the world is One


34


IN SURPRISE

Some say the dark and empty way Awaits the living, others say That travelers in time advance To nothing, by the rules of chance

So bear in mind the things that be Arisen from an entropy, That nothingness, no length or breadth, Should in itself bear only death

Would seem to make impossible A unison divisible, That neither life nor death are nulls, Make evident reciprocals

I saw the winter gather in Fraternal snow and sister wind, I saw my own face in the sea While in surprise it looked at me


35


THEY WILL BE CHANGED

Every night I pray for her My fingers on the crucifix A want of love had made her suffer

So that within the spirit’s core Where love should gain permission in Love and caution were at war

So that she never learned to hope For safety in another’s love, I see her on an upward slope

Her vision growing light and clear For as she gains she gathers trust, The more in love, the less in fear

More she gains in confidence In Christ as she ascends towards Him The greater is her innocence

Color, form and perfect grace Resolve into the purest sense As she draws closer to His face

This is how the dead are changed When Christ receives them to Himself But would it not to us be strange

If we the living were as she In perfect buoyancy of love? So may she think of, pray for me


36


THERE WAS A PROMISE

The first snow of autumn, The ides of November, Seeds of the wild things Cached in their burrows

Some will survive The stroke of the winter, Earth is too warm now To welcome the snow

With people as well The freezing begins, Creatures may perish Under the wind

But there will be some Who will not be lost Under the cover Of winter frost

The seed of the spirit Gathered in haste Bears in the winter A blessed race

As for the others Who live as they please, They will go hungry And cold as they freeze

Who will invite them Into the nest To feed on abundance? They are the blessed

For there was a promise When Nazareth fed From little the many And rose from the dead


37


I HAVE WAITED LONG

The world created stood before the Risen Lord And made confession to the highest priest Within the sanctuary of His holy temple Which is the world itself and all that it contains

Lord God Holy One my parts remain at war, Winter against summer, sea against the land, stones Against the frost, against the freezing rain, And all my creatures feed on one another

The life of one becomes another death, Some will never come to life and breed, The young may not survive, the old devoured By the young forgotten and dispersed

No memory remains, the worlds themselves Are swallowed up in fire, dust to dust, And though you made them for their splendid beauty What is the end of all except futility?

My precious one, My dearest own creation Said the Lord, a stole around His shoulders (The stole was purple, like the bruises on His skin The cruel flagellum of the scourging)

You have not sinned at all, you are dismissed Except for one, and I have died for him, But where is he for whom I took the Cross? I would forgive, but I have waited long


38


THERE I SAT

Above Cullera on the coast A stronghold of the Muslims rose Along the angles of a hill

Now the walls alone remain While slightly higher on the slope There is a small beloved church

There I sat and watched the Lord As people came and touched His feet The One suspended from the Cross

So gently touched in ruefulness And pity for another’s wounds In pure compassion for the Christ

As He like any sufferer Twisted there in agony As would another human soul

Pity for the world’s Creator Made the people touch His feet To close the circuit of the world

And so each morning, every night I lightly touch the Savior’s feet As He does our offended souls

And He would heal them as He could By simple touching if we let God hold them longer for a while


39


THE ONLY QUESTION WORTH DISPUTE

All will be forgotten, every one Or nothing is forgotten, ever done, This is the only question worth dispute But each one can the other one refute

So let us put the question to one side Along with vain obscurity and pride, Attend to one another in our need As we were fed so shall another feed

And if with flesh and blood we have been fed Of Christ, we who are counted with the dead, Then if these are a freely given gift Then why should we be culpable of thrift?

Either love is futile and must die And so the world’s forgetfulness imply, Or love is greater than forgetfulness And all the powers of the world are less

Even death itself is not as strong Even time’s duration not as long, And yet it is not possible to show The lineaments of love, and yet we know


40


SO FOUL A SKY

So foul a sky clears not without a storm. Shakespeare, King John, Act 4,Scene 2

Flurries, a frost as if of senescence West, white blizzards lean and bend The hills are screened with deceitful veils Now the beginning not the end

A storm, they say, of triple winter Not one summer in between Who will be left when the storm is over? What sun shines behind that screen?

Hear the windows shake their frames The gale, perhaps a sonic shock Of missiles flying overhead, The doors of Janus are unlocked

Afterward what peace remains? A thaw and crocus in the fields That once were cities of the plain What harvest can a blizzard yield?

Another world, another life And all for nothing seemed the war, But in the soul and in the mind An evil frozen to the core


41


LETS IT ROLL

Hills who glory in duration Say where you have been, Under sea, above the clouds White faces to the wind

Some who live the briefest lives Scrabble slopes and ranges, Comprehend our shape through time And how it always changes

But we are also juveniles Beneath the hills of time That rise and fall and rise again With which we hills align

They in turn are foothills Beneath a splendid throne From which the Lord of all of us Rules timelessness alone

Each hill enfolds another In endless resonance, But none beneath the sight of Him Arises out of chance

For though he rules eternity And writes it in a scroll, He touches every little stone Lifts up, and lets it roll


42


WHEN SUMMONING TO MEET THE BLESSED

A young hawk lighting on our fence An eye that with a golden cast Through the morning thrusts a glance

Noble shoulders, tapered wings Tail a perfect slender rod Favored beauty, child of God

Never stirring but to turn The rounded turret of its head Perhaps already hawk full fed

Does not deign to move until Some spirit moves it to depart Creature of a faultless art

Do not say such beings are The product of a random throw For we who love them see and know

The patterns of the forge and fire That from creation’s moment cast A mold that perishing will last

So that the herald will recall This calm patrician winged guest When summoning to meet the blessed


43


WHICH ONE IS ME

Centurion, an order came, Take a detail, get it done, The crucifixion of two thieves And Jesus Christ who is God’s Son

As in such a cruelty Base confusion and disorder, Distraction and banality The sourness of sweat and horror

I sat before the tabernacle Where in stillness Jesus stayed, Man and God eternal watched As Judas came to kneel and pray

I saw Judas on his knees Ask forgiveness, need it most, Why should he not take Communion, Gratefully receive the Host?

We the parsimonious Scandalized depart but He Impassively observes us both And who can say which one is me?


44


SEVEN ARTISTS

How did the bread that Christ transformed To body come to be? What craft and art transformed the wheat Into divinity?

A fine musician sang the sun Into the warming sod, The seeds the poet cast reached up To drink the rain of God

The jeweler struck a blade of flint Honed till it was keen, With it cut the wheat stalks down, The shocks of them made lean

The potter took them to be threshed To separate the heads, The painter mixed the flour With water to make bread:

Water but no leaven Extracted from the yeast, No oil required but it was Most fitting for a feast

The sculptor was the baker And in the oven thrust The bread till it was sweet inside, Outside there was no crust

Then the dancer took the bread And set it on the board, A bread the Christ transformed into The body of the Lord

Now tell us, said the artists, This body, is it free? If you would eat My body, friends, Then you must follow Me

I have paid the price for you To Me it is no loss If you will do what I have done And help Me lift My cross

45


This bread will give you strength enough Although the bulk is great, It was my blood the wine you drank My body that you ate


46


BURY ME HERE

Up on the height The hills spread out On a warm fall afternoon

The whistling hawk A bosun’s pipe Soars to its evening rest

Better up here Above the race Of the quarrelsome ones

Space to the mountains Encircling scarps And to the sky alone

Peace and no words From the restless race Silent below

But the trees have already Lost their crowns And the sharp wind waits

For the troublesome folk Who live underneath This endlessness

Soft blows the wind From the trembling south The last leaves flutter

A brief respite A pause out of time Bury me here


47


AT THE END OF TIME

At the end of time The celebration of a Mass, one chapel, A solemn preparation for a burial

The final requiem A body lies before the altar Seraphim sing praises from the psalter

Where are we now? Who is lying in the coffin? This is dead Lazarus and this is heaven

The risen flesh is raised And Christ the sacrifice who died Is now by heaven glorified

What does this mean? The dead are raised but once forever Time is vanquished, time is over

One who never falls never rises So shall the dead be thus Forever of the type of Lazarus


48


AT THE WEDDING

The tireless, the young who dance The wedding of the worshippers Of nature spirits and romance And all their ghostly nomenclature

Nothing to the Christ referred Who sanctifies the wedding tie, The worshipping of Lucifer The children’s neo-pagan lie

That something unexacting rules The world’s profuse extravagance, Ecstasy become a school And every joy erotic dance

Beyond the lights, the canvas tent I wander into autumn night As if on mission to be sent, To leave behind naive delight

Where flushed with some hormonal glee Transported by the rhythmic beat, The lyric of hilarity They gesture as they stamp their feet

Into the silence of the depths Where overhead the glories fly And stately majesty is kept In tabernacles of the eye


49


HE KNOWS OF THEM ALL

For the reading today they chose Sirach, a blessing Not Revelation, the cursing of Babylon, Cosset the gratified smug congregation

As everyone knows, bad things never happen The results of our doings flit in the wind Forgotten as ripples smoothed on a pond

But oceans are poised on the narrowest fulcrum Mountain chains roll on the point of a stick Great conurbations are brittle as chalk

At the end of the Mass one offered the Host As the body of Jesus and not of the Christ For demons had fed on their self-satisfaction

He offers Himself to the blind and the deaf As if they were equal to martyrs and saints For He knows of them all and offers Himself


50


A TIME OF THIEVES

They swung their heavy hammers Smashed the plate glass windows Took a hundred Rolexes

The wheelman picked them up Then they rode somewhere Perhaps to Baltimore or anywhere

But no one can steal time Only diamond watches Time may not be stolen

Time inviolate Time the everlasting Until it ends

So that the robbers’ fence Will pay them ten per cent And the money will run out

Money buys no time But time will spend them well It is no miser

Let us purchase time Say all the money thieves But time is not for sale

If someone robbed some time Wound it in a watch The watch would seize and stop

They would cease to run But time would travel on And leave them there


51


YOUR ROOM IS READY

Your room is ready, six six six O my God, what place is this?

Big and bright, shipshape, spacious The staff are pleasant, kind and gracious

But where’s the room, the corridor Has many numbers on this floor

None of them is that assigned So many doors but none is mine

The passageways are long and curved Will I be placed where I deserve?

There’s a snack bar and a crowd It seems that eating is allowed

Here is a wide and sunny place A throng but no familiar face

But there’s a couple that I know Among the constant ebb and flow

I have seen them both before And they will find the proper door

They know me and I know them They guide the lost, will not condemn


52


TWO OLD RAVENS

Two old ravens in a tree Looked down on a battlefield, The older said: See what I see? I think a truth has been revealed

Remember when they had no souls? No, the other said, but you Can tell what ancient mountains told When they looked down and Earth was new

I tell you they were peaceable Except when there was scarcity Of food or females, all was well, The violence flared up fleetingly

Once the beasts had souls they kept Their malice burning day and night Like fire in a smothered pit, Their cunning kept it out of sight

But when it flared it burned and burned Until it burned their places down, It even makes my stomach turn And I take pickings where they’re found

Was it the soul inside that bled, The wound that made them so insane? It may be so, the older said, When they could give their lust a name

When they changed from soulless beast Into a soulful animal Their purity as creatures ceased And there was born the criminal

The ravens stood and rubbed their beaks Across the limb where they had sat, Then they spread their wings to seek The beasts who burn their cities flat


53


EVERLASTING LIFE

By one way or another If in patience, without claim Except the claim of love in Jesus’ name

Astonishment to learn That those who live before God’s Throne Will make their living presence known

As Aaron sanctified the tribes So with this blessing will they bless If you the graciousness of Christ confess

The sign will find you from all places That ever were, in every tongue As ever those who live have sung

This will be given as a gift To all for whom the year is new To show that everlasting life is true

That those who circle round the light Are acolytes of majesty Who dress Him in His sacristy

With praise and glory as a robe In which He shows His shining face To all who glorify His grace

Pavel December 2, 2014

54


TIME AND YOU

Summer night and windless, warm When I went walking in the sea I thought my God had forgotten me

From Corsica came choppy waves Low and ivory-fretted foam Across the shoreline coming home

Down the shore the River Jucar Spread its crest along the sea Nothing in the waves knew me

Either then go forward, back Through darkness of a light untrue Because the muffled moon was new

But someone said not for a while Because I am not finished yet Go landward let the dark moon set

It, not me, unfinished yet With what the voice had made of me Who walked by darkness through the sea

For if one wades out far enough The buoyancy lifts up the mass And then the weightless through it pass

To leave that earthly weight is such A strong desire of the fugue Of loss that turns to lassitude

Those who know the viscid wish To cast away the robe of dread Will know why they turn back instead

Because there is no ending made And something says it is not through This summer night with time and you

Pavel $ December 3, 2014

55


THE LAST STOP

The last stop comes, the train arrives The doors are open, all must leave, Through the doorway from the night Tendrils of the white fog weave

The platform in the open air Conducts the edges of the cold, Doors have closed, the train departs The rigors of the night enfold

Now we must descend and search The frigid streets for ways to find A shelter and perhaps a home, Fatigue and fear defeat the mind

Lost and lost, the city strange, A web without a center spreads Without a plan, without a map A single light shines up ahead

Bright but somewhere close or far With no perspective to disclose The scale of things, the size of things Or when and where the sun last rose


56


THEN I WALKED ACROSS THE ROAD

As I walked down an autumn hill I saw my shadow too Ripple through a screen of trees Saplings as they grew

Ripple as if indistinct Ghostly as a specter, As if from solid living form A shadowy defector

That must be me, the real one That delicate outline, And what I think of as compact Mere notions of the mind

For if there should be something old As old as galaxies, In so much time my solidness Would vanish instantly

Then I walked across the road And downward from the hill, The level sun declined a bit And all the shadows filled


57


CLOUDS LIKE CLIFFS

Clouds like cliffs above the hills Fog through which a gray light pours A call of geese above the mist

If we could see above these clouds An echelon of shouting birds Would seem to row across the sky

If you and I could see right through The clouds that cover up the world It would reveal an exodus

Every spirit hatched from death Rising up to join the blessed That fly because they can forgive


58


WAITS FOR US

As a dog of the hunter follows a scent The man and the woman follow the track Of God the ineffable

As a hawk above forests, clearings and fields Watches the movements of hares and voles From the sky of autumn

As a trout of the summer in clear blue streams Looks for the flight of the dragonfly In the mists above currents

So God in His mercy lays down His trace In the clean white world of the printed snow In the April world of the untouched hills

We sense Him and glimpse Him And then we are drawn to Him As the scent hound follows the fleeing deer

Drawn forward by spoor towards the hunted prey Our master and savior, the hidden one Waits for us in His wilderness


59


CHANNELS

Who are we before the Lord? Wounded spirits who still crawl Or come with crutch and sling, not all

To those the wound of love denied A buffet dealt to injured Christ Garments gained by throws of dice

Those whose suffering was grim Will not come forward to be blessed And healed by Christ, their health is less

So then for those the rest will plead It is such duty to be here And joy as well, where love is near

Then the well-spring of His love Will flow as from the Temple ran The fertile glory, Son of Man

We are the channels of the spring That guide the water in its course But only channels not the source

Pavel December 11. 2014

60


IN CONFESSION

The Devil’s a gunman who stands in a doorway Waiting to prey on the passers-by, The soul is a hostage standing beside him And who will release the soul but I?

The gun is a rusty, unhandy weapon And yet it intimidates those who are scared, The demon assumes a covered position Walls on three sides but exposed to the air

Soul of my soul, up to the doorway He is more cowardly than you might guess, Thrust him aside and rescue the prisoner Take up your courage my soul and confess


61


NONE CAN GUESS

As if now summoned she alights again Broad of shoulder, tapering of wing And how should we who see her know her name?

The creatures on the ground are not afraid One small beast approaches her and sniffs Stretches out as if it had been tamed

I see her on the fence from where I sit A soul of wing and steel from those deep draughts That flow in icy currents on her breast

As I have summoned one who seemed like her In mental picturing, this day she comes As powerful as then in fledging dress

But when full-fledged what messenger is she And on what day will she alight, arrive? That time will be which none of us can guess


62


CLIMB UP MOSES

Marooned in the present, Robinson Crusoe Hearing late the dying echo Waiting for the rain that happened Seeing ships that no one summoned

Finite is as finite does For him the shore is mountainous But all the same the sea is vast The present small and does not last

Somehow there across the sea And into visibility A cloud that takes familiar form A thunder cloud, a rainless storm

Climb up Moses to the peak The view from there not for the weak Suddenly the sea goes dry As when the fierce Egyptians died

Then the waves roll back at last The future claps against the past Who escapes and shall not drown Are those who can recall that sound


63


SUCH A CLEVER MONKEY

There used to be a saying A Chinese apothegm, A monkey in the road Can stop ten thousand men

See the column halted The army is spellbound, Such a clever monkey We put our weapons down

We have seen the monkey Who stops an army dead, Here we will be halted In regiments of lead

The Devil is the monkey Who capers in disguise, Such a clever monkey To keep us paralyzed


64


ON THE MOUNTAINS

As the dew falls lightly The Spirit of God on the hills The sweet valleys

So on my soul Fertile or sterile, never at peace Except in your presence

So in that place The Lord’s appearance Grace upon grace

What will there be When the dew has fallen Above and below?

In the valleys peace The grain of God On the mountains, snow


65


THE WHELPS OF JUDAH

I saw the lions mass and run Across an unknown plain, their flanks Were pressed against each other and They moved as one in rows and ranks

What lions are these, sir, I said And when can I stand farther back To see the rising of the dead, The glory which the world has lacked?

On no, he said, this is no end But first there must be massacre When no one can the wealth defend Within the whitewashed sepulcher

Their capital was bones and skin Prosperity putrescent meat, The whelps of Judah have grown thin And now they starve and wish to eat


66


UNTIL THE SKY IS READY

The power at work so quietly That we never hear the sunrise Or the footfall sound at dusk

We are the incomplete Unfinished sentence Bated breath

I saw great dusk display Fluorescent fire opal Burning primrose in the west

The lights are on in the valley The winter hills unfinished Until the sky is ready


67


ARE YOU NOT AMAZED?

Do you know me, I am your Son who made you, I am born The offspring of a carpenter Given over to the scorn

Of many but the ragged few Whom I selected as my friends, Caiaphas knew not of you—The priestly money that they spent

To bribe a traitor to betray Would better have been spent on bread To feed the multitude but they Knew me not till I was dead

But here I am, the foster son, The infant Jesus that you raised Who now becomes the Risen One—Joseph are you not amazed?


68


FOR ONE GOING BLIND

I saw the rising winter bird Go up as light as thistledown Perceived her tiny gentle word As keenly as a trumpet sound

Her fire cloaked and wrapped inside If truly seen would show a flame Enough to light the whole world wide, The flesh a mere impassive frame

Living beings cloaked in light Are then made dark by being slow So that the one who loses sight Inside like fire still may glow

She less dark for being blind Would seem as bright as dawn at sea When every terror is refined Into a splendid mystery


69


THE ONE WHO GUARDS INFINITY

The one who guards infinity said this: As many grains of light as he will need To grow the grain of being that exists Are given to the gardener as seed

To plant the light in loam of memory And when it grows existence is the crop, The harvest gathered in is harmony And never will the gathering be stopped

This is how the world is made to be And I am here to guard it and profess The crop of light, the everlasting tree For I am one of His and tireless

To see that every grain of love is kept Immaculate, the harvest never done, But everything that fails to love is swept Into a bottomless oblivion


70


IN BETHLEHEM

Have you heard that God is born today? But He is God and will not bear that way

Have you seen Him mewling in the straw? Infants weep, do not inspire awe

Was there not above the crib a star? A stall below and God is always far

Is He not the Son of the eternal? The cosmos is the shell and God the kernel

Do not majesties approach to praise? The Christ must come but possibly delays

Is He not foretold in prophecy? He will be fierce and bring an armory

Let me show you what will be His tomb Beneath the walls of Zion there is room

For all that is and ever there will be, In Bethlehem immortal infancy


71


WHY

If the sun Won’t burn forever Stars themselves Are suns together

Watch the sparrow Build a nest As all the trees In sparrows dressed

Dance for summers Then lie down That all their winds May be unwound

Listen quickly Listen well So you may all The blessed tell

How there was Earth And summer sky But let forever Tell them why


72


THROUGH SILENCE

There is a time, a time of God When every creature stops and waits, Time itself has halted, then Each sentience that God creates

Listens and detects the stroke Of every pulse and every thought, The inhalation of the light Which animates what God has sought

All become aware of all Each anima aware of each, So down comes every block and wall That through the silence all may reach


73


WHY?

He is so thin, it grows inside, A thing within no more will hide That draws his flesh to ever less, Oh Lord from whence comes this distress?

To be so chosen to grow pale As one by one his organs fail, It takes him inch by inch by day Until his life it takes away

What reason is there? Can it be? The crab will not let him go free Though radiation, surgery, Why not them? he asks, why me?

Who can know or make reply Or will give reason we must die? I know I saw him white as lead And thin to imitate the dead

Perhaps a scout or guide to find A pathway through the frightened mind To cross at last the boundary That rings the land the dying see


74


FIREWOOD

The Ageless One, the Timeless One No duration may expend The Uncreated without end

Who from eternity made laws Drew fertile light from latency And with it made whatever was to be

Took light and made it run and live Smoothed and trained it to a yoke Until it moved and saw and spoke

These flames became the sentient Drawn upwards from the pool of this Flowing of the universe

This is what we are but yet To what purposes transformed From living light but barely warm

To flames of everlastingness These moving, thinking, feeling sparks That seem to flare into the dark?

Fearful and uncertain things—Look at those who pass you by The unconsumed who never die

Wonder for what purpose made He creatures frail and tentative Except as firewood that lives


75


BELT IT ROUND YOU

What are we being readied for? The mood is militant, defensive The prospect is of war

As ever when the die is cast The tempo rises of belligerence Until the heart beats fast

I thought I saw my uncle then Returning from another war Which had devoured many men

And I a small child meeting him The corner of our peaceful street And he not even hurt or grim

And in his pack were souvenirs Machine gun bullets and a Luger—He’d left behind him all his fear

Discarded ownerless somewhere Until another found it, put it on—Belt it round you if you dare


76


A DREAM OF GOD

The Lord said: For today here is My Mass book Take it to the altar, open, read

I gripped it with both hands so heavy was it It was the world of light itself I took

On the left the sun, the right the moon I went up to the altar of the Lord

I placed it on the table, opened it Beside me there was midnight, there was noon

On the page I saw a lake so vast The wind of winter hurled a host of waves

Edge to edge, from shore to shore they raced But like a narrow collar ice was cast

Jealousy transfixed by sullen rage A glistening circumference in the sun

So there was a fringe around a lake That bore its blue in glory on the page

The collar was a necklace of contempt The lake of blue a reservoir of souls

Full and free unless they touched the earth And this is what a dream of God has dreamt

Pavel January 1, 2015

77


TAKE IT AS A WARNING

There’s something perching in that hemlock tree Say the crows—a something you can’t see, But we know it, see it and we caw, It must be gone and soon, it is our law

Round and round in circles cry alarm Because there is a hawk and can do harm, Hawk inside the hemlock, make it go, Curse the day it saw an angry crow

There’s another time, another day, Hawk above the forest over prey Plummets from the sunward to surprise The crow that never looks above, it dies

Take that as a parable, a fable, See that expectation is unstable, Take it as a warning and beware, Scan the earth but also scan the air


78


DID YOU THINK?

Ice rain, cold rain, winter rain Steady rain, white rain, clear rain Black rain, sleet rain

It will freeze and will not thaw No salt will melt it, liquefy That slick hard surface

This is not rain at all But the armor of the human heart Cold and impervious

Or did you think that rain is only rain?


79


DROWN A FISH

A little golden fish I saw, exquisite in a pool A pool at dawn and all alone, not swimming in a school A jewel, a gem, a treasure fish, and yet so modest, small

The Devil walking by the sea, remarked the fish and roared Kill me that fish, that golden fish, the fish that I abhor The fish that irks me through and through, so settle me that score

The imps that ran beside the fiend, did everything they could To drain the pool or steam it up by means of firewood To spear or hook or net the fish, but these the fish withstood

A spring flowed everlastingly, malevolence was stuck Heat was never hot enough, nor could the fish be struck By any means or implement though evil ran amok

Then drown the fish, the Devil said, find me an ocean sea Find the deep ones deep enough to drown what vexes me The imps jumped up and poured them in and clapped their paws with glee

Then far and wide and vast and deep an ocean spread and rolled The golden fish near vanished in that ocean manifold But still the fish would calmly swim, the Devil lost control

You stupid imps, you blockheads, you empty hollow pates That fish will be my misery, the sum of all my hates Drown the wretched golden fish, it’s dawn and getting late

But as the sun rose up and spread the day the fish began To grow in measure with the light until much larger than The largest whale that ever swam, was ever seen by man

Stupid silly fiends of Hell, you cannot drown a fish By throwing it in any sea as deep as you could wish And who would think it otherwise except the devilish

So then the fish, the golden fish, grew larger than a whale As golden as the rising sun from golden head to tail And every fin a foil of gold and golden were the scales

Golden was the light it shed, as golden was the fin Until it met a merchant ship, was bound for Spain for tin The sea was deep as Jonah sailed, the sailors threw him in

80



81


WHY SHOULD I?

He rushes onward, onward, onward Momentum has a grip Draws him, leads him, pulls him forward

Torso like a pendulum With a double swinging stride Behind him is a never-perfect vacuum

Superman with seven billion heads Famished, never full He wants to gobble down your daily bread

Onward and onward, until there is no more Until there is no sky above Beneath there is no floor

Onward ever onward, he sees there is no end He takes the sky in fourteen billion hands And tries to make it bend

Twists it in a double strip, deforms the sky Stop it fool you shout, he bellows back Shut up, why should I?


82


WHERE THEY WAIT

The people of the sky appeared last night Their bodies mottled azure blue The white of scattered clouds But since their bodies blend against the sky They are invisible to all except the few

No one will commend them, they have few friends Since hardly anyone can tell Where they begin and brightness ends They are slowly dying as a race As storms appear, of them there is no trace

But they will manifest to those who wait Sometimes years and decades till they come To show themselves in solitary places The edges of a lucid dream perhaps But even then one may not see their faces

Here is what I know of them, they are not fire But they have knowledge of where fire glows They ride the wind that canters from the west And to the east when day has weakened go But where they wait for light again nobody knows

And yet I think they pity us and now foresee From loftiness what others may not see A heightened risk of some calamity Which we in lower space do not suspect Because we know not where we go nor can detect The cross of roads where corollaries intersect


83


SO BRIGHT

To the top I go To meet the Northern Clipper To wait for Lady Snow Her soft and silent slipper

But that must be tonight The sky is laced with blue Gray and brilliant white The wind has blown askew

Not even crows have flown Since morning or have called But light itself has grown So bright that it can scald


84


MOUNT SUBASIO

Mount Subasio, a cleft The refuge of the primal friar

Was there not a blessed peace A silence in which one could hear?

No gossip and no violent words To break the caul of innocence

Bird song only, never scandal Nor the rattle of a rumor

Only wholesome rain and snow The soughing of the virgin wind

Calumny, malicious prattle Such are mankind’s fond delights

Francis, tell us, how the wounds Even so have not yet healed

For as stigmata printed him Bleeding from the hands and feet

The jealous curses of the race Ascended even to his cell


85


WHERE IS HE?

He told us: Wait, I come again Transformed Himself through bread and wine And then appeared to Paul, and then

His life in us a present grace Appeared in love that gives itself, Love’s affections interlaced

So that the monks in capitals Drew thickets where His creatures hide Herbs adorning animals

Comes again and still once more Until like summer’s heavy rain Love and graces pour

Where has He gone and why so late This promised sacrament returned? But it is Christ Himself who waits


86


HERALDIC BEASTS

On one side for a guard there stands A desert tortoise tan of shell And on the other is a lion Turned to plaster by a spell

The tortoise holds the Holy Father Propped against his carapace The lion gazes through the window At the winter sky and space

But if the two should vivify The lion will step forth a stride To roar, the tortoise just as bold Extends his neck and scorns to hide

These are my heraldic beasts Not much bigger than my thumb But never trifle with them if They wake and move, they are not dumb


87


THE RIVERS RAN OIL

The Tigris, Euphrates A male and a female Flowing from Eden Before the great Fall

Joined at the ocean Scented with attar Of olive and date Of fig, oleander

Spread to the seas A copious scent To make the earth teem Those bountiful currents

Beasts became numerous Forests spread wide Through the lands of the Earth Before there was pride

But when the first couple Chose willful dishonor Instead of delight There was fire and terror

Ousted from Eden To an exile of toil They dug in the ground And the rivers ran oil


88


THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS

Little moth, the opera is in progress See, the doors are open, flutter in, Down an aisle above the many seats Do you see the colors, hear the music?

No, there is a cavern and a sunless warmth Currents rising, falling and a breath of wind Vibration in the air and amplitudes To make the membranes of my wings pulsate

Don’t you understand the clever story? Love and vengeance, treachery, a golden ring, Power for a sacrifice of human love Renunciation till the end of time

No, there’s nothing in it but some roominess Sunless beaming of a light, exotic smells

Listen then, my little one, those others here Know no more of God than you of this


89


THEY FOUND THE GOLD

The signs are worse, the birds fly up The pigeon’s liver spotted red, Leaves are floating in the cup The calf has bawled to wake the dead

Stir the milk and read the curds Signs portend a time of stress, Augers know the flights of birds But where they roost they only guess

Once an expedition sought Alexander’s treasure in A desert where the Greeks had fought The army of the clever jinn

They found the gold, a heavy pile Until the weight they barely bore, But when they traveled on a while They came to where they’d been before

Voices called them from the dunes Devils led them in a dance Round and round in circles, soon They lost their way, spellbound, entranced

Followed roads the jinn had made But jinns in deserts always lie, Heat descended, never shade They drank their water bottles dry,

They were never seen again–Read the entrails of the dove—Walk a desert end to end You’ll never find the shade of love


90


THE SACRED WORD

Before the second coming The dawn before that day There sat an angel on a stone A pearwood lute to play

What is the music, angel And what might you be called? I am the angel Gabriel Today the world must fall

This is a suite of Johann Bach I play before the end I love the taking of the strings The melodies they send

They are like the world of light In which all melodies Resound together on the lute I made from pearwood trees

Then he struck the final chord And sang the sacred text The sky became a sacred word The angel uttered next


91


WHAT MIGHT YOUR WISHES BE?

He came up over the Moore’s Hill ridge Just as the winter sun was rising Red shadows on a thin snow cover

It takes some guts to hike alone Even if your wind is good A titanium valve is in his heart

Bitter cold in January Along the foothills and the scarps Of the rolling Alleghenies

When the trail has narrowed in There’s not much room to place a foot On the rough and glassy ridge

Once at the foot of another ridge Climbing up in waist-deep snow It was so cold to stop was death

At dusk’s blue end I saw two mink Tumbling, romping in the drifts As the night cold squeezing tested me

Face to face to meet blue death And then pass by and say farewell Means you have to go alone

Sometimes there’s an urge to see And meet whatever stands and waits To ask: What might your wishes be?


92


AT MORNING MASS

At morning Mass were just a few But for a moment many more Were sitting there behind my pew

At ease and watching with content The Eucharistic sacrament The transformation imminent

Behind me for I sat ahead The vanished ones for whom I prayed The confident immortal dead

Yes we are the ones who died Waiting for the golden One We would by this be satisfied

They were there, I could not see Their faces for I did not turn But they had come to sit with me

But in a moment they were gone And I began to beat my breast To finish our eleison


93


WHAT COMES NEXT

The snow said print your footsteps here Then came the quail, the fox, the deer

With hoof and pad and toe and claw That all was published by the law

Afterward a war to write With shell, grenade and laser sight

Rocket salvos tracked their feet On fields that once had grown gold wheat

I saw those letters black as soot Where guns had stamped a burning foot

But then survivors, scavengers Would scatter these until they blurred

Peruse in haste this blotted text Before the spring and what comes next


94


BEHOLD THE ELEVATION

Behold the Elevation of the Host A prologue and a little preparation To bring the festal dinner of the blessed

Lovers at the banquet who will feast Upon the open glory of the mighty One A celebration that will never cease

But one who sat at table rose and said What about the little ones on Earth Abused and broken, love-starved and so seldom fed

The voice was not a low and cringing treble But rose above the singing of the psalms Nor was the questioner a probing devil

And then for many moments there was kept Great silence as the Glory showed His face That was the battered Crucified, He wept

And then the vision faded and I thought My Christ I cannot bear it yet You did Such agony of pity that You sought


95


MAKE THEM TAME

The tracks of rabbits in the snow That cut across, diagonals, Seldom do we see them though

Cottontails avoid our sight There before and afterward Though it be day, though it be night

They say the weak outlast the strong But meanwhile long of life are those Who hold the power—Lord how long?

But this is how, the weak evade The potency that must erode, Their might, their strength is overplayed

That leads the great to self-defeat Exhaustion, even boredom wins, Their triumph never made complete

But like the rabbits, so the meek Who live unnoticed as does Christ, The innocent whom Herod seeks

That being so, the strong proclaim: We will domesticate the weak And make them tame


96


IN THE TEMPLE

There is a flame that burns at night Flint and steel against the tinder, There is a fire of the day Cities burning into cinder

There is a fire on the altar, Priests of pagans giving omens, There is the fire of Isaiah Hill to hill a flaming summons

In the temple of the soul There is a flame not great, not least And there a sacrifice is made By Jesus Christ who is our Priest

There is a fire of His grace Which in the soul of us consumes The inner sanctum of that place, Sin and death and world and tomb


97


AND SO HAVE I

A peregrine close overhead No migrant but a transient On it sped

In a moment passed In this mild January Warmer than the last

Where will the falcon go? If it sees a cottontail Contrasted on the snow

Will it stop and stun? Can the target sense it Feint and jump and run?

Indifferent to me it flew On an errand soundlessly Something urgent drew

The falcon to the west Perhaps a summons Seeing to its nest

These birds of prey may know Even in a distant place Above the melting snow

That something is awry And hasten there And so have I


98


JANUARY 2015

I looked outside the window, saw A flowering that seemed to be A flowering against the law It is the end of January

Then I looked again to see Snow entrapped and improvised To look like flowering to me, I am not circumspect or wise

I will not be whole-hearted for A blossoming of warmth and buds Now there comes a winter war And there are blossoms seeping blood

They will not see another spring Who burst by rocket, flame and shell, Few are those will know their names Or care where winter blossoms fell


99


IN SEEING

What did the wolf do? What did it answer to? It answered to hunger A cold snowy winter

Down came the snow A veil the wind blows, God has gone where? To the world, everywhere

What did the flowers do? Sunward the flowers grew, Turned with the sun A million as one

The stem and the root The petal, the shoot, Height is the prayer Of the seed in the air

What does a person do? What does he answer to? Hunger or light? Reason or sight?

In seeing he finds The Christ of the mind In the Christ of the eye And in those who must die


100


GO ON

The sun went down, and all the ways grew dark —Odyssey;, trans. D. C. H. Rieu

The ways grow dark this winter dusk And soon alone, each one astray Go where you will, you will be lost, None who came will know the way

The signs were switched, the maps are false The mission given was a lie That sends you to your death or else The ones you left behind will die

We heard a thunder growing near Or we ourselves approached the sound, No one knows what could appear Behind the darkness all around

The orders say with confidence Our plans are working and by dawn There will be victory, immense Successes will be ours, go on


101


SOME GREAT FALL

The dam is fifty meters tall Of solid granite obdurate, So from the walkway in his fall

He thumped the angles of the stones Hit the bottom where he lay With no apparent broken bones

But he was dead and this is how: Each organ in the body fixed By membranes from the cleft to brow

Was ripped away and so he died, Although he seemed unhurt without The organs were detached inside

You could have rattled him and heard A sound of organs jumbled up Like pebbles shaken in a gourd

Society may seem intact But if the soul is disengaged So that no part can interact

Unless it jostles other parts—The separate mind uncoupled is From grace and spirit, soul and heart

It was the impact violent Of some great fall that made it so And none have since been innocent


102


A RACE OF ANGELS

Above, in these primeval hillsNew water runs through fossil seas,Evaporates, deposits crustsOf calcium the water frees

How many clumsy beasts kicked throughThose old uplifted bottomlandsBeneath an ocean, ever changedBefore transmuting to a man?

From tusk to tail until at lastUpright and clever, stubborn-wiseA race emerging from the pastHow many aberrations died?

God is patient yet contrivedAnother race angelic, fleetAs thought, as vital and aliveA human beings, though complete

He made them perfect from the startNo evolution was requiredAnd yet much closer to his heartThe flawed mutations He desired

For as the angels brilliant be,To fire as is flesh to frost,So even dull and sluggish we,Not one He loves is ever lost

PavelJanuary 29, 2015

103


THIS WINTER STORM

A stream of snow across the hillsWithin His place the Lord of stormsThe Lord of everlasting peace

A long and bitter winter duskThe western sky is yellow, bruisedDo not fall down or you will die

I walk five times around the churchCounter-clockwise, widdershinsInside His blessing Jesus stays

Once I waited on the CrossNow I wait for you to comeSo I can see you through to Paradise

In truth, my Host, Your place aloneIs where I truly long to beAll peace, all rest, all sanity

Then why do you not stay with Me?I have been waiting for so longTo hesitate is foolish, wrong

It is because I am not fitFor comfort yet, this winter stormCompared to me is peaceful, warm

104


AS ONE OF THEM

Whom He loves our Savior breaks As He broke on the cross, What sense in what He suffered then? Whose pain was it, whose loss?

Did Jesus not forsake Himself When giving sacrifice? What price for this abandonment Which suffered paid no price?

But children have no debt to pay Why do they suffer so? Grief and torment is the way That some must undergo

But when they ask why is this pain, The blameless have no pride, Say reason falters once again As one of them He died


105


BESIDE YOUR STEPS

The hills have spoken and the trailsUnwind the tracks of fox and doeWhich weigh near nothing on the scaleThat weighs the heavy weight of snow

We are so strong we prop the sky,So old that ages fall like rainAnd run away though they may tryTo wear us down to seas again

When you came here and printed textWith freezing, melting, sinking scriptWe shrugged, the feet that came here nextInto the morgue of ages slipped

Can you mean no more than this,The tracks the beasts print on our backs?You are much more mysterious,Beside your steps another track

PavelFebruary 2, 2015

106


WHAT WE LOST

Who told them they were blessed When the Lord God gave them Paradise? They were simple, effortless

All the creatures never fallen Lived as one beneath the shade of trees The undivided ecstasy of heaven

The sword and fire of forgetfulness Banished them from holy unison They could not see beyond their own distress

And here the creatures also die Devour one another as we do And the trees are sick with longing for the sky

Pavel February 3, 2015

107


WISDOM IS HER NAME

In all her complex weavings In the forethought of her stratagems In the subtleties of patience Shaped by all necessities In exquisite, elaborate detail Coded step by step in her determined plan Is it so?

The code is somewhere elsewhere logical Enfolding and all-purposeful In her, in us, in everything and everywhere

What is she then? Do you see the web The interlocking spiral threads?

One like her, the spider, catches wings Although it too is subject to the algorithm And to it linked as silken cable is But she, the Spirit’s artifice, detains the soul Wisdom is her name


108


WHAT MAY COME

A man whose hobby is to build Bird houses though there are no birds, So those who write although not skilled Nail and hammer at their words

Who thinks the birds will someday perch By spring at least or maybe summer, The dowel oak, the sides are birch The roof what he can glue together

What will come he can’t foretell, He hopes to hear the tenants sing, But what may come no one can tell For who knows what the sky may bring?


109


SOME LOOKED UP

Some who climbed the rough-hewn plank Looked up to see the curving ark, Others in their nervous ranks Waited while the sky turned dark

Which of us is waiting now For rescue as the sky grows dim, The sun falls down in spreading glow Against the Earth’s enormous limb?

Some have thought this just a tale An ethno-mythic parable, A legend or a tribal veil Drawn across a chronicle

Always there are refugees Fleeing from a field of war And natural calamities As there have always been before

But now I think of greater gauge And powers we have summoned up, Stupendous violence we have waged The vicious pride of the corrupt

There need not be another rain Or punishment that God exacts, Behold the clouds of wrath again And who can say the warrant lacks?


110


WHO WOULD NOT?

No escape, think of the sea To sink into a weightless warmth, A soul-supporting density A three-dimensioned glowing path

Free to glide beneath a glass The mirror of the noon day light Where undetected angels pass From night to day and then to night

No boundary or palisade No passport and no government, While overhead a thunder fades Above a distant continent

Here a muffled song and there The ripple of a golden fin, Who would not revert from air, An angry and pursuing wind?


111


SOMEWHERE IN UKRAINE

Somewhere in Ukraine, some year Yet unborn you won’t remember In your far unknowing future

But I see for you, in the street Blood poured out from skull to feet A crumpled man like surplus meat

Although at end of every war We said that we will have no more And so in penitence we swore

But we are born recidivists Homicides and hypocrites Animals with brains and fists

And so I send this visual Of murder not unusual Your ancestors were criminal

And pray that you have been released From slaughter and have got your peace Or else posterity has ceased


112


THE FUTURE

The future in its chrysalis The unknown in its uterus Dark the contour in its womb The silken wrappings of its room Vague the nature of its shape But very soon it will escape

Will it glide or will it swim In what way deploy its limbs It will assume familiar look And if by squinting be mistook But ever hatched it is unique Astonishing surprise, a freak

Monster, demon, child of us The future in its uterus


113


ENCOUNTERING INFINITY

They heard a noise at evening as of God Underneath the trees, beneath the shade Walking in the breezy time of day And when they heard the couple were afraid

Could it be the wind, the fertile Spirit Speaking through the branches as they motioned, Was it like a sea of waves, the swell Rolling through the reaches of an ocean?

Sonorous and powerful His presence Strolling through the holy aisles of Eden, Invisible until the coming dusk Descended from the majesty of heaven

They who had rejected timelessness Robbing from the innocence of power Dressed themselves in garments made of leaves, Encountering infinity they cowered


114


AS FROM MY EMPTINESS

Improbable to see five thousand men Sitting on a lawn, not more among Them than two loaves, two perch split-dried Hanging from the cord on which they’re strung

So then the wonder rabbi feeds them all As if the air had wallets or the clouds Dropped the food from somewhere out of mind - You’d either scratch your head or laugh out loud

I dreamed it did I? Yet I saw it done As from my emptiness these words are drawn As if five thousand hungry men were told To have some faith and sit down on the lawn


115


NO MORE OF ADAM’S CURSE

Tell me truly what will they resemble The souls in paradise when they assemble? Beautiful as birds of paradise Those fortunate to have been given twice To God’s good mercy and the light of grace? What will their natures be in that bright place?

Nothing that the visionless can be In shadowland where seeing doesn’t see; No one knows among the race that fell What citizens of paradise could tell If those who live on Earth would comprehend What lies beyond the Alpha and the end

But this I think I know and you might too, Imagine what the folk of Eden knew, That all is one, most beautiful, eternal Never old but always fresh and vernal, No barrier there was between the dream And consciousness, they did not have that seam

That all is one and they were one with all As ever bright as spring with no nightfall, That what they saw and praised is what they spoke Before the oneness of creation broke; Such will paradise resemble still When unity of love will be fulfilled

But more than this, the barrier between What spirits say and what they feel and mean Will be dismantled and the souls converse In harmony, no more of Adam’s curse That he within and everyone outside Would never touch, his fullest love denied


116


LIKE THE RITUAL

Like an eagle on His nest The Father waits above the world Above causality and time and space

The universe is His to save Or plunge into oblivion As spinning foam dissolves into the wave

If He spread the infinite As if He would take flight All day would turn to night

And if He folded it again Space would fold against itself And time would end

In what way does the balance hold Between destruction and creation The world’s beginning and the old?

It is like the ritual Of great austerity Completed in the cenacle

There He took what He had given And gave it back again But so the twelve became eleven

If the soul were never free to go It would be changeless and unbending No sentience to know


117


FROM THE START…

From the start of everything On this you can depend, Starting is not finishing The end is not the end

Nothing ends despite the throes Of one side or the other, There’s a thing the devil knows Never utter never

Those who watch the world on high Seldom interfere Even when the simple die, Calamity draws near

Let a soldier shoot a gun There will be a battle, God is no automaton The angels are not cattle

Peace has never been the spread When war is on the plate, Judas took a piece of bread And flesh is what he ate


118


EMERGING FROM THE SEA

If thinking is an instinct Like walking up a hill, Like swallowing and drinking Like eating up your fill

The blinking of an eyelid, Drawing at a straw, Would the mind be mindful According to a law?

Thinking is the plover Not knowing where it goes, Born to be a rover The way a river flows

Thought is like the pigeon From Noh’s menagerie That landed on a mountain Emerging from the sea


119


THE WINTER OF THE GUN

Hills disperse beneath a haze of snow Above the ridge comes summer’s overthrow, Now the conquest, victory of winter Means there will be bitter wind forever

Overthrow, the north assembles all Its energy and smothering snow fall, Brings enough to finish the defeat, The immobility of cold and sleet

If it lasts till summer hearts will fail Beneath a fall of everlasting hail, Rain is what we need, and summer sun But armies come, the winter of the gun

If it lasts the rule of snow will spread A monarchy, the kingdom of the dead


120


THE PRISM

Simple is the white of snow Containing every color But if I look for elements Simplicity won’t measure

A prism held against the light Will separate the tones From violet to green to red That seemed as white alone

Are the colors made of white Or white of all the hues? I unify or separate Exactly as I choose

If I search for signs of God I split or unify, So I may confirm His grace Or if I wish deny

He is in the unity And also in the schism, Harmony the life of God And wonder is the prism


121


BY REASON OF HIS LOVE

If love can bring the dead to life Then love will be much more Than looking over darkling seas To see another shore

It will be like the Christ who walked A lake in stormy weather, And that was death He walked across So death is not forever

Christ is love who walks across The storm of death untouched, The violence that pulls us down Infirmity’s dry clutch

And this is how He signed to us He is the Master of The tempest of mortality By reason of His love


122


WE DREAMED THAT WE WERE DEAD

The world rose up from sleep When Christ rose from the tomb But now it sleeps again

Those who would not wake In the garden of Gethsemane Turn away in dreams

Who keeps vigil now? Christ alone prepares, Watches in the garden

The gibbous moon shines out And gives a brilliant light And the stars withdraw

Although the moon is bright Shining in their faces They turn away and sleep

It is the human race That must arise from death When death is conquered

When He comes again Everyone will wake Remembering their dreams

We dreamed that we were dead But Christ rose from the grave And we awoke


123


AND THEN HE STOOD UPRIGHT

By the end of a bitter winter The frost goes down a meter, Admit the soul is ground How far can frost go down?

Can the life be lost, Repel a killing frost? Take love away, such chill Can grip the soul and kill

If deeper, deeper goes The clutching of the snows The life of us will stop And never make a crop

Never hope to raise The flower of God’s praise; Then what can bring a thaw? The One whom Mary saw

The garden green at dawn, Across the earth was drawn A rod of living light And then He stood upright


124


YET FORTY DAYS AND NINEVEH SHALL BE OVERTHROWN

They listened and believed him, The marvel of it all, For many hear but do not heed A prophesied downfall

Others do not even hear The noises in the street, They flourish in a deafness till A downfall is complete

Anyone is justified To say this is a tale About the inescapable, Folk wisdom and a whale

Others might identify A sort of bleak acumen, Oftener than oftener The city comes to ruin

Nineveh attended once But ultimately fell, We are the inheritors Succumbing to a spell

Jonah has posterity Prefiguring no lie, But all the fattened citizens Deny, deny, deny


125


THE DREAM OF PRIDE

He said: the door is open, I thought I saw it there, A portal into heaven Opened in the air

A doorway or a window, Beyond it I could see Four rivers and a garden, A splendid fruiting tree

The sunlight on the rivers Was like an aureole That sanctifies and covers The blessing of the soul

Jacob dreams a ladder Between the earth and sky, But he can climb it never Heaven is too high

Paradise descended Where angels rose and fell, Heaven condescended His destiny to tell

But now the portal closes And seldom opens wide As Paradise disposes Against the dream of pride


126


TWO WAYS OF LOOKING AT IT

In one the past has evidently passed Over with, confirmed and not compounded, Being now is not to be misused, Nothing in the present is confounded

But in the other way comes the eternal, That which happened happens never when But all is purpose, union in repose, There is no present, future or a then

Now late winter streaming through the window Lights the desert plants a glowing green That I have placed before me at my elbow Who is it who looks and who has seen?

Time is of the creature and the eye That sees itself and catechizes why?


127


INSIDE ST. LEONARD’S

Crowing on a red brick wall, strutting up and down A gibbous moon in daylight above the black-winged clown, Selene silver blackened, a rivet in a dome Far above the windows of the town’s retired home

This is what the crow declares: You and we are one Between myself, the moon, the sky make no comparison, We are undivided, and that is what I call Crowing and swashbuckling along a red brick wall

Those inside St. Leonard’s listen to the cry Thinking that they are so old that soonest they must die, But if they are immortal they will dissolve instead Into the great blue oneness above a white death bed

Like to a weak solution their souls will concentrate By God’s evaporation into another state, Salt beneath the sunlight, crust along a beach Though gibbous is the winter moon, far above their reach

Pavel February 28,2015

128


DECORATED

He wrote to all the blogs and on-line papers Demanding war against some other country And every time he did another skull Was hung around his neck by grinning demons

A skull with skin attached and shreds of flesh Bonus for his bloody dedication, Invisible except to fiends of hell And weightless in this world, though not another

More and more and heavier and heavier Each son, each father lost became a head To hang around the neck of that warmonger The decorated eater of the dead

Pavel March 2, 2015

129


THE RUINED LORD

If you were ever broken, the pieces are still there, Try and pick them up again if you should ever care, Put yourself together from fragments on the ground, Stand erect on sutured legs, be sure to look around

See the others mended although they always hide Fractures of the inner self, the damages inside, Was ever such an army as invalids like these Battered and forsaken rising from their knees?

As Jesus healed the lepers and vivified the dead Wine made up from water, the famished many fed, So He puts together what agony has broken, Jesus is the ruined Lord come back again as token

Pavel March 2, 2015

130


THE BLACK CREPE

We may yet see the world in funeral crepe Streamers of blackness from burning cities So that from above the blue is blocked The night side spreading to both her sides

And the moon looks down, wrote Robinson Jeffers, She says: My sister, what ails you so? A wretched scurf from the mites on my skin An inflammation that soon will clear

Then you will face my seas again Cold and healthy with curds of foam The shallows bright with flowering coral But first the crepe of the black cremation

Must this be? Said the moon to her sister Her silver cheeks against the sun, I am prepared my sister dear And have been since they scored my skin

Pavel March 3, 2015

131


NEEDING

Tell us, Brenda, how long have you had MS? Fifteen years, she’s thirty-eight, looks less, Slim and pretty and leans on her walking stick Aside from her frailty she seems not to be sick

Except for the obvious slurring of her speech And the trouble perhaps in her extended reach, Her dog like her is starved for company, She’s home by day and needs someone to see

And O the strong compassion that I feel The unexpressed but hidden that is real, Invites a visit though she hardly knows Who we may be and through her needing grows

Needing one another and so frail It seems sometimes a trivial detail

Pavel March 5, 2015

132


LOST

Shelter in the flat Antarctic Safe in your protecting shack, Wander in the flatness, whiteness, Which direction takes you back?

Lose the sense of all direction When the drift begins to blow, Wise it is to plant some pickets, Crimson pennants on the snow

Wander in a world without The love of God it is like this: Killing cold and featureless Where dry illusions flow and hiss

Do not lose the cabin buried Underneath the white plateau, Wise it is to plant some pickets, Crimson pennants on the snow

Pavel March 6, 2015

133


THE WINDS OF TIME

The angle of the study heads southwest So that in March the window lets the light Come streaming from the morning in a column That leaves the window fading to the right

Later on, three quarters after three Sunlight floods in glory as before, Golden on the window plants and pours Golden bars against the wooden floor

The study is a ship that ploughs ahead Through time as if a vessel on a reach Of golden light to find a port of call Above a golden harbor and a beach

There the souls are walking to and fro, The winds of time refreshing as they blow

Pavel March 6, 2015

134


THERE COMES…

There comes the wretched prodigal, the ne’er-do-well The one that everybody said had gone to hell, Rags for clothes, no shoes at all and one black eye I guess wherever he got to the well ran dry

There’s the Dad with cleaner clothes, a fancy ring Gold I think and solar systems glittering, Sentimental fool, a hug and tears run down, He’d better stop that blubber or the kid will drown

That’s a good one, look at how they pour the wine The way the dancers pound their feet is not refined, Don’t you hate their gushiness, it makes me cringe And every time I do it makes the fire singe

Pavel March 7,2015

135


IN ALL YOUR BEAUTY

The trees are waking from their sleep Whose roots have tunneled fathoms deep And touched the larva, mole and grub With bristle, knuckle, bend and nub

And so confirmed to be alive The living that will rise and thrive, While they comb out their tender hair With fingers of the southern air

On the limb a wordless note That some believe an empty rote, But these are lessons taught by love From deepest root to branch above

Which is the best of any prayer To sing the light in wordless air, Say: Be of us and we will bathe In all Your beauty and be brave

Pavel March 8, 2015

136


SO TELL US, CHRIST

Who believes the love of God If one has been denied The love of human beings first? All love, stillborn has died

But then if God Himself is love And He was crucified, Christ foretells how love becomes The breaching in His side

Love itself received the Cross The hammer and the nail, And if we crucify our love Then love itself will fail

But if we offer love for love It will rise up again, So tell us, Christ who rose for us If love will rise, and when

Pavel March 9, 2015

137


ALL ADMIRED BABYLON

All admired Babylon, but Babylon recedes Babylon the mighty is overwhelmed by weeds, Towers crack and crumble like maggot-sickened bread The city that was strident is the city of the dead

But still an army swaggers up and down the street Merchants come together to falsify and cheat, They haggle and they swindle though long ago deceased Servants set a table at the graveside for a feast

I was once in Babylon many years ago Saw the mighty ziggurat illuminated glow, Cast around the city a dome of lurid light But light projects the shadows to intensify the night

From these deepest shadows a pestilence came out Greed and great indifference, depravity and doubt

Pavel March 11, 2015

138


HE MAY REPLY

An angel took me up and showed The fire that the angel sowed, Seeds of fire in a field, Seeds of wrath that he unsealed

I asked: When will these seedlings bear The flames of some deserved despair? He said: As Sodom will become The burning of your kingdoms come

He said: when Samson set ablaze Tails of foxes in those days Of ancient Israel that was such A fire that the world will touch

Then the fields of growing grain Now the cities of the plain, Around the circle of the sphere The blazing of the atmosphere

I asked: is there a way to stop The growing of this burning crop? He said: I am a creature sent To compensate the innocent

Above all else for this repaid: The children burned in fire raids; “Save me mother for I burn” For this God’s vengeance you will earn

I asked: is there a way to halt This punishment against our fault? The angel paused and then replied: Ask One who for these children died

There is less time than you can know For even now these seedlings grow, Appeal to Him, He may reply But who knows how He will, not I


139


THE STRANGEST THING OF ALL

I tell you of the strangest thing of all How love can come to love beyond a wall For love can love the infant held in arms And love can love the child who comes to harm Love can love the father and the mother Siblings and the helpless and all others Love can love the lover for her grace Or love her for the sweetness of her face Love can love the absent who return Love is given, taken but not earned

But this is stranger far than love for those Love can love the one who dies and goes Goes beyond the visible and high For we can love the ones we love who die And if we thought them vanished into dust We would not want to love them, but we must


140


FOR WHAT HAS IT BEEN BORN?

They let the strong force go To be used against their own As if it were a club or stone

What else can they invent To murder one another, What can they discover?

The flocks of heaven gather Angels in their place Perched above the human race

They look down in dismay: See, they are the same As when his brother Abel fell to Cain

They offer sacrifice Of their own flesh and blood These dirty beings of the mud

The Lord God said to them My children wait a while These creatures of decision are on trial

The verdict is to come The Judge is on His throne And sees the club and stone

It is not far from these To wrenching from the core The greatest energies of war

And so there is a hush In heaven and they wait And on this creature meditate

For what has it been born, To be self-murdered or survive To be aborted or remain alive?


141


NO BRANCHES LOW ENOUGH

All illusions will be shattered Suddenly we’ll understand That nothing that we wanted mattered That all our bricks were made of sand

And when the world becomes a waste Of ruined cities and of lives, Inner images defaced, Only friendship will survive

Friendship, love and loyalty Of which there had been short supply, All the rest insanity For which the mass of us will die

And as we look across the fields Of rubble that were once our streets, Prophecies will be unsealed Our triumphs shown to be defeats

Who will be left, no one can know Not even prophets see that much, But on those streets the forests grow No branches low enough to touch


142


THE GROVES OF GLORY

Seated at the banquet of the spirits Some are not surprised by where they are Who feast on truth and happiness forever Who feast with deep and pleasurable hunger Appeased though ever whetted by their joy

But some who were the dull and bitter ones Will be surprised at where and how they are Look around them as they gaze at music Listen to the colors of the banquet Taste its welcome as it were a nectar

For they had been restrained and put in prison By one who must despise his limitation That powerful in evil he may be He cannot make a single joy or welcome Create a life or else take pleasure in it

But those who come to heaven will awaken As if from some profound and healing sleep And they will gaze in joy at those around them Refreshed beside the waters of the boundless Beneath the groves of glory and of peace


143


TWO RIVERS

Water from under the altar In a stream that no one sees, The water becomes a river The desert a grove of trees

A river waters the desert But the desert only grows The apples of desire And yet the river flows

How can there be two rivers Of death and fertility? The one is the water of mercy For the desert inside of me


144


PRESENT TENSE

A sign in a grassy field: When nuclear war begins The ban on school prayer will be lifted

The godless will call on God Will pray penitential prayer The criminals fall on their knees

That much will it take to bring The hosts of millennium To the gates of Jerusalem

And in the immediate fire When flames have melted the streets Truth will consume the denier

And they will have lived for once In the light of the living God The eternal present tense


145


THE FALCONRY OF MAMMON

Those who keep a raptor for a pet Sometimes suffer pitiful illusions That falcons, hawks and eagles love them best But these are birds of prey and love no one

Falcons fly when launched and then come back Because they are conditioned to return, But have no feelings or affections, lack Emotions that a falconer might earn

So is there the falconry of mammon— The loveless tie investments to the wrist Which they may launch in flight to stoop upon A victim profit fat with interest

But these are cold of eye, expressionless And fastened loosely by a golden jess


146


THE GOLDEN LION

The golden lion goes one way The tortoise goes another, The lion searches for his prey The tortoise goes for cover

When they travel far enough Their rendezvous has come, The tortoise has a shell that’s tough And supple as a drum

The lion reaches out his paw Attempts to flip the tortoise, Grips the tortoise in his jaws A pestle and a mortise

Unlike the other tortoises This one will live forever, Stronger than all fortresses, Invincible and clever

Unlike the others of its kind It can afford to wait, The lion searches through his mind For tortoises he ate

Never have I seen a one As heavy and as strong As anything beneath the sun, There must be something wrong

The lion batters at his prey And makes a savage sound, But all the more the tortoise weighs And sinks into the ground


147


THE ELEVATION OF THE HOST

The Elevation of the Host The blessed light, infinity—I wondered at the smallness of The inner life and self of me

I dwindled to a point of time, How insufficient as a host Of life eternal, aught is mine, I am a tendril, wisp, a ghost

He said: I will remove that husk Which must disintegrate at last, You creatures of the fleeting dusk Between the future and the past

I will show the soul inside As in this bread My corpus lives, Sieve out your gross ungraceful pride For that is what My grace forgives


148


MORE BRIGHT THAN MANY SUNS

Melt snow, melt heart, melt flesh itself We are the frozen ones, Spirits of the Lord are swift More bright than many suns

Then how can we become as they If like a pinch of dust Unburnable we blow away Before a light can touch?

This is how it is devised: God keeps us in His hand, More sympathetic and more wise Than we can understand

He says: You are My firefly And when I let you go You will be brilliant as am I But with a lesser glow


149


ALTAR WINE BEFORE THE SNOW

Under cold frames in the garden Beets and spinach take advantage, Plant your lettuce, choy and kale Under glass, they’ll never fail

For this may be a winter-spring In which by April few birds sing, In May and June if frost be hoar By summer solstice look for war

Watch for little spades of chard That seek the sunlight in the yard, Wait with me to know the truth When sprouts and collards show the tooth

But let the sun of peace shine out There will be sunshine, never drought, And grapes around the arbor grow For altar wine before the snow


150


THERE IS A CORNER

There is a corner round which we Will not proceed because we see Around it, somehow, corner-wise The dread familiar one denies

But if I take myself in hand To lead my soul to understand What mind enclosed will not concede, Then round that corner it will lead

Then if but once my soul has peered Despite the corner it has feared Into another crossing street Another mind and soul to meet

Who was mere steps behind my fear, The corner hiding what was near, I will observe a soul and mind Which by its terror was confined


151


OR WAS HE REAL?

Someone dead I never met but lately read about Stood beside my easy chair in the coda of a dream Solid as reality that lives and does not seem

Judging from the photographs his features disarranged As if they had been glued together ill and hurriedly In some infernal bucket shop or crazy factory

As if he were assembled from a load of unlike parts According to a plan that’s only partly understood From realistic painted cloth and crooked scraps of wood

He held me in a skewed regard, his glasses at a tilt And then as if a flickering that flashes on a wall Vanished from my view as if he wasn’t there at all

Something in that apparition makes me want to know How much of our perception is assembled from the scraps The little pieces manikins assemble in our naps

Put together in a sort of mock satiric way By something old that gathers up the trimmings of our lapses And sews them in confusion to the shreds of our synapses

Or was he real and do we see the recently departed Paroled from their purgation uncompleted if we read About them with some interest, then swiftly they recede


152


SOMETHING MARVELOUS

If once you contemplate the dawn And see the clouds configured there, Amber, rose and wisps of wool, The gray of dawn’s nocturnal vair

Remember that when Jacob dreamed Of angels’ rising and descent, The sky was just as this, the light Fell shining from the firmament

And when the Nameless wrestled him Scorpions had stirred their stings, Desert birds inside in their nests Stretched and warmed their stiffened wings

All was as it is today The color and the sense the same, Except for something marvelous That wrestled him but had no name


153


A FIRE BURNS WITHIN

If once a seam of coal is set on fire, It burns and burns until by time extinguished, A seam of coal may burn a thousand years Though shafts above abandoned mines may vanish

Burns and burns through winter and through summer Vapor floating skyward to the surface, Radiant enough to melt the snow Smoldering as if it were a furnace

But we have set the nucleus alight Confined it to a pit of heavy metal, Silently it burns beneath the world And who can put it out besides the Devil?

Let them know that underneath the skin Of common earth a fire burns within


154


THE MIGHTY DOORS

Toward the Savior’s Sacred Heart Many crippled make their way All who wish to be there may

Dawn within the chamber spreads In His light the blind can see Love’s delight and majesty

Know how many gather there Look around them, recognize The beauty of the meek and wise

In the crossings of that Heart Vaults and columns rise above Assemblies of eternal love

Harmonious the blessed preach Speechless ones can find their speech Sing their blessing each to each

All are welcome to remain But if there be a few who leave Because for lack of love they grieve

And from His charity they flee The mighty doors remain apart In welcome to the Sacred Heart


155


THE MEN OF SODOM

The men of Sodom ask for some ID The enemies of human liberty, Here is Sodom seeded from the past, Rebuilt and renovated, made to last

The suitable perversion now is this: A document subdermal in a cyst, A constant electronic pheromone, Transducer and a tracer and a phone

But still above the valley God surveys The outrage of creation in those days, The pleading of the patriarch in vain To spare the wayward Cities of the Plain

Again a blinding light, the guests expose Eternal light and bring them to a close


156


I REMEMBER

Mystery do not retire From the heartless and denier, Unbelieving base betrayer Hypocrite and spirit slayer

You have died for those as well As saints confined within a cell, Bore the whip for cheat and thief Who devastate a child’s belief

For cruel despots, savage masters All who profit from disasters, These you also died to save Whose stronghold is a self-dug grave

Those inside the serpent’s stone The poisoned fruit of death, alone, Even these you cause to live For their contrition save, forgive

Forgive us in this Holy Week Who know not well the love we seek, For if we knew it we would know The consolation You bestow

For I remember those who broke An infant’s back with savage strokes And when the savers saw that child He looked at those who came and smiled


157


I WILL DIP YOU IN THE SKY

If I were a redwood tree as tall as many spires I would be intimate with clouds, the friend of many fliers, My toes would grope beneath the ground, the coolness of it feel The sun and moon go round my head, the stars a burning wheel

Although I might be slow of speech, the wind would serve as tongue Thriftily my needles drink the air, enormous lung, I would have lived with centuries and know them as my friends My life would seem as long as hills’ as though without an end

But even I, magnificent, my body thick and straight A column in a temple green would still anticipate The answer to a question, the puzzle of my soul The slow and patient heart of me, O Lord what is my goal?

Could it be to root and grow the greatest of the tall? Be of hope, my spirit says, though everything must fall, You are as frail and breakable as any twig or straw For I will dip you in the sky my images to draw

Pavel March 31,2015 They fled away, their blood ran cold and thin

And I predict that other sheep will face The terror of their own eon and place, Informers and the cops of that gray hour Will cause the flock to cover and to cower

Now listen, there is safety not the least In hiding from the predatory beast Who will emerge from waiting in its den, The beast of Hell, devourer of men

Triumph is to turn once more, defy The monster in the cavern of the eye For that is where it lives and not elsewhere, Those who see it kill it if they dare

Pavel September 28, 2015

158


159


THE SUN BEGINS

The sun begins to build in strength As Earth relaxes at full length, Crocus, jonquil poking through The warming soil where last they grew

Buds of chestnut, dogwood trees Swelling till the leaves break free Unfurl their parasols to spread Shades of April overhead

The sun is vassal over all Vaulting higher toward nightfall, Day by day increasing heat Till equinox and summer meet

Who is Lord beyond the star That sways a mastery so far, Beyond, above, without, within Forever potent to begin?

Pavel April 1, 2015

160


BEHIND A WALL

A splendid welcome for the Prince of Peace But in the doorways lurking the police, Fronds of palm trees scattered in the road But Judas crouching on them like a toad, Disciples swear endurance at His side But when the whip has whistled they will hide

Knowing what will happen we conclude Christ is green and Caiaphas is shrewd, Power always triumphs over trust Hypocrites are wiser than the just, Lamps are lighted in the upper room The burning oil dispels but little gloom

Triumph over death is hard to see Behind a wall of bad publicity

Pavel April 2, 2015

161


TENEBRAE

Ierusalem, Ierusalem, convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum

Now the candles are extinguished One by one, lament my city, Truth and noble poverty Love, self-giving charity

Peace and patience, homeliness Modesty and cheerful grace, Hope and faith and honesty Mercy, justice interlaced

Benevolence and kindliness Clemency and thankfulness, Piety and decency Each the joy that God will bless

See the blessings like the fingers Folded in a human prayer, Lights extinguished, Tenebrae In the darkness Christ is there

In the darkness Christ is waiting Offering a light to guide Souls bewildered by the shadows From the blindness of their pride

Pavel April 3, 2015

162


WHEN I SHOWED . . .

When I showed the night my Easter candle I offered up my soul, the little flame, Insipid gift to God above the altar Lost within the splendor of His name

Thinnest light beneath His utter star Flame He can extinguish with a breath Who gathers up the hurricanes of space The greater wind of all that we name death

The cheapest candle sold, the cheapest wax But something else the Risen bought tonight: The ignorant receive the melted wax But God has paid forever for the light

Pavel April 4, 2015

163


WHEN I AWAKE AGAIN

She happened in the cool bright night The spirit of content, Now rest, she said, as sleepers might To whom my gift is sent

That all is well and as it goes Have nothing to regret, Lie sweetly in your long repose Though waking you forget

And when the constellations fell Beneath the western hill, The rising sun approached, repelled The darkness and the chill

But there was cold and cryptic fear That I could not explain, O Christ your Wisdom hover near When I awake again

Pavel April 6, 2015

164


CONCEALED FROM WHOM?

Why does he take his firearm to church, A gun that’s light and small enough to pocket, Concealed from whom, the angels?

He takes it everywhere, but why to God? Crucified, the risen Lord invincible Looks down and weighs his soul

For when they took Me to the Cross, He says I did not bruise a reed, snuff out a wick Isaiah tells the generations

Fearful ones, you make the world afraid—Afraid of you, your enemies destroy you, Shadows come around you and you shoot them

Beneath the Cross I see the weapons offered High explosives, poison gas and fire A thousand cities burning in the sanctuary

The blood of Christ drips down and steams like incense The cries of burning children rise to Him— Their parents cannot save them

This too is the present world’s oblation An offering as if the flesh of beasts A bitter ceremonial

Pavel April 7, 2015

165


SHE HATES TO SEE THE POSSUMS

She hates to see the possums Gambol in Fox Hollow, But foxes are the demon Creatures of the shadows

One is a marsupial Pocketed and fey, The fox an elemental More sinister than they

Heavy dusk at twilight Dawn before the sun, Most of all at midnight The fox and vixen run

But once in a midwinter In daylight through the snow I saw a vixen canter To startle mice below

Pavel April 8, 2015

166


THE SPACE OF NOTHING

His head was changed to a conical stub A small eraser mixed with clay, The body resembled you and me But the noddle wiped the walls away

On it scratched a sort of face But as it rubbed it disappeared Until there was nothing left of him, Death was not what he had feared

The wall removed him from the room Or you might say he was sucked through The space he made by rubbing outThe love of God that is proved true

For some there may be hell or not Of that we living may not know, But also winds of nothingness That through the space of nothing blow

Pavel April 10, 2015

167


IT IS NEAR

Scouts surveying the unknown Saints and holy ones and prophets, These explore the outer zone Beyond the planets and the comets

Farther than the oldest stars Galaxies and fields of dust, Beyond where swarms of angels are, The purgatory of the just

To where in loving perigee The blessed souls in orbit stay, Wherever light from light may be The mystics travel, there are they

But for a moment, then they fall From that alluring lost frontier Which falsely the unknowing call Impossible, though it is near


168


THE STROKE

At the summit, world behind you Still the brilliant light before you Out of darkness carry on

Those who reach it climbing high See a valley when they die Mountain ranges farther on

It is the shadow cast behind That forms the image of the mind Cast against the wall of sense

Though before you range and peak Beyond them all the place you seek Past measurement immense

And we who see them shrunken so Their lolling limbs and bodies so See nothing of their destiny

And so I saw her when the stroke That killed her when her body broke But not what she would see


169


SUDDENLY AT DAWN AND SINCE

Suddenly at dawn and since Pear trees blossom and the quince Around the mansions of the rich

Hedges of the berry briar Grow around their branches higher Rivers make a mound and ditch

The world has closed itself away No matter what they do and say No matter what they proffer, pay

Green will overgrow their walls Until the rotting curtain falls Dust of mortar rains around

Beneath the cupola of green Dexterity and pride unseen The vine and rootlet bring it down

Frost will wrench the bricks apart Rain the sculptor works his art Nothing of the house is left

Nothing of what money built That will not suffocate in silt Soft the stronghold built by theft

Then the woodland scraped and scoured Limed and poisoned, burned and soured Will by seed of seasons grow

When the geese of winter pass Above the withered winter grass Who that knew them then will know?


170


WHEN THEY HOLD YOUR FLESH ON HIGH

When they hold Your flesh on high All who see will never die, Holy blood for all to see Poured for all is poured for me

One communion and one breath Drawn within, there is no death, Death will fall, a ruined place And who can find a single trace?

Then as one the spirits fed By holy flesh the holy bread No more to live alone, apart Communioned in Your Sacred Heart

Behind the bread, the wine, the veil His ampleness will never fail, Enough for every soul who lives And they will live if they are His


171


MANY OFFERINGS

As your angel offers at Your seat The flesh and blood surrendered on the cross, Let us too lay ransom at Your feet The deaths which we accounted as a loss

Take from us these vanished precious hearts Whom we have mourned as if they do not live, From our souls our offerings depart—Grief in love and love that will forgive

Your messenger appears before Your throne, Let him bear the gifts of sorrow’s praise, We are poor and small but not alone And these are many offerings we raise


172


IF AND WHEN

If and when we are relieved of sin, Of greed and self-importance, loathsome skin, Will it be painful to be stripped away Against the tender spirit, will it flay?

Oh no, He said, I am more tender than The softest woman and the gentlest man, For when the skin of pride is taken off It will by My devising be so soft

That like a glove removed without a pain The skin will come away with every stain To leave you uncorrupted and so pure That you will be amazed, so is My cure

If your soul submits to Me with trust I will remove from you that loathsome crust


173


OPENING A DOOR

A farmer drove a wagon once upon a time, Horses in their harness, a hopper full of lime, The wagon was uncovered, a rain began to teem The lime was slaked with water, started in to steam

Lime awash in water heats until combustion, The cart was set on fire by oxygen and suction, A flaming wooden wagon, the horses in the harness Bucked and pulled the cargo as if it were a furnace

A lesson to be understood: even stone can burn, The world is full of lessons, some are even learned, That which seems unburnable can flame within a second, Catastrophes will happen which no one ever reckoned

The world is ectothermic and often set aflame By unexpected chances for which we have no name, Coincidence is normal, as we have learned before And hell is made accessible by opening a door


174


AN INFANT WAS CHRISTENED

An infant was christened by ritual signs On the nineteenth of April of twenty-fifteen By the oil, by the water, the traces divine Which symbolize presents, effect what they mean

Who will propose a future for him Although we are ignorant, careless and blind, Innocent body in soul and in limb, What will he know and what will he find?

Will he endure the perversion of war, Prairies of rubble and cities of iron Rising in moonlight corrupt to the core, Stripped and exposed to the staring demon?

Will there be peaceful and plentiful shade Green as the forests that drink from the sky? He hasn’t yet wondered why people are made Or take to the light or why he must cry


175


CHAIN REACTION

In the massive metal They call uranium Which lies inert until A flood of slower neutrons Provokes a chain reaction The atoms burst apart Escape from their attraction Release the binding force That held them close together

There is another massive Body bound together A peaceful congregation We call community But then a force cascades Which only few foretell And no one can control That breaks the bonds apart Which hold the peace together

Fissionable world Massive and unwilling But deep within the metal Unstable as they spin Around each other’s orbits The progeny of Cain Breed a chain reaction That breaks the mass apart Creates a detonation The energy of war


176


TREES TO WEAR

I will embroider this on that Said God, about the blossomed pear Sewn against the pale magnolia Handsome robe for sky to wear

But who will notice these on that Except if they will look from there Where I have placed them in a line So that the sky those trees can wear

If you will find the three aligned I will My scene of beauty share, The marvel of my great design That azure has two trees to wear

But if you creatures never see Or look at that but never care, I still will sew the blossomed trees So that the sky has trees to wear


177


ON THE WATCH

She said, take up your post, stay here Where ever that is Christ is near, It was, is now, shall ever be The stronghold of the Trinity

A fastness measured stout and tall Saint Michael is the general, Reconnaissance by Noah’s dove That brings the news of faith and love

The arsenal is mercy, peace, Their potency will not decrease, Humility the faultless shield That conquers when it takes the field

She, the saint of souls, the rose Said watch by day and night with those, And if the fortress seems forsaken Call on me and I will hasten

Then I’ll come with Christ the Son Commander of this garrison, The soldiers of His great command And on the watch we all will stand


178


BRIEF SPRING

There are forces in creation, Gravity and that which holds The nucleus against repulsion, Electroweak, which is two-fold

There is more we never see More than that we may soon know, A plan enfolds infinity The world above, the world below

And you who see the flowering plum The pear, the quince and all that flowers, Remember that there is a sum Of all the brief and passing hours


179


THE WAR BETWEEN MARCH AND APRIL

Snow or petals, ambiguity, What’s that falling from the apple tree? Chilliness and April have divorced Winter brought a suit and April lost

Now it comes to seize the property Every pear and every apple tree, Melancholy tulips have been closed Early March and April are opposed

Ever since the morning of the world When the first anemones uncurled Orderly progression is the law Winter is succeeded by a thaw

But once there was an army of the snow That overpowered April long ago


180


WHEN ALL THE WOUNDS CRIED OUT

If every wound of ours would cry The world would hear such great lament That all the living would reply To whom the Lord our Christ was sent

Down came He, took on the grief Of love denied and love ignored, On left and right a tortured thief And from His side His mercy poured

Then He felt the pain and dread Took on the grief that was unheard By darkened minds and souls of lead—He is the bright and living Word

Still the wounds cry out in pain And He has means to offer cure, The risen Christ will come again But while we wait we must endure


181


EVERY POWER

When we heard the fibers creak We knew the tree had stopped the wind, Ran without the breath to speak For when it fell we might be pinned

Tulip poplar, tall and old Fungus-rotted through and through, Wind of winter rough and cold, Desiccated, azure blue

If you hear the fibers crack Then by reflex start and run, Time has taken up its slack, Suddenly your life is done

Unless you run—and this is true That every power has its fall When it has rotted through and through, Though some may see no rot at all


182


IMMORTAL

Alex took a hundred pills a day Anything to keep demise away, Always keeping registers to measure His pulse, his temperature and his blood pressure

A hundred years is what he levelled for A hundred fifty, sixty, maybe more, To having no commitments reconciled, No wife, no friendly intimates, no child

His lab was dedicated to that end, He had no time for marriage or a friend, But even so he was an optimist A totally devoted scientist

A benefactor of humanity He pressed ahead for great longevity, And while he worked the seasons went and came, Immortal, ever changing, and the same


183


LOOKING DOWN

Where I stand remain but few, Come back with me to where I grew, A ridge of tall and patient pines And of these houses were no signs

But now I am alone with these, A cawing crow, some other trees, Beneath me are the graves of men Of us not many specimens

But we will be their epitaph And long the summer winds will laugh


184


A SQUARE IN ATHENS

From the chapel off Ermou The chanting of a soloist, Latticed doorway letting through The half-tones of the Akathist

Praising Mary sweet and good Who bore the Christ to be our own, Hardly to be understood Through traffic’s bellowed monotone

It is by far the smallest church In Athens, let the voice go on, The Virgin is disposed to hear Our plea for Christ’s eleison

I have known, would know again She can be anywhere as well, Swift in mercy to befriend The soldier and the martyr’s cell

Summoning through time and years The chanting voice behind the door In Athens now again I hear And know whom it was chanting for


185


AND ALL ALIVE

I squinted at some pagan verse Cold and crisp it was, and terse, Like apples twisted from the boughs That tremble as the black wind soughs

Crooked branches brittle-gray Fretted through with time’s decay, Their pagan apples sour-sweet Though long preserved and strange to eat

The poets gave the falling of The climbing sun, the noon of love And how the creeping shadows grope Across Olympus’ chilly slope

Poems gone as ours will go, Persephone descending low She all of us precedes unless Our Creed is right that we confess

So that the pagan poets come To Christ’s more bright Elysium Than ever Aristotle trod Or Homer did or Hesiod

Now in retrospect foretell The scouring by Christ of Hell So that in hope they may revive, No grief to them and all alive


186


THE AWNINGS

Office building, tell me what you see, Other buildings burning under me, People running, taken under fire, Tall and short, but meanwhile nothing higher

I am safe for now but so exposed I want the streets around me to be closed, Why do people shout and scurry so With fire made to make my windows glow?

Tell me why my elevators stopped Why the awnings on the street-front dropped, There must be something wrong but I am steel And stone of lime and so I cannot feel

Tell me why the awnings drop and slam It puzzles me so empty that I am


187


EPIGRAM President, will you divestYour treasure from your treasure chest? It would give me too much painTo pauperize my sweet Ukraine,But with it I could still commandIn Kiev or in Switzerland Pavel April 29, 2015

188


MIRACLES

Day has always followed night Darkness always follows light But very few complain of tedium

Boredom never was diurnal Nor is tedium nocturnal Except above the polar circle

Day and night are complements Ring the senses with a fence Of habit and its daily profits

But if the sequences should change Day and night would be estranged The daily order differently arranged

Triple nights and then the day Would mean a playfulness at play And vice versa, or some other way

Reality is regular A bargain that we all prefer To which we are particular

God appears to improvise When removing His disguise As pupae become butterflies


189


THE DUST

God leaned across the Earth As a man across a dusty table And He blew the dust away

All envy, greed and pride Flew up and out into The dark abysses of the cosmos

Then the Earth was clean Like a mirror that reflects The superposed reflection of itself

The Lord recalled the dust Assembled to an unlike pattern From that which it had occupied

Let it try again, He said Once more, another time To draw itself up from itself

He named a different creature That dust which struggled upright To live another life

It is your name and mine Of those who came before Or those who will come after

He is the Lord of time and space And He will name Whomever He will name


190


THE TEMPLE OF THE BEES

A Temple in a forest Holy and serene Shouldered with the sunlight Fretted with the green

I see a timeless Temple Where I cannot say, See a granite table A book is on display

Bees in lazy circles Hover in the shade, Pass into the Temple Through the colonnade

Move up to the volume Find the page you need, Scan the printed columns Take the time to read

One or many pages Nothing is forbidden, Histories of ages Nothing has been hidden

A book for the inspection Of any mortal mind, There is no restriction On anything you find

Every kind of topic Commonplace and tame, Everything exotic, Named, without a name

Even to your own Short biography, Everything is known Whatever it may be

Something in the future Something in the past, Something coming after Even to the last

191


But no one there remembers Anything he sees When he leaves the altar Of the Temple of the bees


192


WHERE LOVE HAS GONE

The light of faith a candle flame somewhere, We hide it in a secret hiding place Where love has gone, it is our own affair, There is no map an enemy can trace

And yet there is no barrier or code No secret password, document or plan, No ruse or ambush likely to explode, It is the candle of the Son of Man

Nothing puts it out except the will Of One who lit it first, He is the Master, Although a wind may blow the air is still Where it is secreted from all disaster

It burns and ever burns and will burn yet Though enemies may search the world for it

Pavel May 1, 2015

193


THE CURTAIN

The curtain of the inner sanctum Hiding nothing clean, the Glory has departed The veil is now an unclean kingdom

That sanctum is the holiness of Moloch The ultrasonic piping of the bats The mournful crowing of St. Peter’s cock

When Christ undying rose up from the tomb The useless veil was ripped in half But a veil of light remains around Him

Who can bear to see the deathless One? But in the Sacrifice of flesh and blood He is the clouded and exalted sun

Pavel May 2, 2015

194


THE MEMORY ITSELF

Was it not a garden which He set around His kingdom And not a place of war, a garrison, an armory, In sunlight not in shadow, with rivers and not granite channels?

A place of gentle pleasures and of mellow sun Where rivers ran and sparkled in their currents, That flowed for everlasting through eternal meadows

He is not fearsome in His everlasting stronghold But strolls as if a patron through the groves of peace The concert of the birds of dawn and evening

How often then do people reconstruct The memory of trees and blooms and blossoms? It is the memory beyond the place for which they reach

Pavel May 3, 2015

195


WHERE IT SHOULD

The petals of the pear tree blow Across the garden of the blessed Spinning lightly like the snow

All that lives in light is good So when it falls it lightly falls The tree has blossomed where it should

But that which serves opacity Envious of all that lives Consumes the heartwood secretly

Pavel May 4, 2015

196


AS HE LOVES THE JEWEL STARTS TO BLAZE

Held by truth, their spirits turned to crystal, This way, that way turned for God’s appraisal, He sees them through and through as if they were A specimen of jewel to a jeweler

A property of preciousness He knows, The quality, the luminance that glows When He illuminates the facets of A jewel of His worth, a gem of love

There is no room inside that stone for lies, No way to hide, no matter what the size, He is the jeweler, God artisan Who made the soul to be with Him as one

He spins it round and round beneath His gaze And as He loves, the jewel starts to blaze

Pavel May 4, 2015

197


THE BREAK OF DAY

As birds sit on the wire To watch the world below, So the angels gathered To see the cities glow

Isn’t that the morning, Servant of the Law? Never such a morning, A day you never saw

Go and tell the Master The wonder of the change, He already knows it Although it is so strange

The glowing is a power The city cannot hold, All dominion weakness And honesty is sold

Power has escaped them To hover overhead, Changed to desolation The city of the dead

As birds who sit the wire Leap and fly away The angels lifted higher To see the break of day

There was spread before them The mountains and the sea, Dawn that was a captive Mounted and broke free

Pavel May 5, 2015

198


AS EVERY PROPHET TELLS US

Roll on, roll on thunder Across my window sill, The world is torn asunder By the grinding of time’s mill

As every prophet tells us On good and ill alike The weight of time tremendous Is focused on a spike

Glistening are the young leaves As if with diamonds hung, And if like us the birds were thieves There would be none among

Pavel May 6, 2015

199


NOT YET DEEP DUSK

Not yet deep dusk, the swifts in flight, Their business is with light above, For us below already night Who struggle through a dearth of love

They swoop and swerve and bank their wings Across the setting of the sun, They always know what dawn will bring Has always brought, God’s will be done

But those beneath have lost their trust In even where their steps may go, Those earth bound sons of greed and lust Impure and heavy, blind and slow

The contrast as they dart and glide Compels a wonder at our pride

Pavel May 6, 2015

200


EVEN IN OLD BABYLON

Even in Old Babylon On one day of the year, The priest would slap the royal face And pull the royal ears

The priest would then permit the king To enter if so pleased The sanctuary of the god Although on hands and knees

So even at a pagan shrine They knew humility To be the ticket to behold Such low divinity

Then how much more should we adore The Christ of brilliant light With self-effacing gentleness Adoring and contrite

Pavel May 7, 2015

201


HOW FAR FROM HOME

Imagine falling from beyond, From all that is and was and will, Through every law and light and void From where the work of death is still

From light’s eternal joyfulness That has no end or side or length But is itself the measure of Its own abiding endless strength

How dark and fearful is that place To which He fell to find and save A narrow and unholy race—To Him the globe itself a grave

When He stood the slaves upright Who gave Him to the cross of Rome He burst from death’s oppressing night—But Christ how far He was from home!

Pavel May 8, 2015

202


THE CREVICES

Hide in a desert, who knows where? Stones, Elijah, move, beware They crush the heart and break the breast The demons enter in, digest So then instead of beating heart There is a stone, the demon part

Run, Elijah, take to heel Or to the demons bend and kneel Elijah ran until he came To where he could forget his name I am God the Lord, it meant Recall the punishment God sent

But then exhausted he sat down To wait for death where death is found In desolation, loneliness But this is when the Lord will bless A jug of water, loaf of bread Which from the Lord revives the dead

Go and seek the highest cave Where prophets hide whom I will save, Teach to serve and be of use Though battered by the world’s abuse Hear, I speak, My voice is low Enough to send you where I go

To whom shall I transmit your word O Lord, my God—Elijah heard A voice like wind among the stones As through the crevices it moans To find the remnant of the folk Who will remember what God spoke

Pavel May 9, 2015

203


THOSE BURNING BONES

I saw St. Peter’s church on fire, The stolid congregation stayed, Flame from pew to wall to choir, How could they be not afraid?

There they sat by rank and file Smoke around them rising thick, Shouting I ran down the aisle, Along the walls the fire licked

Pull the people from their places Bodies motionless as stones With rigid and unfeeling faces: “Burnt you will be only bones.”

Get out and save yourself, I heard They will not move till Kingdom come And Christ returns as was His word For these are stupid, deaf and dumb

But then as in Ezekiel I heard another in command Above the desecration tell Those burning bones to live and stand

Pavel May 10, 2015

204


REMEMBER ME

Some have said all will be saved And others that not many fall, The hard of heart proclaim that few Will ever live in grace at all

But what do people know of Christ Who walked the hardest street there is With bloody lashes to his back And found the mercy to forgive?

Jesus said look out and see That I have made the garden trade A dead dogwood for young plum tree, A consecration I have made

Wait till spring when I rise up And then I blossom red and white, Remember Me in flesh and cup Through every bitter winter night

Pavel May 11, 2015

205


TO MAKE MY WISH COME TRUE

I am so bright I’ve lost my head It rolled along the ground With any luck that’s good enough It never will be found

Now I think with just my neck A bit of shoulder too Where shrug and twisting intersect To make my wish come true

I wish my head would stay away Without it I can see That everything is what I say It all refers to me

Pavel May 12, 2015

206


THOSE WHO WILL GO FREE

Each lie that’s told becomes an iron cell Where those who fabricate forever dwell Remote from all around them, isolates, For that which mocks existence segregates The prisoners of lies, each one from each, Nor can one inmate to another reach

But as the Lord of truth takes up His throne No longer will the inmates live alone, The doors spring open, those who will go free Will stand amazed and for the first time see Who lives beside them, face to face, and find The grace within the other, soul and mind

Understand and love and go their way But some may be afraid to leave, and stay

Pavel May 13, 2015

207


OLD SHIPS

When old ships cross the harbor and aim their prows to sea They creak and groan like old men do In their debility

And when they reach that opening, they roll and pitch and groan While gleaming ivory crowned the fretted Waves like royal blue stone

Run beneath the stiffened keels to rush upon their reach Until they gain another shore And hammer down a beach

The planet groans and shudders in a passage through the sky Though silent are the waves of time That break but never die

And when they gain another land they shatter in their spray Beneath the high immortal cliffs To fall and flow away

Pavel May 14, 2015

208


MY TESTAMENT

Here is what I leave, I give to you Water from the desert that I drew, This desiccated ground delivered up Enough to bring a brimful to a cup

Not much, I know, but better than a thirst In this denying desert, red and cursed, I wish it could be more, but this I found Secreted in the channels underground

Take the cup of water, drink, it will By scraping of the soil of God refill, The rains may come or not, no one can tell, There may be more beneath you for a well

Pavel May 15, 2015

209


WHO’S NOT EVER TEMPTED?

Who’s not ever tempted by the false desire To be regarded, courted, feted, well-admired? Truly it is better to be silent, small The donkey of Nativity who kept his stall To breathe upon the Christ child but was ill-accounted, On which the Christ the blessed one was safely mounted Entering Jerusalem in lowly state - Palm leaves were the Passover the donkey ate

Now be still, be silent and make not a sound For silence more than anything is most profound - The signal to the prophet that the Lord preferred Was not the quake or burning that Elijah heard, Low and deep as oceans and the deep abyss And who would not be humble at the sound of this? Power deep beyond our hearing and our sight And to be still and small beneath it good and right

Pavel May 16, 2015

210


THIS CROP INSTEAD

We plant a garden, then it rains What have we done to draw such clouds? The sun comes out but seeds remain, What germs are these that cry aloud?

Rain comes down as red as rust, What crop will manifest its fruit? First the harvest of the just Ripped and shrieking from the root

We had been exiled so we spread The only seeds that we could take To cultivate this crop instead: Narcissus and the red mandrake

Pavel May 17, 2015

211


OH SO STRANGE

He likes to fish, said Peter’s wife He won’t catch much but who can tell And who can stop him, off he goes With that crew of ne’er-do-wells

His heart is broken and he’s scared But fishing calms him well enough, The sea is quiet until dawn, By afternoon it can be rough

There he goes to ease his heart 33The water peaceful, there it lies By quarter moon before the dawn, A current takes the boat coastwise

Fist and haul the empty net To mend the meshes where it frayed, Shoreward slowly they ride in Though counting fish they might have stayed

Nothing ever really changes Dreams that happened floating free, It won’t come back but oh so strange The figure on the beach they see

Pavel May 17, 2015

212


AN ASCENSION

It’s knotty to describe it but here goes When you give a good without reward Some have said the pleasure of the gift Is in itself a carnal hedonism And therefor call self-giving an illusion

But they mistake externals for the essence For if I give without a recompense Not even gratitude or recognition The act itself becomes objective truth That neither I nor one anyone can see

It is an object rising, an ascension The way the Christ ascended from the Earth An object which achieves its full dimension No matter how much pleasure or how little My deed affords, or anyone can know

And this is how I see it now, a sphere Of perfect love, as if a golden world A symbol of an infinite circumference Orbiting the blessed One, the Lord Who from the center couples every soul

But I have read how rabbis recommend This method of distributing a sum On the giver’s coattail sew a pocket And let a sum of alms be dropped inside So that the giver may not see who takes it

Pavel May 18, 2015

213


WINDING ROOMS, INNER ROOMS

Delightful when the north wind blows In middle May, the iris blooms, Spruce leans over, spreads its fringe, The woodland shows its winding rooms

Tonight a summer heat withdraws, Tonight there will be near a frost, Today the sun will reach the height Of gliding hawks in dazzle lost

Tonight will fete a crescent moon Above the meadows overgrown By sweet new grass the rabbits graze, A bear with one green eye alone

Slides like oil from inner rooms Along the aisles of hemlock trees, A blackness in the meadow looms, It is the one green star I see

Pavel May 19, 2015

214


WITHIN THE FORTRESS

A clear fine day in middle spring, On rising ridges five miles off Single trees reveal themselves

But as the locust sconces blossom White and lilac pendant clusters And as the clover blooms its wool

There are no bees to forage here A desolation, holocaust—Is there no one to see and fear?

They are the sentinels of God Withdrawing from their outer posts As we within the fortress feast

Pavel May 20, 2015

215


TO DESTROY A PEOPLE To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots.

—Solzhenitsyn

And so the great hog roots and snuffs The swine of underworlds unseen, Ploughs the fallow and the ripe, Slits the stalk where children gleaned

Long of muzzle, yellow tusked It slavers over root and grain, Sparse of hair along the rump But coarse and tangled is the mane

Where it passes nothing grows, The feet have scattered poisoned seeds It scuffed from Hell when it came up, Where clouds give never rain but bleed

It is the beast of lawlessness Of chaos and sterility, As it champs it drops its brood Insatiable in vanity

Pavel May 21, 2015

216


PULL OUT THIS ARROW

Christ says follow Me but they demur He must follow us to where we go, The hillock of the pleasures we prefer Where Christ is pain and pleasure vertigo

Everything we want is what we get, There is no opposition to our dreams, The Savior’s insubstantial silhouette A shadow on the wall of our museums

God must follow us for we will not Countenance rebuff or be delayed, And if He will not follow He is naught, God not Adam balked and disobeyed

He refuses so we will depart, Pull out this flaming arrow from my heart

Pavel May 22, 2015

217


MEMORIAL DAY

The hillside filled with flags that wave like grass Gravesides swept and garnished with remembrance, Monday is the day of reminiscence, Wind has clasped the graves in its embrace

Who preserves the resonances, keeps Precisely in their minds the wars that fade?When they lived the flags above the streets Quickened with their colors their parades

Visitors bring symbols to this hill—The graves of those so lovingly they tend With flags are void, no spirit may be killed, The wars are buried here and not the men

Pavel May 22, 2015

218


THOUGH GRACE COME FROM ABOVE

Present, Past and Future Three immortal women Led me to a happy flight But not so far as heaven

There will be fulfillment They said, of Christ’s desire, And you may serve His purpose well, I asked: Will I go higher?

A fourth who did not speak to me But seemed to be displeased, Scathing glanced then turned away, She left me ill at ease

Because I am a mortal sheet Of God’s translucent glass Though which the Holy Spirit shines, If clean the light will pass

But if the lens is blocked, opaque With blotches of self-love, Then I will remain below Though grace come from above

Pavel May 24, 2015

219


THE HIGH SCHOOL DRUM AND BUGLE CORPS

Our mountains save us, Ellie said, Now this honor for the dead, Marching bands, the banners wave, Speeches for the deathless brave

Valley, mountain, hill and farm Fortress walls to keep from harm, Here the Christian town and street, Distant triumphs, few defeats

A golden wheel the countryside, Feeder corn and dairies’ pride, But in the distance blue and far Beyond the hills the rackets are

Hills defend us from the storms But regiments in uniform Leave from here, the brave return From where a foreign country burns

War and plunder, giant stakes Gamblers risk, the winners take, Far and strange those alien Burning, dying foreign lands

What has that to do with this Christian township’s homely bliss, The high school drum and bugle corps Which has marched off to that before?

Pavel May 25, 2015

220


BEFORE THEIR EYES

He said: my mother has been stricken, Years ago began to sicken, Dementia overtakes her mind, What torment has your God designed?

There is no God and no I Am, He said, but still I say goddamn, If I should meet Him I will tell That tormenter to go to Hell

I remembered how I once Had suffered grief for someone else And questioned why if kingdom come There is such empty martyrdom

I kneeled before the Holy Child Of Prague and all was reconciled, For there was much that is, will be The blessed spirits know and see

But how can ever one convey The mystery I saw that day? Who knows? The scroll of light is sealed And to the very small revealed

But as for those consumed by rage, Not till the ending of the age When all the dead must live and rise Will it unroll before their eyes

Pavel May 26, 2015

221


CALL TO ARMS

I saw the banners flying An army on parade, Archaic in its armament Its bravery displayed

Steel and shining breastplates Lances, helmets, feathers, Harnesses of horses belled, Palfreys on their tethers

As they passed beneath the sun That glinted on that kit, I saw the face of every one Who rode and strode with it

One I knew among the rest Ignatius was his name, And as he passed he called to me: By God we’re all to blame

I saw the Church was riddled With pride and lassitude, She needed to be purified Re-sanctified, renewed

But ever as in every age The Church becomes fatigued, Decadence and rot seep in And many are in league

The enemy assembles Within the human heart, These soldiers are the lowly ones To battle they depart

Their weapons are humility Devotion, martyrdom, Charity the call to arms And penitence the drum

Pavel May 27, 2015

222


RUNNING TO CATCH UP

Wait for me, I said to Christ, my step is slow, When I will be ready for you, who can know? Trust, mistrust and hesitation are my shoes Two feet have I but triple are the steps I choose

Christ looked down although not from a lofty height: My followers all started off as blatherskites, Even when I led them they were far behind, I would not have selected any other kind

Unteachable the clever and the worldly wise Who do not welcome revelation or surprise, But tell me what the simple know, it is not much And like good Thomas must be shown by sight and touch

The minds of human beings are a crooked maze In which it’s easy to be lost in many ways, But life is simple as a road that’s always straight No matter when they start My friends will not be late

If only they are friends and not My enemies Who will be running to catch up, but on their knees

Pavel May 28, 2015

223


THE TREE OF PARADISE

How could the gentle Jesus blight A simple fig tree, what was meant By cursing something unaware, A thing that is not sentient?

He said to it: You will not bear Another fruit again, for I Was hungry but you gave me naught And so be shriveled, tree, and die

Here is the answer, possibly: The Lord who governs worlds and time Assigning symbols to each name Attaches universal rhymes

The fig tree is a symbol of The Temple and the sacrifice Without the fruitfulness of love Becoming cultic artifice

He is a poet and He works The many worlds by metaphor, Allusion and resemblances Which always seem to be at war

Then He drives the traders from The Holy Temple made for Him—There is a tree of Paradise, The fruit of God hangs from the limb

Pavel May 29, 2015

224


CATHEDRAL OF ETERNITY

When those who age begin to see The arch above them open up Like that of an observatory

Over that another sky A dome-like, arch-like vaulting span Which no observer can deny

That one too—it slides, recedes Another dome with figures there Visuals the aged can read

See there is a great design Enfolding all that can be seen So then the ageing may recline

Look up and watch the sky unfold To show the vistas of the blessed Which Holy Scripture has foretold

Cathedral of eternity A flower blossoming to show The meaning of the verb to be

Pavel May 29, 2015

225


THE WAITING ONES

Upon her blouse she wears a cross As she signs out our borrowed books, I a silver cross-shaped sign My wife her silver crucifix

Silent wear the badge of faith For now we all remain devoted, Common here and yet they herald Times to come of persecution

They will be a sign of Cain, Against us lifted every hand Because we murder civil peace, The cross becoming contraband

Think it not? And yet I see Swollen clouds above Carmel, The rains descend, the fire leap The waiting prophets bent to Baal

Pavel May 30, 2015

226


THE BURNING OF THE CROWN OF THORNS

If before the Elohim the prophet Moses stood, A thorn bush and a holy flame, although it burned no wood So where the Holy Spirit burns becomes a holy ground In charity and unity wherever it is found

A simple love, an act of faith, creation of delight: Portraits of eternity to carve and paint and write, Praise of green and praise of blue, the colors of the sea, Gifts without the hope of gain in generosity

Where they are is God most high and even in a cell Where martyrs wait for martyrdom, the menaces of Hell, Wherever there is sacrifice, the bearing of the Cross, But also in a gentleness, endurance of a loss

So when the flames of holiness on Pentecost poured down The burning of the crown of thorns created holy ground

Pavel May 31, 2015

227


HIS GARMENTS

Tobit gave the strangled man a burial Though he might be turned in to the King’s police, Now we may be forced to bury Jesus Christ, The precious Blood and Body of the Eucharist

Remember that in Ireland beneath the Crown The faithful celebrated but were not revealed Because it was illegal then to honor God, The altar in the wilderness was then concealed

Would you think concealment inconceivable? But I have known the like not long ago That Masses were obscured from the authorities In people’s homes so that they might not know

Courageous in defense, exalt the Christ Or be like those who for His garments diced

Pavel June 1, 2015

228


BABY RABBITS

The cats go hunting after dark, Across the street the hill is green With spring and rabbits newly made That never saw what we have seen

And when you pass them on a walk They freeze and crouch and stay as still As any tuft of grass or weeds But any hunting cat may kill

They lay the bodies on the porch Lie and lick their bloody feet, How smooth and soft the feline fur And every line of them is neat

Pavel June 2, 2015

229


THE LANDS OF DREADFUL MYSTERY

He built a stone wall all around him So when the afternoon grew late It was complete with him inside But in the wall there was no gate

Then he found the beams and blocks To build a tower at the core, The tower had no windows in it Nor had any gate or door

He wanted to be sure inside The tower built within the wall, He built it blank without a window So he need not see or fall

How could he retire inward Deeply so he would not see Beyond the tower and the wall The lands of dreadful mystery?

Then he put his back against The tower and to his surprise His skin became a skin of stone And men like that one have no eyes

Around his head there grew a capstone Conical and made of slate, And there until the end of time He will be powerful and wait

Pavel June 2, 2015

230


TWO EYES

The daisies are upgiven in the grown green field Asters of the sun on a pure white shield, Aliens of Europe that were carried to the west As if they were a gift to the Islands of the Blessed

Now between the shadows of the dusk and the dawn The deer move out among them, the doe and the fawn, Higher grow the grasses and higher grows the sun Until the summer solstice and the summer has begun

Now are met together, the yellow sun, the disc As if it were a lesser sun, a kind of asterisk, Which one is the flower and which one is the star? That depends on how you look and which of them you are

One looks at the other and both have an eye One is of the meadow and the other of the sky

Pavel June 3, 2015

231


THE HAWK ABOVE THE SHADOW

I understand the purpose of obscurity For when the daylight sky is overcast The animal below it casts no shadow So that the hawk which glides and hunts above Will miss the rabbit foraging below Which blends with clumps of dust and vegetation Evades the sharpest eye unless it moves Because a shadow shows the living prey

So too the one who may in his obscurity Resist prevailing madness in his time His very being bland and shadowless Until the moment comes when underneath The sudden glaring sun his shadow shows And then the hawk above the shadow knows

Pavel June 4, 2015

232


THAT WILL BE…

It seemed to me that Tobit is a tale, Edifying fiction in its form As in the fable told about a whale That swallowed Jonah taken in a storm

Then I saw another way to read Because a truth comes often in disguise Like Raphael responding to a need— Who else in Nineveh could be so wise?

Tobiah peels the lids with both his hands The cataracts that make his father blind, When Tobit says “my son”, by some command A simple truth emerges in my mind

That I will also see again my son When cataract illusions are removed, And I will also say: “My son, my own” But that will be when grace and love are proved

Pavel June 5, 2015

233


AESOP’S FABLES

When I tell you there are some Who from their birth dislike the sun, You will find the truest sense Inside the fact, take no offense

The bat, the fox, the creeping vole The mouse within its narrow hole, The moth that spirals to the flame And many others one might name

But there are humans of the shade Who are so secretively made That even in the bright sunlight They live with the deepest night

So that Our Lord who knew of them Declared that they would self-condemn, Who like the mouse retreat to holes And like the fox devour voles

Pavel June 6, 2015

234


SPIRIT PURE

Come with me to where the Risen waits, There are no crooked highways, are no gates To pass by word except to sanctify The name of Christ, and then you may go by

He is within, without, in every thought Of love and liberty, your passage bought By Sacrifice and washing of the feet, In Him the heart unfurnished is complete

Tell me how to recognize that Friend—He lingers where the roads no longer bend And you will know Him when He says your name, The one that no one utters is the same

Spirit pure and bright and spirit true Spirit blaze of light and spirit new

Pavel June 7, 2015

235


JUDAS LEFT

Judas left and it was night Darkness falling swift and calm, Silver shekels round and bright Silver money in his palm

Let there be no doubt of this, Christ has known forever more The base betrayal of the kiss The secret agent at the door

God is flesh from simple wheat But in the synagogue are spies, Night has fallen on the streets And on the holy Temple lies

Planets spinning turn a face First to darkness then to day, Once to darkness once to grace People spin their lives away

Wheat of love and wheat of hate, To sift the darkness from the grain Christ was sent to separate, Eleven grains of light remain

Pavel June 8, 2015

236


I LOOKED UP…

I looked up to see the ground Where I would buried be, But when I saw the grassy mound The grave looked back at me

You below, the hummock said, Why are you not here? I welcome all the freshly dead Who have no more to fear

Here’s a poem, said the hill, Of green and snowy white, The verse of man is doggerel By day or summer night

You are mistaken, ancient one, So massive, green and wise, I will exist when you are gone My smallness a disguise

There is in me vitality That eons cannot kill, A life of immortality But you will vanish, hill

Pavel June 9, 2015

237


NOW WE CALL THE HAWK TO WITNESS

Crows are setting up a clamor Calling at a hungry cat, A predator is silent, clever Guardians have seen to that

Cats are large and cats are small The bigger have impunity, But when the crows alight and call They warn the world of what they see

If a hawk should see a stalker Would it stoop and seize the prey, Strike the beast and take the taker Bear the predator away?

And if the prey should be too heavy A hawk could tear it on the spot As we have seen it do already, Leave the carcass there to rot

Now we call the hawk to witness: Come and see what we have seen, Come and strike and slay the menace Punish and destroy the fiend

Pavel June 10, 2015

238


WHO IS LIGHT?

How can the Law of Moses be fulfilled By One who is the Law itself by grace, Replacement by His Sacrifice of love, And yet He says no law will be replaced?

It can be thought of this way, see it now: The table of the upper room, the light, Jesus of the Great and Last Discourse, The flame of Him unvarying and bright

As He speaks they flicker, dull, unsteady While He remains a strong and constant flame, The lamp of Him consumes His love forever And when they are of Him they are the same

Who is light unless they are of Him? But if they turn away the light will dim

Pavel June 10, 2015

239


WILL YOU SAY?

So pretty you could put a frame around Two cardinals, a female and a male, An ivory picket fence on which they rest, Diagonals, and perfect in detail

Olive green the hen composed with tan, The cock a scarlet red, a mask so black The contrast is an ache as much as sight, Palette that the greatest painters lack

Every sight the painters know is framed And every photograph within the lens, Everything without a name is named Between the invocation and amen

And will you say that random are the words The uttered these and other perching birds?

Pavel June 11, 2015

240


VISION FAILS

I saw the elves of Easternesse Depart from those dark lands of dread, Unhurried go towards Westernesse, The land that bars the gray and dead

They sing a dirge of memory In their procession through the wood Where once was joy in every tree And blessing in that multitude

They leave what has no life inside Away from life it desecrates To cross an ocean clean and wide, But first for ships the elves must wait

And as they stand above that shore They strain their sight to see the West Where cities know not fear and war And joyful is the welcome guest

I see, say those of noble sight A glimmering above the line That parts the ocean from the light—I wish, cry some, such sight was mine

I see a ship some others say, White and splendid are her sails, Her sides and bows adorned with spray, But others say that vision fails

Pavel June 12, 2015

241


COME TO LIFE

Thunderstorms to break the heat, Lines of tempests ride southeast, Overhead the wisps of rain Wool untwisted from a skein

Maple, chestnut, birch and spruce Shake their tops and branches loose, Disembodied, bend their boughs, Come to life the west wind soughs

Just like this we wait for some Trade for aimless tedium, A bolt of fire from above Or violence if there be no love

Pavel June 12, 2015

242


WILD ROSE IS IN BLOSSOM…

Wild rose is in blossom Magenta, ivory white And will be here till autumn, The lengthening of night

Leaves will lose their luster And fall beneath the frost, Goldenrod and aster Their yellow flame be lost

Read the lesson closely That nothing bright will last, Or disregard, go lightly And let the season pass

If to be more mindful May sometimes lead to gloom, The vision of the thoughtful Need not be of doom

No grimness in conclusion In what the mindful chose, But only their acumen In the falling of the rose

Pavel June 13, 2015

243


THE ONWARD RUSHING

As you prepare the sharp turn left The growing corn is vision high, It bars the driver’s view and then A car above burns down the road

Time to reach the farther lane But still the rushing car comes on And as it passes there’s a face Grotesque behind the slanted glass

Malice in its grinning mouth Glaring eyes and finger up, The flying car accelerates - Close but not this time, this way

Surrogates, the dark recruits, Mercenaries without wage Pressed to what no one refutes, The onward rushing of this age

Pavel June 14, 2015

244


SUMMONED THEN

It was so long ago they found The Lord who lived beneath the sun, Or in the moonlight on the night A dreadful Passion had begun

Like us, like us, in flesh and weight, A friend the simple heart could seek, A shadow on the stone that moved, The signal of His soul could speak

Attenuated grows the gist, So long ago, so far in space, The Earth in many orbits passed And who but Glory sees His face?

But still when I behold the flesh And holy blood the priest presents, Summoned then I am so moved To beckon to the sacraments

Pavel June 14, 2015

245


LIKE A NOON

Across the nearly summer pond The ripple of a blackbird song, Bullfrogs pluck a tempered string, Twosome when the blackbird sings

Water lilies show a face Of yellow sunlight-centered lace, Over them a dragonfly Hunts with head-enfolding eye

Peace on peace the marsh and lake, Through the reeds a garter snake Twists the marsh in middle June, Summer rising like a noon

Pavel June 15, 2015

246


FOR THE MARTYRS OF IRAQ AND SYRIA

As darker grows the day The strong defeat the weak, The unforgiving slay The innocent and meek

Then who will read the psalms That promise justice done? The lion kills the lamb The kingdom has not come

Hold the cup on high Before you drink the wine, Swear by those who die That Jesus was divine

It is the blood of Him The corpus of the flesh, For now the light grows dim In this dark wilderness

Swear by those who give Their lives to verify And also to forgive, Swear by those who die

Pavel June 16, 2015

247


BOTH MUST BE

Nowhere enters nothing, goes Where every door and gate must close, Where life has lived but never more Will living creatures be restored

But now I see a garden made Beneath an everlasting shade, Each tree and leaf diminutive And so by light the living live

Figures living, living by The light, if not the figures die That moving from the shade to light They know them both and know they might

Shade and light, there must be both Though often dark to light is loath, It is the law that both must be—The shade beneath the growing tree

Pavel June 17, 2015

THE ROMANS MADE A SIMPLE CROSS

The Romans made a simple cross, The upright held the cross in place, The piece they fixed from side to side Clinched the felon in disgrace

But here unknowing built a sign, The baulk across a symbol of The bloody mystery of Christ, The pillar ends in Light above

Jesus said: I am the way Whoever trusts in life will live Forever, but He also said Beyond your death I will forgive

For you will rise as I rise up And I will wait until you come

248


To Me and My eternal throne, My glorious imperium

Which can it be, the upright piece That shows the way to endless joy, The horizontal present world Which Christ in coming will destroy?

Here the cross itself may speak: I am the symbol and the tree That flourished once in paradise, I bear the One who planted me

Pavel June 18, 2015

249


SEE ME

They say that faith is blind who have no eyes Tell that they are shrewd but are not wise, Grope in darkness, turn away from light Struggle not with evil though they might

Yield no praise for that which gives them all Profess their domination as they fall. Hide their terror, boast of being brave Brag of being strong but are depraved

Find no meaning in the great design See no system given by a sign, Stand beneath a canopy of grace But never meet the bridegroom face to face

How will they gain vision back again? In the final moment they will, then—And might they burn forever in a fire? See Me, says the Lord, say your desire

Pavel June 19, 2015

250


OFFER AT LEAST FIFTY CENTS

I said to him: May I despair? But when I looked he wasn’t there, So then I looked around for some Others who I thought were dumb

And proper to feel sorry for But I had no one to deplore, Is there no person to be found On whom I can and may look down?

You may contemptuously view But pay these people if you do, A handsome fee will cure offence, Offer at least fifty cents

A dollar more will ease the pain Of even cold and sharp disdain, But stinging scorn is more offensive And is even more expensive

Pavel June 19, 2015

251


NOTHING KNEW

A finch came down and settled on the feeder Fed on many seeds but dropped just one Which sprouted in the ground, it was a flower

The seed drew out its rootlet, from the top Squeezing out a stalk that reached the sun Which pulls the seedlings upward for its crop

Welcome little seedling, come with me The sun said to the flower, turn and face The west where I will set in majesty

So from a circumstance a flower grew One flower turning westward to the sun Though nothing that could see it falling knew

Pavel June 20, 2015

252


THE COURT OF WAR

Outside the house I saw one morning Two fat hogs inside a trailer Waiting to be taken to The slaughterer, a livestock butcher

The farmer elsewhere, at the courthouse - We live in a county seat—Once his business had been settled Off with them to be made meat

Curious, the hogs looked up Great around their curving sides, Their empty mash pans on the floor, Unknowing of their final ride

Who are we, who is the farmer, What can we be waiting for? He is death the fattener Presenting at the court of war

Pavel June 21, 2015

253


BE CAREFUL WHERE YOU SLEEP

Be careful where you sleep For when you sleep afar From your accustomed place The fiends know where you are

They show you when you stray Your best beloved dead, Show as they decay And melt on their death-bed

Then when you awake You fear what you have seen, The frailty of love The pitiful obscene

Come again to Christ The merciful embrace Of Jesus of the Cross In His accustomed place

Pavel June 22, 2015

254


END TO END

Fake women, men and bodies Fake marriage, sex, no babies Fake hope, fake life, fake speech Fake lessons liars teach

Falsehoods of the mind False, the clever blind, False, the pleasing lie They take no life, deny

False, themselves they cheat, They cripple their own feet, Straight their falsehoods send Like arrows end to end

Pavel June 23, 2015

255


THE RHINELAND OF THE PAGANS

Did you know that in the Rhineland of the pagans Did you know that in the England of the Saxons After the departure of the legions There remained a remnant of the churches Here and there the followers of Christ? Congregations left within those kingdoms Seeds of Eucharistic faithfulness?

Chronicles recorded few if any Though there were some staying, never many Surrounded by the temples, there among The sacred oaks on which the captives hung Tolerated sometimes, not remembered

Lights of vigil in a darkness, small Every day and even through nightfall And you might never see them there at all Lighting for the Mass time beeswax candles Among the Alamanni and the Vandals

Pavel June 23, 2015

256


I SAW THE SILENT MAN I saw the silent man across the streetStanding in his garden as if struckBy how it grew so lushly in the summerWhile he himself was barren in his soul I asked the man to visit at the MassWe gather for on every summer morning,For we were sterile till we saw the ChristWho cultivates the plantings in His garden It is the new allotment of the mountainIn which our souls were planted when He roseThat morning when the sun began to riseThough we have yet to flourish as He did

PavelJune 24, 2015

257


THREE WERE WEAVING

Three were weaving, weaving on a loom But they themselves were figures of a pattern Woven as a triplet in the womb Of time and circumstance, of what will happen

You and I are what they wove and now I weave again the figures of the women—Who designed the weave they do not know Except that the designer works from heaven

Watch them weave and silently advance, Those who work the loom are not aware They are a pattern woven not by chance Nor are their threads of being laid elsewhere

All are flat as figures in a weave But they will come to roundness in a while—Those who think them solid self-deceive And those who spoil the pattern self-defile

Pavel June 25, 2015

258


SEA OF FIRE Lyric for a gospel song After W. A. Muhlenberg

When first the Ark of peace was launched And all the world was drowned, That refuge rode the sea of waves No land at all was found

But when another Flood shall come There will be seas of fire That God in wrath of flame will send, A holy flood of ire

And those who go within the Ark Will find no land but then They all will see in after days The New Jerusalem

The Ark we call the holy place Where Jesus Christ resides, The Master of the ship of grace Though some may think He hides

And those who berth within that ship Will sail the sea of flame To find a land of peace again As Noah did the same

Pavel June 26, 2015

259


ASTONISHMENT

We who were created out of nothing We who are a syllable, a sound, A gust, a breeze that spins above the waters, We came to be alive, what are we now?

Astonishment to stand before a mirror, To see the one who is the one who stares Then looks away, then looks again in terror, Suppose by light of day I were not there

If death should me remove, and I am space Not even that, appearance nullified, What would become of that familiar face If on some day and suddenly I died?

Question with an answer, who can break The mirror of eternity or see The spirit of the body, who can take An everlasting form away from me?

I am of a purpose and a form To fill the mold I was designed to fill, Eternal shape to emptiness conformed And nothing that an emptiness can kill

Pavel June 27, 2015

260


THE SOUL WAS MEANT FOR ECSTASY

Will Christ be with us to the end Or to His world chastisement send? Both, I think, He will not go Though yet permit a second blow

Stare into another’s face If there you find a precious trace Of pleasing joy and sacrifice The light of gladness, sign of Christ

Know by this that Jesus stays Even in these latter days, Faith and mercy not wiped out Though intellect falls ill with doubt

But if you meet the duller eyes That stare at grace without surprise, The tree of life as merely wood But say the world goes as it should

That is the signal of distress, You see the sign of what will be, The mind accepting something less The soul was meant for ecstasy

Pavel June 28, 2015

261


A SECRET SPACE

A little box that’s made of birch A cross is chiseled in the lid The sides are round with florets carved As artisans of Suzdal did

Inside there is a secret space Containing thin and tender bark Uncarved, unpainted curl of wood A sapling cut contains the dark

The cheapest, lightest cylinder Around the lid a floret ring But when you lift and look inside You hear the yellow wagtail sing

Pavel June 29, 2015

262


SENTRIES

The aperture between this world and theirs Is narrower than you may know, compares With iris of the sparrow and the wren, Smaller even, of the finch’s hen

But who will guard our commons from the next? To find a sentry shrewdness is perplexed For it demands much more than soldier mettle The fiends from there are foul and unsettle

It is the meek and backward who are fit To take a place before that door and sit, They will not use their services to boast But little spirits find some courage most

So they sit before the narrow vent And by their quiet stubbornness prevent The squeezing of a dogged evil through That near destroyed the world when it was new

Pavel June 30, 2015

263


MONSTERS

Those animals obeyed the law Of reproduction and defense, They fed on lawful prey, I saw How suitable the needful sense

Sense responding to a cue And all to honor reproduction, Nothing bent and all was true No act performed was a perversion

I meant the race of crocodiles, Primeval monsters flourish still, Compare Nathanael without guile Except for freedom of the will

Then I saw a soul misshapen, Loss of God had altered it Into the figure of a demon, Glutton, fraud and hypocrite

I asked: is this the aftermath Of bidding Adam to beget? Then what will be the coming wrath When monsters are out-monstered yet?

Pavel July 2, 2015

264


THOMAS

If you see My face you shall not live You may only see My passing glory, Gazing deeply I shall not forgive On My holy mountain of epiphany

But when the Lord as Jesus came to Earth Child of God, true son of God and man They saw Him, touched Him from His very birth But which of us can see and understand?

Thomas you have probed behind the veil Touched the altar and the sacred Ark Which ran with blood and lived to tell the tale, Emerged from Light to see the world is dark

This is the revelation we have heard: Darkness in us lighted by the Word

Pavel July 3, 2015

265


THROUGH THE FIRE

A day of sun between the rains As when the world of Noah stayed In hesitation, Flood delayed

The Deluge could not start at once At first a few precautious drops If they reform, chastisement stops

Come and sit with Me, He said Outside the bright sun of July Here are only you and I

And this small church is empty now So that distraction is the least With none assembled for My feast

Do not hesitate, confide, I can listen and I hear Reproach and memories, that fear

So do not be unwilling, tell, The rain tomorrow must be so And what you tell Me I will know

Afternoon, the birds asleep The air is still, the garden spreads Above the sleeping and the dead

And I am always here will be Past the ending and the rain And through the fire I remain

Pavel July 5, 2015

266


SHOW TO ME For Paul Bland

Setting off a costly stone Glittering, let all admire Let me gleam it at the Throne

See the medal that I wear? Then the voice of Light replies Rather show a long despair

See my uniform, my clothes Braided brim and epaulettes? It said, of these you must dispose

Contemplate my treasure chest Wealth and power to the brim—Of these, it said, you must divest

Worthy and of great repute Living in the greatest splendor— Here such office does not suit

Beaming from the sky of fame Everyone to me deferred—Here no one will know that name

What about their testimony Universal admiration? Here is one thing, one thing only

Show to Me your wounds and sores These shall be your only badges, These are Mine and should be yours

Pavel July 6, 2015

267


SEE THE ROAD

Where is heaven, where is hell In what region do they dwell? I looked within to see if I Could find where those two places lie

Looked within, there is no chart No map, no plot, no finder’s art, No star to lead the looker where They might exist, no angel stair

To outer space, a spinning hole, A rounding blackness of the soul, But side by side those two exist, In paradox they pair and twist

Like chromosomes, like separate twins, Reject the one, the other wins, Choose me or me the voices sing, Win nothing or win everything

Spaces full inside the space That has no measurements to trace, To each I travel, to and fro, Say yes to one, the other no

And who will be the perfect guide? He is the way but stands aside: “See the road and I will wait But woe to one who hesitates”

Pavel July 7, 2015

268


WHEN WE EMERGE But the plan of the LORD stands forever—Psalm 33

Read the route map diagram For subway number three, it runs From west to east, from south to north, You ride the train with everyone

You ever knew, and they know you, Some may sit and some may stand, All who came aboard are here To gratify the Son of Man

The stations on the way demarked By red within a circle, three The number of the endless train That travels toward eternity

A friendly and untroubled crowd Fresh and happy for the ride, I do not see their faces since They fade, perhaps I look aside

But they know me and seem amused To find me here along with them, Amused I say and not disposed To reprimand or to condemn

But travel as we must through death And farther when we disembark, The tunnels that we go through end As we emerge and leave the dark

Pavel July 8, 2015

269


IF THAT GARDENER WERE NOT SO MILD

Foolish creatures, cunning but not wise, The rabbits nested underneath the cart, Till the kit has opened up its eyes The extra work of gardening can’t start

Until the kit has opened up its eyes And strengthened to the point that it can hop, Till the kit achieves a certain size The extra work of gardening must stop

When the wind is strong they won’t emerge, It hides the coming footsteps of the hunter, Even if the rabbits have the urge To graze on tasty grasses and the clover

If that gardener were not so mild The rabbit doe and buck would lose that child

Pavel July 9, 2015

270


THE TIDAL RACE

I saw a wall that was not stone Smooth in face, of ivory And made from this and this alone, Of height immense in symmetry

What donjon, castle does it hold And who built up this citadel? What force within it is controlled By artifice or miracle?

It is the circle of a skull Confining contents of the mind, To number nigh impossible, Infinity by them defined

But to break in or scale that wall May not be done by will and force Except by One who conquers all, He is the builder and the source

Once or twice He will admit An exit or an entrance to But not by intellect or wit And even then lets in a few

Then like the harbors of the sea Which fill and empty by the tide, The two or more becomes a we, The tidal race an ocean wide

Pavel July 10, 2015

271


QUO VADIS?

Peter run, they’re after youThe Emperor demands your head,Impossible, that can’t be trueI’m not a citizen, he said

It’s crucifixion that they mean Decapitation is too good For one who is like me unclean, They want to pin me to the wood

So Peter beats it out of town Along the road and safe at last, He travels with his head hung down Whenever someone journeys past

But then a figure on the road Stops beside the refugee And on His back a heavy load, A beam, and cross piece separately

The eyes of Peter open wide: My God, My Lord why are you here? We know that You’ve already died Or does the ghost of God appear?

He says, Quo vadis, Domine? Where do you go my Christ, my Lord? "To die again for you today By crucifixion, not by sword

"These are the balks of wood I bear Since you refuse the sacrifice, This death becomes My own affair Since I must face the torture twice"

Peter stops and holds his breath His chest is burning with disgrace, O Lord I must resume my death Or else my Lord will take my place

He puts his hand upon His arm That is real flesh and welted skin, Then turns and faces Rome again: Stay here, my Lord, I will go in

272


Pavel July 11, 2015

273


A SEED

The sunflower from seed became a flower By rain in rainy June a sapling tower That raised into a flower-bearing tree Whose top kept growing unremittingly

Growing till it reached the edge of sight, The stalk a string, the top of it a kite, Roots that held it fast were pulled and sheared Detached, the flower dwindled, disappeared

The last that it was seen it was a dot That wavered in the wind, and then was not, Where it may have gone no one can know Though seeds may sometimes fall like blackened snow

And this is what may happen from a word A sound, a breath that someone may have heard

Pavel July 12, 2015

274


AN INTUITION

An intuition, formless, almost wordless And yet that of the person of Lord Jesus: If I see the Christ I see the Father The maker of the world, the world’s Creator, But if I lose my seeing then He will Withdraw behind a veil, invisible

What figure shall we use, what metaphor When with the light this darkness is at war? Only this I know of, call a thrush At dusk and let it break the sudden hush, Thrust an arm and beckon to the sky To draw an eagle closer, eye to eye

Obey the summons though we may resist, Thrushes sing and eagles to His wrist

Pavel July 13, 2015

275


WHERE FIRE CAN SPEAK

When Moses left Egypt In flight from the Pharaoh The desert engulfed him

How did he know The way to a refuge The ever-filled wells?

If he followed the tracks Of the merchants and soldiers A killer pursued

They would hunt him and find him So then to the wasteland Wanting for water

Did he see in the distance The mountain of God In the shimmering air?

He sees it before him As the sun is descending Over his shoulder

Over his shoulder To the land of the River Where Moses was born

How can he know That the desert is waiting For God to descend?

So sterile and bleak So dry and infertile Where fire can speak

Pavel July 14, 2015

276


SHOW ME

Show me a songbird that doesn’t sing A swollen sky that doesn’t rain, These are symptoms of our sin A pleasure undischarged in pain

The soul is a cloud with rain inside That hovers over fertile fields, The spirit sings when dawn comes up The darkness to the morning yields

Come and drink the morning sun That ripples in the cup of dawn, It will no drunkenness provoke Though from the everlasting drawn

Pavel July 15, 2015

277


EARLY COLORS

The sumac and the ivy take a color Although they have two months ahead of summer, Deeper crimson, shades of dusty black A shadow of the winter sky come back

Yellow leaves of walnut in the garden As if to shed the sunlight as a burden, Leaves are falling, there are more to come But where is this false autumn coming from?

Trees are tired and the stems release Their metabolic work but that will cease, People too, their numbers not restored Each generation lesser than before

Early to an autumn will decline, These early colors signal of a sign

Pavel July 16, 2015

278


THE BURGLAR

Can all the cripples make a human race, The prideful and inglorious replaced By spiritual glory meant to be, Could those be our descendants, you and me?

I have seen the mirror and have spoken To that poor hobo cracked across and broken, “You tire me for I have lived with you So long that I have worn away the view”

What did Christ of glory have in mind When with eleven followers He dined, Or when He saw the flower of their fear When Judas and the Temple cops drew near?

Lord, I am not worthy that You should Break into my house for my own good

Pavel July 17, 2015

279


THE WORK

The sixteenth psalm of David, reading from verse ten Assures the Holy Ones of God eternal joy and peace—The contractor and Pharisee who pray may wonder when

They open up the window, look around and see The imminence of peace and joy, contentment and surcease Of theft and guile and arrogance, of base hypocrisy

Or not, the world is as it was and ever will be so Or so it seems to anyone who has an honest eye The peace of God may come to us, but it is coming slow

They say that virtue is the good that has its own reward Surely this is so because it is so much admired Except when profit has come due and virtue is ignored

Listen then, you may transpose this discourse to another Plane of understanding, where virtue has dimensions Unseen by many Pharisees, as Pharisees discover

The body falls to pieces as it was meant to do Recycled like the mountains, the oceans and their islands Though mountains wear away by rain, the soul is ever new

For as the psalm has told us, the Lord will not permitHis Holy Ones to be as though they never were nor letCorruption wear away His love, nor truth be hypocrite But they will be transformed to that which has no counterpart Except for that which artists feel for what they have created Who driven by creative joy must finish what they start

We who make the things of Earth must be dissatisfied Because we are unfinished as the work that we create But we are what we finish and the work has never died

Pavel July 18, 2015

280


VISION OF THAT HOLY FIRE

When I look at someone’s face I see the face of the unknown, The features being but a trace Of what the light of God has shown

When Jesus looks He sees the whole Of what we were and are, will be, The living spirit and the soul Beneath the features eyes may see

Imagine then if we were so, As Christ can see so might we too Peer beneath the skin to know What is within, complete and true

You would see no secret there Within my flesh, the inner core, And you would know how deeply bare You are to me, and were before

But never shame to be exposed From infancy to when we die, No portion of us would be closed Nor what we are we would deny

I think that we would all unite While being open to the gaze Of each and to the Holy Light Of God in unity of praise

That which brought us to that sphere Would be the substance all entire, No shadow in us but the clear Vision of that holy fire

Pavel July 19, 2015

281


IT GIVES ITSELF TO BE ITSELF

We are wasting for true love Hunger and a famine, ribs of grace Show through the flesh

Where is the secret horde of love, Who has hidden that bright treasure And for how long?

Look beside you at the faces The careful blankness of withdrawal Of the famished self

How easily we slip away from sight Behind a door of watchful courtesy And bare indifference

But in this careful watchfulness There is a wary but important hope For that which is invisible

So that when Jesus teaches of the Holy Spirit He speaks of this when manifest in us: True love and sacrifice

Even to the death, yes death That love which gives itself To be itself

Pavel July 20, 2015

282


PRINCES OF THE AIR

Princes of the air they sail, South by west majestic go, Not vaporous, embodied air White-robed nobility they flow

Procession of the noble mist High-chested and of sober worth To courts unknown as royal guests Where hurricanes unbelt their girth

Peers and princes of the sky Their goings broad and make no sound, Around their fringes seagulls fly And all the hunting swifts go round

Pavel July 21, 2015

283


WHISTLE PIGS

They are companions of the dead Who slip through pipes beneath the hill Which underneath the graveyard spread To catch the seepage and the spill

Their fur is dense and chocolate brown, Heads are flat, incisors keen, Their tails go long against the ground And in the dark their kits are weaned

Suppose a dog intended harm, To seek and find them by their smell, The hill would whistle in alarm Within the darkness where they dwell

Now overhead the shadow rolls A soundless awning from the east, While all around are living souls Emerging from the graves, the beasts

Pavel July 22, 2015

284


STARLIGHT FIRE

Someone gave a gift, a book About the haunting of a home, He said read this in daylight only Not at night when demons roam

By night or day it makes no difference We do not tempt the underside Of surfaces we see by day, The commons of demonic pride

We are forbidden to hold traffic With the Lord’s menagerie He banished to the world beneath The everlasting congeries

Of life, the honest summer night Of moth and bat and firefly And vole that creeps between the tussocks, Starlight fire in the sky

Pavel July 23, 2015

285


ANTOINETTE

A Dutch child in the Dutch East Indies In 1941, on Java, many years ago, Imperial Japan invaded them So I heard her tell, who else may know?

South to the Indian Ocean there to meet a freighter The refugees fled southward, those fearful Dutch civilians, While close behind the conquering Japanese And so there was a freighter placed on station

The ark of rescue rocking in a gentle swell, But as they stood reprieved on shore They heard a sound that made the sky reverberate, A red sun on a fuselage, the engines roared

Bombs were dropped that pierced the iron hull, the Dutch ship broken As they watched from shore, their liberation gone, While from the road behind them came the sound of trucks She told me on that day, five decades on

Then there was a long internment, pitilessly hard With hunger and anxiety and hardship all in plenty, While from the Netherlands could be no word Nor from those alien impassive sentries

But she survived, survived—If Antoinette had never told me so Who would have known to look at her How tough some people are—who else may know?

Who else may know the toughness of the secret heart? The spirit of the weak is wordless, hidden Until the day we share what we have learned—Though evil is most strong survivors are more stubborn

Pavel July 24, 2015

286


RIVENDELL

In Tolkien’s legendarium a refuge from disaster, While those who bow and kneel before the tabernacle Enclosed inside the glory of the saving Christ Stay safe within the stronghold of eternity

Rivendell was built among forbidding mountains, A settlement of peace, a lampstand of the precipices With fountains of serenity from springs well-guarded, Invisible to ghouls that roam the outer wasteland

But we should not stay over-long in Rivendell Because the contest of the worlds goes on, Pilgrims take their places in the slaughter line, Grip swords of patience, others heal their wounds with prayer

We look behind us longingly and yet By choice endure the vengeance of dominion—Rivendell the tranquil perches in a cleft So narrow that the daylight there is all too brief

Pavel July 25, 2015

287


ONE BY ONE

Mud and spittle on the eyes, What village shaman may this be? What is the explanation for A village blind man who can see?

Perhaps he wasn’t blind before Or some placebo was applied, Strong suggestion or a fraud, Perhaps he saw before and lied

But granted that the Son of God Compelled the rare exceptional, Why use secretions of the Earth To work the inexplicable?

Because He made them, light from Light, Because without Him there is none, That all may see that miracle He gives them vision, one by one

Pavel July 26, 2015

288


NOT A WORD

Midas, you have ass’s ears for meddling in those things You had no business meddling with, the strum of lyre strings When fingered by Apollo, which sounded poorer than At least to you, poor meddler, the breathy pipes of Pan

If that’s the way you hear it, the god Apollo said, I’ll give such a pair of ears you’ll wish that you were dead, A donkey’s ear for music gets you auricles that size, A hee haw for a tenor voice with which to harmonize

Now Midas had a barber who used to cut his hair But when he cut the royal locks the hair dresser declared Such lovely ears you’ve grown, my lord, perhaps I shouldn’t trim The hair around your ears so much, the barber said to him

Midas whispered: Leave it long and also keep it quiet About these longish ears of mine or else they’ll cause a riot, These ears are not for public eyes, a turban made of wool Covers every inch of them, they are invisible

Not a peep, King Midas said, so keep your flappers shut, No ifs or ands or maybe sos, no gossipings or buts, But if I ever hear the word you let my secret out You’ll either get the chop from me or else go up the spout

The barber swore it up and down, he swore it side to side That never would he breathe a word about King Midas’ pride, Those ears that stuck a yard above the royal cranium, He said he would forever be the royal barber dumb

But after many barberings the secret like a mole Tunneled deeply into him and tormented his soul Until he could no longer keep the mystery suppressed Of why the royal turban—there was gossip—no one guessed

He rushed out to the suburbs and found himself a fen And with a violent movement he lay down at length and then He thrust his head beneath the water, shouted through the bubble: The king has ears compared to which most others are like stubble

The king has ears a meter long, and that’s the truth of it The frogs and fish will know the truth or else I’ll lose my wits; He thought the secret safely drowned but travelers can hear The wind blow through the cattails: The king has donkey’s ears

289


Pavel July 27, 2015

290


NOT KNOWING

The noble Agamemnon had a stiffness in the shoulder On the left side where he carried into battle His heavy multi-layered shield against brave Hector

So many wounds, so many wars and strongly built That warrior, that king, that sovereign of Mycenae—What power could destroy him but his guilt?

Agamemnon, did you bathe to soothe your aching spine And did your back take ill, not getting any younger, That braced a heavy shield against the Trojan line

And in that steaming pool in Mycenae Clytemnestra came with oil and dripping sponge A net, a knife, a murder, eye for eye

You sacrificed her daughter for a lucky breeze—The Queen knew how to take revenge on you Who thought that kings at war do as they please

Listen then, the Greeks knew that the heavy world is such That one weight over-balances another weight Until the equilibrium comes back, and often by a touch

They said it was the will of Zeus, or fate Or that immortal goddess Dikē, justice Who brought the universe itself against the state

For petty gain or grand advantage as we thought Which daughter or which daughters have we sold Not knowing that instead it is re-balance that we bought?

Pavel July 28, 2015

291


IT WOULD START

Because she wears a summer dress You see the scar that was a wound Which opened up her chest, exposed The heart within that time can mend

But there are other scars which heal More slowly if they heal at all Or never heal but still inflame Forgotten since but yet appall

Appall in ways we can but know In moments of lucidity When gazing at the shadowed face Of swiftly slipping memory

Wounds that would be wounds of love Affirmed and yet as if the heart Were shocked somehow and paralyzed And yet so clutched that it would start

Pavel July 29, 2015

292


FACING WEST

This is where we live for now In the foothills of the mountains And where I will be buried when The time will come, sooner, later

Contemplate another death Of cities and societies, And when that may be no one knows, The time will come, sooner, later

Look out from a nearby hill, Across the valley you will see A cemetery and a cross And that is where they’ll bury me

From what high hill from which to glimpse The ending of the present state? Ancient Rome had seven hills—From which could prophets see its fate?

Facing west the Palatine Where rose the palaces of Rome, Magnificent the polished marble Red with the reflected sun

Pavel July 31, 2015

293


NEW GUINEA

They belted on their side arms And took their gray grenades And up into the mountains of New Guinea went the soldiers

One of them my uncle in his middle 20s Toughened by survival in those awful forests With his buddies from the engineer battalion

Strong enough to climb into the Owen Stanley Just to see those rumored savages With their suckled pigs and their cultivated gardens

Up into the clouds and through them to the highlands Aliens whose footprints like demons' had no toes With magic stones that cracked and flamed like thunder

Dead now many years, I think of him as young That amateur of martial arts, of judo and jujitsu But really, which you heard him speak, not so very bright

He lived through months of fighting with a searchlight crew Survived to see MacArthur wading through the surf—They took the Philippines—and how they loathed him

What did these troopers seem to the people of the mists Rising from the world below the world Like spirits of the dead come back to life?

Will some of us then rise from the mists of this dead world Like spirits from the mud, the dreadful heat and its diseases? What will they think of us that day, exhausted toeless wonders?

Pavel July 31, 2015

294


UPON THE DARK MOUNTAINS Give ye glory to the Lord your God, before it be dark, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains—Jeremiah 13, 16

We will be lost and beneath us the precipice, The howling of madmen, above us the heights Where may be the demons or may be a nothingness Nothing seen forward and no vision near us

So now while the daylight still shines on the mountains While there is time give praise with the pure ones, The sun is not gone yet in spite of the demons Who swelter in darkness, the deep of their ovens

Give glory though twilight is made our cathedral The altar be secret, the offerings dwindle, No light be upon us except for one candle, The way be a mystery, so we shall stumble

But if you are faithful the Christ is your guide The light falls upon you although you may hide, The path among pitfalls is level and wide For all of the darkness of mountains is pride

Pavel August 2, 2015

295


A BILLION VOLTS

A billion volts burned overhead last night So close that time and space were ripped apart Through which a vision entered of destruction And of the dispensation that the world must be

Enough, there will be no more universe Enough of all identity and consciousness You are dissolved, you beings, into formless clouds For I will make another world of other names

Or nothing, nothingness, such is My power Eternity is mine and form and number That which knows and that which has no self All change and changelessness is mine to hold

You are dissolved, it said, but in that moment The all-destroying bolt above the Host Between the sky and earth had touched the steeple And stopped, though with a mighty voice it shouted


296


THE AFTERGLOW

I realized last night When lightning passed so near to us above us A bolt that split the world of us in shards As if all time and space might shattered be

All categories of existence cancelled Identities extinguished by the Lord—That God requires nothing to exist That all we have from Him remains gratuitous

That even joy of heaven need not be Nor sacrifice to benefit our being Nor even death defeated by the Cross That nothing need subsist but light from light

Or He might wrap Himself in perfect darkness With nothing to be made for Him to love So that existence must be ours for this—That love descends from Father to the Son

And from the Son to Mary ever Virgin And from the Virgin to the Holy Child And from the Holy Child to all of us And from the Christ for us the Holy Ghost

Amen, amen, the lightning is a sign Of God’s tremendous power to dispose, That all that He has made can be unmade And yet there is the afterglow—He rose


297


THE FALCON AND THE PEREGRINE

The hawk that wheels above the hollows A brain with eyes, a soul that sees Surveys the clearings and the meadows, The pathways underneath the trees

But how much farther can I range Without the wings and eager eyes? A vision I would not exchange With any predator that flies

For I can see the future passed The past as future all the same, The last as first, the first as last, A wild uncertainty as tame

The falcon and the peregrine The eagle and the soaring hawk Can see whatever birds have seen But we the paths of heaven walk


298


HE FOUND THEM GOOD

All the apples on the tree All the fishes in the sea Every sparrow in the nest Every one a holy guest

Why should there be anything To grow and fly and swim and sing? There’s a reason to be found In every shape and every sound

He made them all to be His pleasure Living things He made to measure, All amusements of His craft— He found them good and then He laughed


299


PAY ATTENTION TO THE SIGNALS

What are crows uprising for? Shadows in the dark spruce tree Against the hawk declaring war, Flapping darkly their decree

We are off to find a journey But our good friend stays behind, See, he bids his good-bye kindly, Another journey he must find

Pay attention to the signals, The ancient Romans did as well, The flights of birds above the temples Might their future fortunes tell

Now within the curving cavern Of the dream that comes awake Stirs the sleeping that awakens To the sound the dark birds make


300


WHEN I LOOKED…

When I looked at the sterile hills of Mars In the photograph sent by Curiosity Rover, The rippling pinkish sand and barren buttes, The lifeless prospect and the scattered boulders

I thought how well this vacancy conforms To the arid human soul, the blank despair Of the godless and deracinated man, The desiccated ground and lack of air

That is our planet fittingly, reflects The empty light of our own internal sun When we have left behind the house of Christ And the mortal triumph of the Risen One

If we colonize the desolate And ultraviolet wilderness of space, Which idol will our heirs propitiate, How to pray to that which has no face?


301


IN THE LAND OF SLAVES

Christ was in Egypt too A slave who worked on the tombs And no one knew His name See, you knew Him not, you other slaves

When the children of Israel made the calf of gold In the desert of rebellion It was Christ who returned to Egypt of the black land To die with those who had turned back

For surely when they made the golden calf There were some who would not drink the strange infusion But hid the fragments in their dirty robes And went back to the flesh pots of the fellahin

There He served where no one knew His name For His time had not yet come—He is Christ the unbidden One Who serves and is not known in the land of slaves


302


THE WAR OF LIFE AND DEATH

The Father sent His only Son On a desperate mission To leave the country of All Hallows For the Crucifixion gallows

Then like any Father will He worried while the stars held still To see His Jesus raise the dead, Five thousand hungry peasants fed

He heard Him bait the Pharisees And contradict the Sadducees, But death was death, it held its sway Above all creatures made of clay

Then they pushed Him to the Cross, The Father wept His heavy loss And shook the ground so mightily Who made the stars above the sea

He gave an edict, all must die For death is death, in dust we lie, But such the grief the Father bore That death and living went to war

They battle still and still oppose Though from the tomb Christ Jesus rose, For death is stupid and knows not That it has lost, though death may rot

Although it must disintegrate And though the time of it grows late It waves its rotting, stinking fist Against the shining Eucharist


303


LOVE SURROUNDS HER

The Blessed Virgin on her throne A crown of every precious stone, Blue her garment, light surrounds And haloes her, a glow profound

In her hands a green-bound book In which the Blessed Virgin looks, She reads Isaiah’s prophecy, An imminent doxology

Praise and glory to the name Of what the angels will proclaim When she has given God His birth To bring His mercy to the Earth

A gift is this, of what to come By grace of Him, of all the sum, This precious gift her Son provides, The book of life that nothing hides

Love surrounds her, is the glow That haloes her which He bestows And which she may from Him dispense, Along with holy innocence


304


MANY THOSE

Many those who run from Me But few will take me from the tree Said the Son, Christ crucified Loved by few, by most denied

Who attends that secret place Where I am put in My disgrace? Women who have less to lose, The frightened men will hide, refuse

Who will know me when I rise Cast off my deathly flesh disguise? They are those whom I loved best Who would not stay and risk arrest

Then who is loyal and who will stay To praise My rising day by day? They are those who conquer dread Because I rose up from the dead

But who will see and not believe? They are those for whom I grieve, I died for them but they are blind And to a darkness self-consigned


305


THE FIRST AND LAST

It circles, primaries outspread A gliding vulture, naked head Above the hillside of the dead

These have long been put to rest Beneath the ground, and sometimes blessed, For soil and seasons to digest

But there is no discernible Animal that has been killed On which to bend and pluck its fill

It lands on long ungainly toes A creature of the air that shows A naked head where nothing grows

It has a business to pursue Opaque perhaps to me and you And what we could not see it knew

When time enough has been and passed Souls will circle—time is vast—The graveyard of the first and last


306


ON THE SURFACE

On the lake a haul-out board Placed there by a thoughtful ranger, Turtles warm themselves at ease Moated safely far from danger

Also flowering water lilies, Petals ivory, centers yellow - Damselflies and dragonflies Hunt and steer above the shallows

Close to and within the marsh Frogs as if with pewter clad Fold their legs and warm themselves Beside the jade-green lily pads

Heaven too perhaps is like—Where spirits pull themselves above And rest in sunlight on the surface Warmed and sanctified by love


307


AND NOT GROW OLD

They paint the house, the ancient house With deepest golds and yellows On the finials

Such a big and ancient house It will be long before they finish Then the world itself will vanish

The painters climb until they reach Astonishments Bewilderments

The cupola looks out above The farthest sight Of day and night

There they stop and wonder if The painting of it ever ends And if there is an ending, when

The Patron will be back by night But He has never yet complained To see how much undone remains

He tells them then to scramble down: Beloved children you must rest For now you are my chosen guests

The house goes on to an extent That no one ever sees it all But all they see they will recall

And then when I have taken down The walls and roof and all the gold You will go on and not grow old


308


THE LESSON ENDS

“Now I’ll show you how to swim, See the pool before us, now I jump and sink and rise again, That is water, that is how

“The lesson ends and you have learned To swim, and so I can depart” But how will we know how to swim,’ The children asked, ‘is it an art

“Technique, a secret how to float Or rise again or hold our breath?” “Here is a truth about the Christ, To find Him plunge in life and death”


309


THE BOARDS GIVE WAY

The Devil moved next door and paints His rotting porch to cover Hell So when the summer season ends He will sit down and stay a spell

The fiend is cold and when the cold Comes down on us in ice and snow, It is congenial to his mind, No reason then to rise and go

His inner core is solid ice His soul a frozen-hard cement So when the lungs of him inhale He draws death from the firmament

In boards beneath him rotting spreads, The blind unwary think them new But when they come to visit him The boards give way and let them through


310


THE SONS OF GOD

Dusk and all the valleys sleep Across the west a streak of red, Amalgam of the earth and sun Which through the atmosphere has bled

And now the creatures of the day The singing bird, the doe, the stag Have rest and quiet for the night, The summer stars hang out their flag

Their country is the summer night That moth and bat and nightjar see, And soon the marching of their might The soldiers of eternity

For this is war although no sound Can penetrate to reach us here, The dying of the men of time Until the sons of God appear


311


A VIGIL

They sleep so soundly these dead folk If they woke up what would they say Of what they dream of Judgment Day?

We who peer at them from here Through thistles, milkweed and the rose Wonder what the spirit knows

But now we fade into the bush We creatures of the wood and shade We are of noon and sun afraid

Hush, one says, no wondering For these are elsewhere still asleep And we a vigil for them keep

And when they rise from there we too The lovely ones, the curious Will be undying with them, thus


A VigilPhoto by Pavel Chichikof

312


OUT OF THE VALLEY

Out of the valley, the deep valley Mists of summer morning flow And from the mist Saint Michael rises, Mist that covers swales like snow

His arm is held around the world Which does not know of his protection, Though the world emerges then It does not know of its infection

I saw the flowing of the mist A church as if from mist just born, The vessel of the Eucharist, A steeple rising like a thorn


313


ABOVE THE WINTER SEA

Saint Thorlak driving demons out of Iceland Came to one dark crevice in a cliff And from that slit emerged a hollow groan: “Thorlak, mercy, mercy on us fiends

“Christ in power drives us to this desert, Glacial rubble black as is our souls, Suppose you exorcise and banish us We will go naked to the world of winds

“Even demons need a place to live So by the grace of Christ please let us be, Relent, good bishop, we will be at peace And not disturb your flock for centuries”

The saint, whose heart was filled with charity Withheld the prayer that crushes Satan’s skull, But centuries passed by and then the world Blundered and broke down the seal of stone

Up into the storm the demon leaped Attained the rocky shore of Myrdalur From which it caught the westerlies and sailed Above the winter sea and Ireland


314


WHO CAN WE BLAME?

The people belonging to Hell grew a garden But just for themselves and not for another, Trees of the fig and trees of the lemon Form without scent without pistil or anther

When it was finished all of it theirs Fruit trees abounding that never matured, Apple trees apple-less, pears without pears Medicinal commons without any cures

They watered and weeded until it was beautiful Yet though they tended it nobody came, Where are the worshippers, such is our bountiful Garden of Eden then who can we blame?

Around them a wilderness, limitless, sterile A desert of death which no one traversed, And they unapproachable stayed in the middle Suffered their loneliness, bitterly cursed


315


DO NOT QUARREL

No piety can pay for grace But only wounds can pay the cost, Wounds of grief and loneliness Love denied and love that’s lost

As Peter sank before the Christ Could lift him up, so must we go Above the deep and cold abyss And touch the emptiness below

As Lazarus who died, was rank Was wrapped in darkness in a cave, Had only graceful Christ to thank, He was by dying raised and saved

Peter nearly drowns and dies Life for Lazarus is won, Do not quarrel, question why That grief is love’s companion


316


A SKY OF SHINING LIGHT

We hear the dead bell ringing overhead On this clear morning summoning the dead, Late summer and the clouds in white procession, Their shining sides reflect an intercession

That in and out of time there comes a peace, A lawfulness of beauty does not cease, That she they send away by Roman rite Arrives within the realm of God by night

Then may the Lord receive me in this way In high procession like the clouds today, For we are also vapor made to form A sky of shining light or summer storm


317


MISSIONARY TO THE YAHOOS

The Devil in the desert tempted Christ With tawdry gifts of power, tempted thrice, Jesus, Lord of all the worlds and man Said, I will not seize them though I can

He studied Satan, curious to see Such confidence and base vulgarity, But I’m like those I tempt, said Lucifer, They trust the one who seems familiar

Although I am to You the prince of evil The fiend of hell and sorrow and the Devil They see me as a customary man And so I seize their spirits for I can


318


SECRETS

Night, the cricket and cicada choir, Dusk is flowing into sweet late summer Veiled the sumac and Virginia creeper

Which by daylight fail into a crimson More beautiful in their degeneration, Oppose the green in generous contention

Day by day the sun declines and less The noon parabola, the days regress Clear and bright the sky in loveliness

This enough, to see it and no more To know what final flourishing is for The secrets that we keep in trust restore


319


MEALS OF STONE

It will exact endurance of a special kind For as the emptiness and desolation spread They will in every hungry soul seep through

So that the inner spirit wastes away Becomes a wilderness of emptiness That nothing fills and where it never rains

And He too traveled through this arid waste—Although at last the angels gave Him food At first a demon offered meals of stone


320


I HAVE CONFESSED

I have confessed before a priest In that accustomed private booth Where self-deceptive lies have ceased, Where is no word but simple truth

But then how will confession be Before the highest priest of all When life and death have set me free In that last great confessional?

No need for secrecy to bare With all there is already known, The spirits and the angels hear, With Mercy seated on His throne

And then the story will unfold As one related to a friend, A narrative by love re-told By One whose love can never end


321


A SECOND

Footslogger, landser, pekhotinetz, poilu All going shoulder to shoulder in shrapnel The fiery wings of the angel of death

These more than others could see in a marvel The faultless and seamless perfection of flowers Hear the astonishing music of birdsong

And as he prepares to harvest the spirit The angel of dying hesitates there To render a second for love of the sunlight


322


TOMATOES TIMES TIME

Red tomatoes fronting on a screen That which is elapsing is unseen, Light embracing roundness and the skin Flows around the wires and comes in

The flowing is illusion quantified Death is dead and dying is denied, Finer and much finer is the frame Infinity and seconds are the same


Small TomatoesPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

323


THE BLADES

Above the hills, along the ridge line Winding with an unseen wind The turning of the giant turbines Arms like shining blades that spin

Fifty meters up and more They seem to march but never shift While through the gaps the currents pour The turning of the blades their gift

There is a spirit wind that made My soul unseen and yet I see By lovely shining of the blades The wind of far eternity


324


IF YOU CAN IMAGINE IT

Lost in swampy green detail A stirring in the leaves and then A blur, a body and a tail A tiny body makes them bend

A passing vole, mammalian Invisible by a means so clever Snapper or amphibian Might not enjoy their morsel, ever

But if you can imagine it Shrunken to a miniscule Down into its habitat Where garter snake and turtle rule

An algal smell, a scent of musk The iridescent flashing blue Of damsel flies, the empty husks Of beetles you have bitten through

A tunnel highway through the stems Of salty grasses overhead And you the furtive and condemned To show yourself inhibited

Listen, you may be as such When Christ in judgment reigns above When those who hate evade His touch And all will hide who have not loved


325


CattailsPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

326


THE STREETS AND TOWERS

Beyond, beyond, beyond the hills The curvature of Earth defends The walls of New Jerusalem The life of God that never ends

But as we are on foot and sore The rugged slopes deplete our strength, We top the hills to see much more Of endlessness of height and length

We might sit down and rest a while But fear of being left and lost Can drive us on by mile by mile A road intended to exhaust

Some of us give in and sit Remove our boots, massage our feet, But these I think have lost their wits Will not get up, their loss complete

How painful is the ceaseless tramp That wears us down, will we arrive To see the lighting of the lamps While still alive, while still alive?

Jerusalem descends from night She rises from the depths of day, She brings the stars to be her lights That on the streets and towers play


327


Hills at DawnPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

328


AN INFANT PLANTED

Last November’s gourds were dropped When all the autumn growth had stopped, But now their yellow flowers grow, Farsightedness is sure but slow

Soon October will have made Gourds of many shapes and shades, Then November’s will be clipped, The Lord’s amusing craftsmanship

Our fragile sight could not foresee What germination there would be, What craftsmanship of spirit from An infant planted may become


329


ABOVE THE NATIONS

Today a mist above Brush Mountain Blue and thin, diaphanous Veils a warm late summer day

Another veil I think of now The shroud of which Isaiah spoke The covers nations in its web

Not unlike a cup of dice The elements are mixed and spilled And so the summer west wind rises

The vapor mounting overhead Above the nations, blown to shreds By forces driving from the west

When cleared away will then reveal An autumn landscape, sharp tableau Expose what cities lie below


330


I SAW A FATHER TAKE HIS CHILD TO SCHOOL

I saw a father take his child to school, The Blessed Sacrament, the ancient Faith, The consecrated blessing and the rule Which builds against the toxins of the state

For there will be such grim contamination Of immorality and lawlessness, That grace will be the only vaccination That immunizes from the world’s disgrace

There is an open place, a hidden treasure, A vial of truth, a sweet viaticum, A cure that heals that hideous displeasure, A remedy against imperium

I saw her father take her by the hand And lead her to the Blessed Sacrament, The altar and the Easter candle stand The tabernacle and the firmament


331


MOUNTING IS TO BEND THE KNEE

Below the when and where of birth On the left the tree of light, Above the darkness of the Earth Baffled columns on the right

Up and up to climb but see No destination overhead, Mounting is to bend the knee And leave below the buried dead

Will we ever see the sky Attain the roof and then release, Or is the staircase endless high Flight on flight to never cease?


Up StaircasePhoto by Pavel Chichikov

332


SLANTED

Slanted truth, slanted gender Slanted sex and slanted business, Slanted news and slanted culture Slanted people in distress

Slanted went to be unslanted Looked for slanted oracles Slanted prophets, cults demented Selling slanted miracles

Up along the slanted staircase Climbed the slanted, crooked folk, Uttering with slanted faces Slanted promises they broke


333


BUT I WILL LIGHT A CANDLE

Row to the dark deep water The shadows of abyss To catch the catch of splendor No friend of Mine can miss

Then Simon, James and Andrew With John Evangel rowed, A wind blew up those billows That later Jesus strode

They pulled with all their powers Until they saw below The dark abyssal cellars Where baffled spirits go

Pull up, pull up said Jesus Hand and fist the haul, The catch will be tremendous Blinded spirits all

Their eyes have grown vestigial Because they live beneath, But I will light a candle That even burns in death

The men spilled out the plunder Of spirits on the sand That goggled in a wonder To see the Son of Man


334


DO NOT BOAST

This morning when the hills were blued with mist I came to Mass and Holy Eucharist To seek a living Person, not a thing, With nothing of my own this One to bring

No doubtful argument and no conceit Of proper gifts to set before His feet, No promise of amendment He might need Or aspiration separate from greed

But only this, a presence to await The silent grandeur of the Lord of fate Who gives me free permission to attend Another Mass which offered never ends

Why should I be welcome to that fête With frail attention, sorrowful and late, Till flesh and blood of sacred Light appears As all the creatures of the worlds draw near

Above the altar and around, before The priest who opens up the holy door, That when he consecrates the hallowed Host We may adore the Glory and not boast


335


BLACK AS NIGHT

Black as night and white as moonlight Picturing the hunt to come, Chipmunk, squirrel, bird and rabbit Corpses scattered to a sum

Through the underbrush of weeds Underneath St. Leonard’s hill Tasting how the hunted bleeds, Wants the night to hunt and kill

Having slept away the day Her muscles rested and unwound She feels the stalking, creeping through The undergrowth without a sound

Overhead the dragonflies Scoop mosquitos from the air While in the attic blinking bats Shivering their wings, prepare


Front Street CatPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

336


THE ONE WHO MADE THE FIRE KNOWS THE COAL

Our hills are beautiful but pitiless None relieve our grieving, heal distress, The sky at night is glorious with flames But nothing in the darkness knows our names

Many say the world is pitiless That nothing lives within its randomness, Abandon hope they say in outer Hell That Dante knew and versified so well

But when he climbed the mountain of contrition He saw how Love responds to our petition— The One who made the fire knows the coal The One who made the spirit knows the soul


337


FOR HIS OWN SAKE

We were made of glass derived from sand Heated in a fire to a shape, A lizard then a lemur that could stand Various diversities of ape

Finally a humanoid was tipped, Slurry to be poured inside a mold, As it was decanted from the lip Became a human figure and grew cold

God took up the man and studied him, Found that there were defects all around, A bubble there, a crack ran through a limb The soul inside the heart of him unsound

So then he held him high above a stone, Dashed the human down and made him break, Shattered him completely, soul and bone Then melted him again for his own sake

Pavel September 7

338


ON PATROL

On patrol above the marsh A three-inch dragon swoops and darts, Thorax green and azure striped What artisan devised these arts?

Compose, my soul, a hymn to this Astonishing and breathless flight, The swervings, divings, followings, The scoopings and the turnings tight

Lord, my God, my very heart What have you made that moves me so? Let this practice of Your art Be planted in my soul and grow

And let me swerve and move and rise In my reflections of Your grace, That so I may display alive My flight before Your shining face


Dragonfly closerPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

339


DRAGON AERODROMES

I saw the veins that filled its striving wings The smaller veins traversed the apices, While close against the thorax as they rowed The greater spread across the planes of these

Globes of eyes surveyed the globes of space Each a hemisphere around the head Enclosing nearly all the insect’s face To find the prey on which the dragon fed

It could fly up and down and forward, back Left and right with such precise control So as to sweep the air, no motions lack With rapid turns and even pitch and roll

It could deform its wings to give it lift And potently accelerate its flight Or hover, then to rapid chasing shift All guided by extraordinary sight

And would you now design a creature such, A million steps inside the chromosomes, And thousands and more thousands at a touch To fill the swamp with dragon aerodromes?


340


Dragonfly closerPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

341


HIS COMPANY

I failed to keep my temper for something trivial, A fumble in the kitchen I would be ashamed to tell, Threw a fork against the sink that made it spring and fly, God be thanked the tines were down and not in someone’s eye

Then in my disgrace I came before the shrine of Christ, The tabernacle where he waits at Golgotha’s high price, Sought His comradeship to tell His mercy of my shame, He said I should not grieve so much but say His holy name

Say His holy name and then rely upon His peace Await the coming of His light when every rage will cease, So I knelt, received His calm, gave homage on my knee, Then I forgot my foolishness to share His company


342


THE NEWS

Did you think the fruit with which the fiend Seduced our mother Eve an easy pick, Or that it was low-hanging on a limb, Accessible to fingers or by stick?

The serpent made her sweat for it and climb, Pull herself as far as she could go, No easy picking, Paradise or not, Take it from the top, look out below!

And as she climbed her body flattened out Until she was as limber as a snake, Iridescent with his greed and doubt But light so that the heartwood would not break

Adam stood beneath her all bemused Imagining the juice inside the treat, While all around the Garden ran the news Of disobedience and their defeat


343


REHEARSAL

If that’s the way You want it, then that’s how it shall be, So then I knelt before the Elevated in all Three, Pressed the heart in pledge of love and then in my salute Stretched out my hand to adulate in flesh the Absolute

A first anticipation of what is still to come That when we see the Lord at last we may not be struck dumb, Serene eternal orbit of souls of lesser flame, As we did here we will do then, adore Him just the same


344


TELL US WHERE

To those who sense the weather change Seek the safety you arrange, Avoid the center of the cell, An eye that seems symmetrical

A storm so huge, the walls so high A cloud that pivots on the sky, A calm so great can never fail You think, on that colossal scale

But those who do not know enough To flee the weather going rough Will find themselves inside a storm Where all misfortunes spin and swarm

The axle of that hurricane Will grind the mountains into plains, The scent of sea, the sound of wind For those are coming, those are twinned

Then tell us where we can retreat—Among the growing golden wheat And where the branches twine and grow Of all the vineyards that you know


345


LOST BUT NEVER MISSED

They stole from you, they took by stealth By subterfuge, by guile, your wealth When you were young and just awakened, Tossed away as stone, forsaken

But I have seen it dirty, lost Where One redeems it at great cost, A diamond on a rubbish heap Where saints and martyrs never sleep

They keep and guard with burning swords The gemstones which may not be scored, Their weapons are their litanies And what they guard may not be seized

By light of day they will be found Returned undamaged, bright and sound The spirits of the atheists, Which had been lost but never missed


346


SIOP

God has a single integrated operation plan For diatoms and tardigrades, continents and galaxies, Moles and shrews and scarlet velvet worms Glaciers glowing green and misty redwood trees

You and I are in that composite scenario, Characters who live within the lines declare Autonomy, their will and yet they go Where subjects go, and God will find them there

But when the story ends who is upright? The jibe says when the game is played and over Pawn and Queen and King and all are swept Into the box, the lid is shut and darkness is the cover

But then another and another think no wise For who knows when another game may start, And he who says it won’t and then denies The Author’s narrative denies his beating heart


347


A PARABLE THAT YOU CAN UNDERSTAND

Disciples, take a parable that you can understand, Stow your nets, raise up the oars and pull out from the land, See, the wind is rising, the running of the sea Booms against the headland—there is no sign of Me

Furious, inhuman, the clouds above you fly The boat goes on her beam ends, in moments you will die, Drowning is a parable that everyone can hear No edifying story is as powerful as fear

Now I will approach you, impossible but true, A savior in the darkness, the Jesus that you knew, Why have you not called Me, see here is My face, The fury of destruction has vanished without trace


348


THE WIND WILL DO IT

A walnut hangs above our yard And now in mid-September drops Green-husked black-filled walnuts down With soft and flaccid heavy plops

Or maybe like the droppings of A cow that nibbles on the sun, A meadow upside down above This many-footed grazing one

On every morning summer long And by its branches and its roots Concelebrate the passarines Who serenade with pipes and flutes

And who will pollinate this tree Which has a catkin and a blossom? The wind will do it gratis, free In gusts of May both sweet and solemn


349


PARASITES

Above the corn the cowbirds gather Shotguns fire and they scatter, Multitudes the farmers slay Black corpses’ thousands in one day

The rest return to feed on corn Their slaughter seem to treat with scorn, Three-quarters of a standing cob One bird can strip, much more the mob

In thirty acres may be left Not much behind the cowbirds’ theft, They mass until September’s frost Their bellies filled with harvests lost

And then they leave with what they ate Sleek and fat when they migrate, A figure of the parasites Who profit when the nations fight


350


THE MEASURING ROD

Through the tall green forest on a narrow path We met a weathered traveler who had seen God, What did the Father look like, was He tall and great? Something like a man and held a measuring rod

How could you know in certainty whom you had met? Oh you will see and know Him by the light displaced And also by the adoration of the wilderness, He is like no one else belonging to our race

His garment is on one side like the sky at night And on the other shimmers like the dawn of day, I could not meet his gaze, His eyes were blinding bright Like freshly fallen snow on which the sunlight plays

He held the rod before Him against trees and sky He said, they are bent out of true and death is here—Do you know the reason for this, traveler? I did not answer but I felt uncommon fear

Then He seemed to think and then the birds sang out, All living sprang into a being as He breathed, My fear like darkness flowed away in streams of doubt, Around the boughs of oak trees garlands of the sun were wreathed

Now you must go on until you find a lake, Choose a spot of most advantage on the shore, You will see an eagle stoop and it will take My symbol, this will be a sign and nothing more

No one else will see it though you meet a few To whom you tell the story, they will not believe, But meanwhile I will bend the crooked ruined true, A better race is waiting in My hollow sleeve


351


THE TRUE TRANSFIGURATION

Here is the true Transfiguration Kneel before the Blessed Sacrament Christ is there and not invisible

A moment and not more suffices But those who can bear this in patience Will have more comfort in His peace

Sounds outside the sanctuary become as rumors As when on Tabor on that other day Three witnesses heard sheep and shepherds' voices

Drowsy is the mountain in the August heat The rains are yet to come As shimmering the sun becomes the Son


352


1 TIMOTHY 6:16

The river will find Him The Light inexpressible, Phos oikon aprositon Light unapproachable

There He can summon As it flows to His feet A river called Jordan Christ’s winding sheet

In it was christened The Christ of our sorrows And from it the baptized His deathlessness borrows

Immortal alone Whom no one has seen His blood to atone For all the unclean

Our flesh He would bathe But still in that river The saved and unsaved Stand mingled together


353


SAFETY NOW

I rest here in this late September pond, Around me is some business, I am still, The fish and flies of which I have been fond Go sparse enough but I have got my fill

Now I sleep and let the sun soak in To heal the cold of morning as I bask, Affix the energy of oxygen, I have no work but living is my task

If there should be snakes too large to swallow Or snapping turtles make a pass at me, The space that I inhabit will be hollow, I have recharged my jumping batteries

Sure enough I have no mind to worry And nothing to dispose of in my thoughts, But then my soul is never in a hurry And safety now is never to be caught


Green FrogPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

354


TWELVE TURKEYS

Early morning, see them come, Twelve wild turkeys in the garden, Ten striped hens, two bearded toms Around the dawning after seven

Often deer, and once a bear, The curious become the tame, The creatures do not seem to scare, The garden window is a frame

This picture causes a release And in the mind a door unlocks For passage in and out of peace, Ten mottled hens, two turkey cocks


355


THE SPARK

The Lord God said to me stand up! Work out what you will not complete: Gaze back into your open eyes Without a mirror—on your feet!

Nor use a scientist’s device An optic of whatever kind, In this there is a metaphor: You may not see into your mind

There I have preserved a flame Invisible, My life in you, By this alone you think and move And know a falsehood from the true

Inside the soul there is a bright Ability, a burning spark Enduring as a pilot light Which if put out the soul goes dark


356


THE COST OF RETURN

She was my personal chauffeuse Chauffeured me through the darkened streets Familiar in a light diffused Where boulevards and bodies meet

When I asked her for the charge She opened up her tariff book: The bill was thirteen years of life But more to have another look

Do I have the price you ask? I wondered in my slow distress, A tour of what has been is quick But costly is it to regress


357


WHO KNEELS WITH ME

Who kneels with me when Christ is raised above As wine and wheat become the flowing blood And flesh, no one or spirits whom I love?

May I kneel together with the dead In life and by receiving when I kneel Partake of that on which the soul is fed?

Yes and that much more because the ring Of all the living and the dead surround The Sacrificed and to the table bring

Their hymns of adoration never ceased Everywhere, in every time and tongue The living and the dead and all the priests

When in one place particular the Host is shown, The world above the world and all beneath Adore together and are not alone


358


THE TEMPTATION OF SAINT ANTHONY

The demons nagged and whined and pinched his skin A man like you is wasted in a wasteland, So capable, enduring and so clever A fool, a freak, an emperor of sand

Constantine admires you we know He sends you greetings, answer with a letter, Consider leaving this outrageous cave So that the emperor can know you better

Favor him with wisdom and advice, Your holiness will be for his improvement, Responsibilities will make you great An anchoritic life is an entombment

Weaving mats of palm leaves is for dolts, He’ll give you gifts and then you’ll get a summons, Don’t be shy, your talents should be used, Enrich the world, be famous, said the demons

We’d offer you a concubine or two But that would be pathetic, we can see, The Emperor will treasure your opinions, Your hopes for him, your pure humility


359


SOME OF US COULD SEE

Keep your cell, said Prior, all you need is there But we were bored and restless and that was our affair, We poured out through the gateway to find a tempting weed With black and purple berries on which we monks could feed

We picked the stem and flower, the black and purple fruit The part that seemed a tuber but was a fibrous root, Then most of us were deathly and soon could not respire Who wished that we were back again in chapel and in choir

When we looked around us the priory had vanished, Although they had been poisoned the sick ones still were famished, They could not stop their feeding although it was their death, Some of us were sore at heart and could not catch our breath

We wished we had our meals again, our pulses and our gruel But who had pressed us to rebel and taken us for fools? One accused the other and each began to tell How he had urged his brothers to stay inside their cells

A demon sat beside us and laughed till he turned black, I’ll give you fools an antidote if you confirm a pact, Serve me for a century and I will cure you all, The world will be your narrow cell, the sky will be a wall

My thoughts will be your priory and I will be the prior, Eat in my refectory, the dishes will be fire, Some of us agreed to this but some would not accede: Whose diet was the Bread of Life should not on fire feed

Although the sky surrounds us as if it were a prison And narrow is the passageway that leads the soul to heaven We will not feed on fire in your refectory, And soon the priory was there as some of us could see


360


PokeweedPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

361


WILD GRAPES

The vine of Christ becomes the Precious Blood A sovereign that heals the wounds of sin, But if the stock should sicken in the wood What power to be His, decayed within?

What vintage can be Christ if it be wasted By lewd degeneration of the vine, The Blood of Sacrifice would go untasted Ruined by the bitterness of wine

Let the vintner find another graft Not the tame but growing far afield, A vine that hugs the edges of a path, The fruit is small but sweet enough to yield

Love will grow the grape that will suffice To bring the soul by grace to Paradise


Wild GrapePhoto by Pavel Chichikov

362


THE CAVERN

“But all this has come to pass that the writings of the prophets may be fulfilled.Then all the disciples left him and fled.”—Matthew 26:56

In terror of what power can inflict And of the traitor by whom they were tricked Who might inform on them and turn them in,

363


THE FRANTIC HORSES OF THE NIGHT

We murder our own children But are not hares which reabsorb their young, A child that’s never to be born Or taste the wind of early morning

Love that never will be taken Never to be born to give, What have we done That happiness to be will never live?

We are a stingy mercenary brood That bets on love as if it were a race Between the frantic horses of the night That win, or show or place


364


LOVERS, REVISITED

A small green meadow floating on waterDragonfly wings that feather their oars,Harlequin props that wave—there are four—The delicate lashes of green-eyed summer

A yelp from a frog—it breaks through the skinOf the alga-light-green covering—Chestnut craters vanish as soonAs algae float in and heal the wounds

Bent reeds bow at the famished fishWho nibble the bottom of this green dish—Mosquito larvae, goggled-eyed impsBubble their microscopic lips

Green-eyed summer leans against fallWhich loves but ends this green pastoral

365

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