The First Ten Poems
Psalms 1, 8, 19, 22, 32, 51, 53, 84, 137, 142.
Psalm 1—The Infinite Tree
There is a balcony under wisteria;
Up the hillside, across the vineyards,
Past the windmills in Languedoc.
You can see the Pyrenees on a clear day
Across the bright expanse of memory
As one might see heaven
In a vision.
“No one waters the wisteria,” She scoffs,
“That thing has roots in the canal by now.”
I am in a strange land, but the smell is thick
As the petals drop like ripe fruit
That I have never tasted.
The darkling is behind me
And before me, but is not here.
You could be lost here and never know it.
You could hear the whisper of psalms
Until you were ready to begin
What there was to begin.
I came to the valley to dream
And to listen.
The word of God growls and rages.
I writhe and wait.
I moan and meditate and suffer.
I pray the seed’s prayer at night, alone,
Waiting for the infinite tree
To drop its petals into my mouth.
I pray
That I will find water the deeper I go.
Psalm 8—Thistledown The Wind Has Taken
January in England is weeks of rain.
The snowdrops writhe underfoot
And I think about what is real.
O Lord, my Lord,
How bright and vast is your name in all the earth!
When I look at the work of your hands
I see how everything is poised
At the start of its becoming.
Fat mat tongues push up from chill soil
Like a rising from the dead.
Overhead wild and unseen singers in the trees
Chorus and break cover,
As if every leaf became a bird at once.
The wind blows from another land
And the clouds go cartwheeling by.
What am I that you remember me?
Yet you have made me haunted and hallowed,
Branded, bent, and fallow;
Lattice of heartstring and sinew,
A long and weary marionette;
Betrothed of hope
And harlot to the mirror’s glances;
Hawk above, snake below,
Mouse afield and running.
You have given me the terrifying dominion,
Like an ancient king returning from disaster
At night, alone, at cock’s crow
Along the skull’s way, burdened and slipping back,
The sum of things I used things for.
I am thistledown the wind has taken,
Yet the lives of stars are nothing to me.
And you have put all things under my feet forever.
But today is only January in England
Where snowdrops writhe,
And all that is real has come to a point.
O Lord, my Lord,
How bright and vast is your name in all the earth!
Psalm 19—The Word in the Wind
Every night the sidelong hip of the Milky Way
Shows itself to you. You see
Backward across miles and years
Along the light of the works of the Almighty.
The earth at your feet is fruitful, wild, and weary.
The wind behind you, now at your face
Blows from another land
Which you have never heard of,
Which you are unequal to.
The sky and the screaming birds
And all the fullness therein say:
Holy, holy, holy.
Why do you wander pathless
In the mountain range of your feelings?
Why do you tremble at all your hidden faults?
Why have you passed so much time afraid?
If you would have light and heat,
Why are you not more in the sunshine?
If you would see the glory of God,
Why are you always elsewhere?
If you would hear the word in the wind,
Face the stars and wait.
Even now your chest, your ribs,
These rafters, this cathedral,
Fills with the breath that made it.
Even now God’s ways wait whole and unmarred
Drawing you back—
You do not need to fill your hopes alone.
The birds at dawn are enough.
The way the leaves are green is enough.
The slim wafer of the present is enough.
Psalm 22—The Chasm and the Passage
My God, My God,
You are the sparrow’s fall
And the flower’s garments.
You are the hallowed hammer
And the hanging tree.
I am poured out like water.
Why have you forsaken me, my father?
Yet surely I was cast on you from birth.
From the ordinary altar of my mother’s womb
You have been my God.
You are the light’s benediction
And the silent sky,
Both the chasm and the passage.
Mine is groan and parting.
Yours is the silence between stars,
Yet you are my canticle and call.
You are unyielding.
I am cross-hearted and heaving.
You have pierced my hands and feet,
Yet as long as light has walked between stars
You have been my God.
You tell the sun your grief
And darkness dances across the noon.
I am the veil, gripped and rended,
In the dark until the dying is ended.
All who cannot keep themselves alive
Will kneel before you.
You have been my God.
You shake the shattered earth of its ancient dead.
You are the breath in buried chests
Who rise and walk and praise you again.
I am the fountain found
I am the holy wine swallowed down.
I am trussed and scattered.
As grapes are crushed, I stagger.
Though creatures of the dark gods
Swirl and encircle me,
And trouble is near,
And the lamb is arrayed
Against the beasts again,
I will find your face
For you have been my God.
You dreamed of flesh in the ground, growing.
For you are the God of scattered seed.
But now I am kernel crushed
Chaff blown, flayed and flying.
I am the flesh you dreamed of dying.
Why are you so far from saving me?
I can count all my bones.
My heart melts. I lay in the dust.
As long as the afflicted have lifted prayers to you,
You have been my God.
Mine is the skull’s way where
All that is crushed, is crushed.
What must be carried, is borne,
And all that can die, is sent to the tomb to wait.
I am the holy bread, chewed and eaten.
I am the Prince of Peace crowned and beaten.
Psalm 32—Deep Heaven’s Diagonal Plumb
Grace, the church’s banquet, angel’s age,
Rib-raising wind, noonday darkness,
Raven’s food and feather and fall,
Deep heaven’s diagonal plumb,
Hound in field and fox in flight,
Storm’s summons and rebuke,
The air of a distant planet, priceless, costless,
A kind of crossing all things feel and fear
Relief, release, consolation, wonder
Farther than eye can see, heart hope, tongue tell.
Long watch at the wayward way, ring and robe,
Far way round and the first home,
Light’s long walk between stars come,
Land of spices; something understood.
Psalm 51—Gather Me Together, Lord, If You Are There
You sit at the big bay window
In the house where you grew up
And watch the lights of the city.
You sip whiskey and count things:
The years of violence you did against your own self;
The cold concatenation of the fears you mistook for virtues;
The parade of things you used things for;
The years you were always elsewhere
And always regretting it;
The creatures in cages
that were once your dearest prayers;
“O God,” you say to the night outside,
“Have mercy on me.”
You know that you have been a man of strings
Pushing through a hedge without end,
Stranded, strangled, and caught.
You have known so many disasters
That found you without warning or herald or witness.
And though they were a long time ago,
You can still find them inside you.
You wander through them like old ruins—
Old choices you can’t escape.
“Cleanse me and I will be cleansed,”
You ask without hope.
You can see that you are losing ground,
And every redoubt is only another retreat.
“Wash me and I will be whiter than snow.
Or leave me alone to go on loving my vices.”
You are doing it again—
That old thing you conquered
Again and again and also left free.
You buried it under the garden behind the house
Where you planted the black roses last year.
“You will find it there, my God,” you say,
“Along with all the other loves
that lost me all I wanted.
If you can, Lord, hide your face
From my empty renunciations.”
More and more you struggle to feel things.
Inside yourself you sense the failing light, the emptying tide,
The tumbling glass, the hissing sand,
The endless internal slipping into the sea.
And everywhere the void inside you yawns wider
And you wonder if there is anything that can’t slip inside.
At the precipice, you say aloud,
“Gather me together, O Lord,
If you are there.”
You tried so long to devote yourself
To the fidelities you cherished.
It seems to you now there are so many reasons to believe,
And so many reasons to throw it all away.
You watch at the chasm of all your flown things
And wait for your old loves to return,
Like birds to eat from your hands:
Your gentleness, your quiet, the stillness
You spent so long running from.
You find yourself asking,
“O God, be my first and last love and only.”
Psalm 53—Petty Kingdoms
There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun.
It’s been the ruin of many a poor boy
And me, O God, for one.
-The House of the Rising Sun, Traditional Folk Ballad
I.
The door opened and the dancing girls came,
The music and the performers, the bodies
Spun in the tempest, hardly touching.
Ghosts moved in masquerade.
And I am one.
Every room was glass and flashing,
Every face a distant star.
There was acceleration
And flickering and fever.
The falling bodies spun
Like dark dust sifting
And I am one.
The piano played itself in the corner
And everyone danced
But no one was listening.
Someone grabbed my face and kissed me.
I wanted to ask if the end had come,
Was yet to come, or was here among us?
I wanted to ask:
If these were the voices
Of my dead friends or
Just the gramophone?
There was a man next to me at the bar
With a cigarette in his lips
And a pile of burnt ends beneath his chair.
He introduced himself as my guide.
“With such deep games played
In lightless corners, one must be careful,”
He said, “You’re like to go missing
In your sleep.”
He bent close to me to confide,
“The fear isn’t believing nothing,
but in coming to believe such horrible things,”
(At this he gestured around him at the house)
“as though they were nothing.
It is the silent, internal slipping that gets you—
down the crapper with the rest of time.”
He winked as though he had imparted something important.
“It doesn’t matter
If you serve the Red Rose of York,
Or the White Rose of Lancaster.
The passage is the same:
Two coins for the ferryman.”
He lit another cigarette with the last bit of the old one
He stank the way a drunk stinks.
I listened to his words,
But could only hear
A loud noise coming from inside me
Reciting the words that everyone who is lost knows:
I am alone.
I am alone.
I am alone.
I fled.
II.
I stumbled into a garden
And shut the door on the distant music.
A man was there, kneeling.
I asked him, “Do I know you?”
And this is what he said:
“We are on the high wire now. And tumbling.
Every line is bent, trussed, and scattered.
I know how young you are.
I know you have feared all the wrong things.”
He laid his open palm on my chest
And felt the fear flutter there.
I bowed myself beside him.
“I know it seems there are so many reasons to believe,
And so many reasons to throw it all away.
Be patient with all that is unanswered
Inside your soul.
The only thing left is not something you will do;
It is something that will happen to you.
You are caught in something irreversible,
And the only way out is through.
The answer to suffering is not an answer,
But an experience.”
I felt nauseous and I tried to stand.
He glanced at the door.
“The end is here, and the son of man is delivered.”
III.
The entrance to the garden opened
And a loud parade flowed into the silence.
Many voices sang together:
“To live is self,
To die is unthinkable,
So we will take our sin in sips.
We have gathered our petty kingdoms,
But it is your universe, so we will wait
If you stagger to the skull’s place.
Come, shaker, rattle us down.
Christ the ridiculous,
Take your crown.”
One man broke off from the rest
And grasped the kneeling stranger
And kissed him, saying,
“Thou my God,
I would pry open your inner parts
And swallow you down with sauces
As one eats an oyster.”
The stranger pulled away but couldn’t
Break the man’s grip so he cried
And held onto his captor,
Who continued relentlessly:
“The sight of you repulses me.
Where is the knowledge I bargained for?
God, my God. Come,
Let us reason together.
Did you not make eyes
To look around? This mouth
To swallow down?
These reticulated fingers
To take and take and take—
First a little, then a lot, then everything?”
Someone raised their voice over the din and said,
“We have come to the end
of our time together, I am afraid.”
They lifted the stranger and dragged him away.
The speaker continued,
“This is bitter business.
Now cracks a noble heart.
Good night, sweet prince. Good night.”
He said and wiped away an imaginary tear.
The rest is silence.
Psalm 84—The House of Many Rooms
Let me show you our customs here.
There is tea at 11:00 and 4:30,
There are the spines of books and milk in coffee,
Voices heard from other rooms,
Cool cotton sheets and birds at all hours,
Old wood without memory,
Matins sung in sunlight on surfaces
And other masks magic wears
As it plays across the ordinary altars you have made.
There is a welcome, again—
Even the sparrow finds a home,
And the house martin a nest
As she follows the long path inside herself
Back to the place she belongs and longs for.
There is the temple, which was always only
Your two cupped hands.
There are gossamer flung prayers
That flash to the vast invisible.
There is the wind from before time
That makes flesh of fleshless.
There are questions that come like light
Across the floor at dawn
When you realize you already know
The stranger walking next to you.
There is the slim wafer of the present
Open your mouth
Body of christ
Amen
Psalm 137—The Vulture Sky
I.
They came to Nyamata 10,000 wide
In search of a place to hide.
They died.
Our guide mimed taking a child by its legs
And sweeping it like a broom
At the low brown mark on the wall.
Until we understood the crescent stain
Was brains. I fled.
You can come and see - your
self, the skulls, the dust, the clothes,
the bullet holes, the pocked walls, the bits of bone -
where the murdered hid.
I did.
II.
The vulture sky
was dark and heavy.
The wolf fate
was fat and ready.
The bird of peace
was up and gone.
(She didn’t return before the dawn.)
The dogs of conscience
watched the show
and inside 10,000 people waited
for snake night
to swallow them whole.
III.
If what happened to me
Had happened to you,
How would you have survived it?
Why should I not rage at my killers? And rage
And rage and rage?
Why do the wounds remain
So long after they have passed,
Yet kindness is as fleeting as birdshadow?
Is the house of my anger real enough to live in?
Why should I beautify the place of my exile?
How much will it cost when the darkling comes due?
What would I do
If my enemy were here before me
In a land without law
Or consequence?
The questions clatter in my mind’s mouth.
They combust. They cut. I shout.
I chew them. I sicken.
I cannot spit them out.
IV
Other memories are flames, like the time
You accidentally burned the boy.
He rolled on the ground and shouted
but it went on burning.
And you realized: they were lying.
It doesn’t go out.
It wants to be remembered.
Oh, yes indeedy, it is always
On its way back.
You wake at night convinced you need to run.
You are already out of bed.
”Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Help me!”
Your wife says: go back to bed.
It is just the radiator.
Go to sleep. It is just the train.
But you know
Somewhere in the room, the snake is hiding.
Somewhere the boy is still burning.
Somewhere 10,000 people press together.
It is all happening again.
Psalm 142—Be Still Or Be Scattered
The glacier is still a river
The icefall still falling water.
The snow covers but does not fill
The cracks. The ice is so blue
It is black.
You are there alone, alive,
Improperly roped. Your compass
Spins at this latitude.
The snow suggests no path. The way is any way
but back.
You don’t know how you came here,
Stunned, stuttering, concussed with cold. You were
Lost loving the glamour of things.
You didn't know you should have kept your time. How long?
And now it is gone.
You begin to suspect you feared
The wrong things and laid down in the wrong hopes
Like they were snow, to die. The Fear
You fled has known this place. You step
Carefully to its embrace.
The ice is thin. The air is thin. The very mountains
Have gone thin. The rainbow bridge ripples
Gossamer and glowing. Even a careful step
Could make all you once were shatter. It is be still
Or be scattered.
Psalms: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 34, 35, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 46, 50, 51, 53, 54, 62, 63, 65, 66, 73, 74, 75, 84, 86, 88, 90, 91, 100, 107, 110, 114, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 137, 139, 140, 142, 147, 148.
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Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash