May 13, 2008
Gleanings: Romans 5:3-5
Gleanings—Romans 5:3-5
More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been give to us. (RSV)
First a confession—I’ve never been a fan of the suffering is good so let’s inflict some more school of thought that some of the Saints seem to espouse. I’m much more of St. Therese’s line of thought—there is enough suffering in daily life for complete sanctification, if only we avail ourselves of the opportunities available.
Suffering is painful, unpleasant, and not the way things were meant to be—it is a radical sign of our separation from God and it exists because of that separation. And yet suffering is something that builds us up. Suffering with the help of the Holy Spirit becomes endurance, a kind of spiritual stubbornness.
However, one of the first thoughts that came to mind as I read this passage is a specific sort of suffering—the kind we call temptation. Every temptation and the struggle to resist it is a kind of suffering. In some cases, struggling against certain physical addictions, it may actually produce a bodily sensation of pain. In some cases the suffering may be psychological in nature as we at once struggle against the temptation and find ourselves strangely, magnetically attracted to what would separate us from God.
The suffering that comes from resisting temptation is particularly efficacious in the way that St. Paul describes. If ordinary suffering that comes from a head cold or a bodily wound can work its way to endurance, how much more so the suffering and the tempering that comes from choosing to act in accord with the Holy Spirit. If suffering that appears to have no spiritual context builds up the spirit to give us the strength to endure and grow, what does suffering that stems from the spiritual struggle itself do?
Struggling against temptation is a form of suffering that we experience every day When we, with the aid of the Holy Spirit succeed in resisting the temptation there may be no “feeling” of victory, no sensation of triumph or of conquering what truly leads to death. The life of faith is beyond that of sensation and sense. Great things are accomplished with virtually no recognition on our part. When we leave the battlefield without having given in, the victory does not belong to us, or at least not to us alone, but to the Holy Spirit within us, to the presence of the indwelling Christ, to whom we have approached a step closer, even if we are ignorant of it.
A friend recently shared with me his experience of confession and of admitting to being tempted time and again and of struggling against temptation. The wisdom that came to him from his confessor is worth repeating and sharing, “But it is worth it, isn’t it?” As Saint Paul points out in this passage, the struggle, the suffering is beyond the worth a human being can know in this life
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May 12, 2008
Gleanings: Titus 1: 15-16
A brief introduction before the actual "gleaning" as to the purpose of these writings. I cannot pretend to be a Biblical scholar. I haven't the training or the background to make definitive pronouncements as to the meaning and theological implications of specific passages. However, I do love scripture and have been raised with a love of scripture, and I do enjoy reading it and trying to come to terms with what it has to say. There are as many purposes to reading the Bible as there are people doing the reading. For me the primary purpose is not to understand, extract, and deliver that abstract truths (theology) that can be found there, nor is it to understand the people and the times, or even to attempt to grasp the grand panorama of salvation history--all of those things are beyond my means. One of the reasons I read scripture is to come to know God and to love Him more. And the chief means of doing this for me is to look at the application scripture can and does have to my life now. Scripture is not carved in stone with a set permanent meaning that never changes. It is a fact that the truths laid down in scripture are Truth, revealed for all time to all people. But scripture is also a living document, speaking now to people as they live now. It is in denying this aspect of scripture that a great many people make mistaken judgments as to its applicability. On the other hand, it is in overemphasizing this aspect of scripture that other errors are made--there is a tendency to pick and choose the pieces we would most like to be true.
So, after that long preamble, these gleanings, if they continue past this point to be public, are simply my attempts to apply individual scripture passages and understandings, hopefully informed by a larger knowledge of the whole of scripture, to modern life. While they are personal reflections, I hope that their personality is not so pronounced as to make them inaccessible for others.
Sacred scripture is a living and beautiful thing. If we allow it to do so, it will speak to us today as it has spoken through the centuries to all the saints of God.
Gleanings: Titus 1:15-16
To the pure all things are pure, but to the corrupt and unbelieving nothing is pure; their very minds and consciences are corrupted. They profess to know God, but they deny him by their deeds; they are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good deed. (RSV)
It would be easy enough to read this passage as suggesting that for the pure anything is acceptable and indeed, it is exactly this sort of misrepresentation of the thought that in the past led to heresies such as Gnosticism and Albigensianism. If to the pure all things are pure, then if one becomes pure, whatever one decides to do must be acceptable.
But it seems that St. Paul may have been attempting quite a different point. To the person transformed in Christ, the person whose life is lived in union with Him, the person who “is perfect as your heavenly father is perfect” all things are pure because that person has ceased to be his or her own judge of what is acceptable. Instead, they have accepted and embraced the gifts of the Holy Spirit, relying heavily upon Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge, and Holy Fear. With these four serving as guides, it is not possible for the pure guided by the Holy Spirit to err in matters of the spirit.
However, as with all things, there are people who come to believe that they have achieved this purity who haven’t any idea of what this purity consists. They profess to know God and after a fashion, to be fair, they know OF Him, if they do not know Him. They understand some basics and then pride themselves on their understanding and knowledge. These people can end up denying God by their actions. They may begin to teach false gospels and spread their misunderstandings far and wide. They cannot be corrected; they become the sole interpreters of God’s will. They know that He intends happy married lives for homosexuals or that women should be priests as is only fair and right in the world. They refuse correction and so they wander further and further away from the truth—one error compounds and becomes an invincible armor of prideful ignorance which then becomes an agenda.
If we cannot surrender to those God has put in authority over us—priests first and then bishops, we probably partake in some part of those who profess to know God but deny Him. The first and most essential actions of those who know God are humility and obedience—obedience to God’s well as expressed in the authorities put over us. When God chooses, they will be moved or removed, but until then, we are bound.
But so long as we remain in this disobedience, we may as well align ourselves with those launching the worst assaults on God, because we are blind.
All healing of spiritual ills begins with humility, with the understanding that we cannot take the steps alone, even if we desire to do so. God must take each of us by the hand and lead him in the way we would go.
Gleanings: Titus 1:15-16
To the pure all things are pure, but to the corrupt and unbelieving nothing is pure; their very minds and consciences are corrupted. They profess to know God, but they deny him by their deeds; they are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good deed. (RSV)
It would be easy enough to read this passage as suggesting that for the pure anything is acceptable and indeed, it is exactly this sort of misrepresentation of the thought that in the past led to heresies such as Gnosticism and Albigensianism. If to the pure all things are pure, then if one becomes pure, whatever one decides to do must be acceptable.
But it seems that St. Paul may have been attempting quite a different point. To the person transformed in Christ, the person whose life is lived in union with Him, the person who “is perfect as your heavenly father is perfect” all things are pure because that person has ceased to be his or her own judge of what is acceptable. Instead, they have accepted and embraced the gifts of the Holy Spirit, relying heavily upon Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge, and Holy Fear. With these four serving as guides, it is not possible for the pure guided by the Holy Spirit to err in matters of the spirit.
However, as with all things, there are people who come to believe that they have achieved this purity who haven’t any idea of what this purity consists. They profess to know God and after a fashion, to be fair, they know OF Him, if they do not know Him. They understand some basics and then pride themselves on their understanding and knowledge. These people can end up denying God by their actions. They may begin to teach false gospels and spread their misunderstandings far and wide. They cannot be corrected; they become the sole interpreters of God’s will. They know that He intends happy married lives for homosexuals or that women should be priests as is only fair and right in the world. They refuse correction and so they wander further and further away from the truth—one error compounds and becomes an invincible armor of prideful ignorance which then becomes an agenda.
If we cannot surrender to those God has put in authority over us—priests first and then bishops, we probably partake in some part of those who profess to know God but deny Him. The first and most essential actions of those who know God are humility and obedience—obedience to God’s well as expressed in the authorities put over us. When God chooses, they will be moved or removed, but until then, we are bound.
But so long as we remain in this disobedience, we may as well align ourselves with those launching the worst assaults on God, because we are blind.
All healing of spiritual ills begins with humility, with the understanding that we cannot take the steps alone, even if we desire to do so. God must take each of us by the hand and lead him in the way we would go.
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April 25, 2008
By Way of Comment on My Present Read
I have, of late, had the sometime pleasure of the company of a young American woman of my acquaintance at luncheon. While the venues, cuisines, and surroundings of our après-midi repast were variable and dependent upon the circumstances and opportunities available to us, they have always been of the greatest pleasure and entertainment to me.
Miss Archer is at once a very determined young lady, but one also tinged with the streak of independence set firmly in the ground of a graceful and enhancing naiveté, which conduces to my enjoyment of our conversational aperitifs.
I've grown somewhat concerned because whereas her talk was mostly of the many men who saw her and implored her favors while she remained on the Touchett family estate, more and more I am hearing of a person of interest who seems to have netted our pretty little bird without her own knowledge. And the more I hear of Osmond, the more concerned I become, because it occurs to me that there is some information circulating about him that does not redound to his credit. While one can never take seriously what circulates on the street or even in the salon, it has been my distinct displeasure to make the acquaintance of another member of the pretty scene that Miss Archer has laid before me.
Miss Archer never fails of speak of Madame Merle in anything but the most glowing terms, expressing only admiration for this widow, who, as Mr. Touchett has observed on occasion lacks any blot whatsoever on her record. One must wonder about such a record--how recent it must be and what must have been, with some great aplomb, expunged from that on-going document. My own sense of Madame Merle is not nearly so flattering to that personage. There is something about her that is, perhaps subtle is the word, but I think wily is closer to the sense. She seems to fashion les tableaux to fit the needs of the moment, and one cannot help but wonder what those needs might be. Mr. Touchett himself has confided to me that she is a woman of great and unrealized ambitions—and perhaps that view has colored my own of her character. For all I know she may be as spotless as she appears to the casual observer.
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April 18, 2008
Hot off the Presses
and so, in need of work. But I like the contours.
[cayo hueso]Deconstruction of the Ant Hill
On the sill a pile of sand as
though the beach had come to visit,
and on it, thousands of golden
lithe-bodied ants fidgeted and
jittered, waving antennae and
pawing the air more forcefully
than any foam-flecked battle horse.
Across the wide expanse of wooden
plank, three golden soldiers dragged one
large black-bodied, full-bellied queen.
And through the brown mill on the stairs
that curled around the central shaft
the mournful hum of servant tykes
who hand one to one buckets
filled with syrup or water up
to some hidden destination.Here's what happened:
In panic, the heavy bottomed
glass bowl came down on the trekking
four. The fat black ant was smashed flat
as the boards themselves, a mere stain
for future pondering. And with
that motion the mill was freed. The sound
slowed then stopped and though the buckets
went awhile, they too slowed then stopped
and the dazed children turned and stared,
golden eyes filling with hot [fat?] tears
that did not spill. They stood, stock-still
on the stairs that circled the shaft
and waited in the weighty air
of the close summer day, as women
in bonnets last seen a century
ago entered, through a small pane
of light and led them two by two
away. The mournful sound settled
into the brown wood and the stairway
emptied into light.
A mere draft, but vividly seen and felt. Much to be done, but mostly tweaking--it says all it was meant to say, and what that might be, I leave up to you.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:26 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 17, 2008
Definitely Cayo Hueso
While the previous poem certainly fits into the geographical category of Cayo Hueso, there is some question about its thematic link. Not so here.
Vision
i
Learn to see again, open
eyes and let the light vanquish.ii
It is darkness that trains the eye
to be thankful for the light,
because in the darkness the eye will
see things of its own invention--
spots of yellow light, a greater
darkness crawling across the less,
spidery veins of blue, of milky light
that does not focus. Light shine comes
as relief to the eye straining to make real.iii
Sometimes, as I lay in bed at night,
I practice seeing through my eyelids.
In that imperfect dark I can make
out every contour of the bed frame,
the dresser, the armoire. No eye
could see better in any light,
dark-sight sees the real contours
of unreal things.iv
The eye of the giant squid is as large
as a dinner plate. In the deep , cold
waters, even with its massive eye,
the squid becomes calimari for the sperm whale.
An untitled piece, this morning broken apart from the titled piece that follows it.
[untitled]
The perpetually shifting balance
of the egret prowling the hedge-tops
in search of food. What wonders
would be seen if we could see
all at once, but vision is itself
a limit, and we cannot see
all-at-once, often not even
little-by-little.What Lies Beneath
The water strider balances on a skin
of water dimpling the surface
with its six legs. And from
beneath, what does this look like
but a bubbled sky?
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:45 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Will It Never End?
Well, we're all mortal, but I hope until then not.
What You See When You Close Your Eyes
Depends upon the day.
__Sometimes it is the darkness of eyelids
__Sometimes it is the orange brightness
____of eyelids, or the red-heat glow
____of tired eyes.
But sometimes
it is the cobalt-verdigris sea, shifting
as you look.
___________Or the span of space
in the broken road crashing out
into the deep-blue air, deafening
in the difference.
________________Or the chain
of clouds that is the sky's
reflection of the crescent
curve of the tropical chain.[cayo hueso?]
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
More Cayo Hueso, I'm Afraid
Things That Don't Travel Well
Glass balls and
unwrapped geegaws
and cut paper
pictures and
photographs
in boxes and
most mysteriously
of all
memories.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 14, 2008
Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher
Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher
In sun-spotted shadow worn wood railing
half hidden, so at first I did not know
what I saw--a shadow that fluttered and limped
and then I saw the small wounded bird, wing
broken, it flopped pitifully, drawing
me closer, calling me for help, but not
really. Clever mother bird leads me far
from the nest of her precious young. I hear
a cry for help, she presents a meal
for the taking. All so her children, those
small peeps might live to one day
face their own monsters.
[cayo hueso]
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More (Not Less) of Cayo Hueso
Fragments toward an End
i
shard of beach bleached bone
shredding the shore sand
raised ribs breathing water
femur forming a bone bridge
tibia fibula phalanges
mandibula scapulum no scapula
vertebrae (amazing though they do not
know it hyoid bone)
radius ulna ilium ischium
a catalog of catastrophe
an abundance an overflowing of death
all applies a nameii
Breathing as through some horrible
dream, mist thick and magic
he sees without seeing.Breathing a thick mist dream
a laboring, long shuddering
intake that seeks to calm the inner
trembling that threatens to shake
all apart, he seeks to not see
what is plainly before him.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Cayo Hueso the Poem
I know you're tired of seeing the words and probably don't much care what they are about. However, this is the first try after about thirty drafts of making sense of the title poem.
Cayo Hueso
i
Stark
beach-bleached
white, shards not sand
that stick up seaside
a primordial picket fence
or cage, clearly
visible even from the uneven
burnt blue ocean.ii
I cannot know how I am loved, I
do not know how I love. The word
means as much as "cloud" and has
all the substance--cotton puff
pushing across blue springtime's face.iii
"Call me an ambulance."The wind
rushing over the grey water's wash
drowns sound so I must say,
"Excuse me."
____________"I don't feel so good,"
and indeed on this very coldest
of days, the coldest seen here
in forty years, his face is as
grey as the sky and sea.
And so I call.
____________It's a small
island, a speck in the sea
and in no time measured from a
city-dweller's point of view,
the flashing lights pull up the narrow
way. "What's up, old man?" the beard speaks
almost before the ambulance has stopped.And I remember it started life
as Cayo Hueso, and bones,
even if shrouded in a little flesh
still stud the shores on windy days.iv
I wanted to go winter sailing
even though the sea upset
me. But I didn't
even get to see the sea I had
come to love.But consolation is a restaurant
on the marina that serves
steaming bowls of tomatoey
conch chowder. And so I rest
content in grey.v.
The bones are still here,
they hire small children
to walk the beaches before
dawn and collect them
in baskets, so the tourists
will not be upset and call
for help.
________Sometimes they fail.vi.
Named then for the strand washed
reminders of our interiority--
what is not seen lies below
and upholds what is.
For this there is no help
on cold grey days. Or,
it is indeed its own help.
It's rough, I admit--an still isn't quite there. It is, perhaps, at times too blunt and too much. And yet, it hints at what I'm trying to get at. It serves well as a draft to move forward with, perhaps adding parts, certainly reworking some lines and sections. It is, in sum, a very interior poem that really resisted ever becoming exterior.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:59 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 9, 2008
Poem in a confessional vein
I have to admit that it scares me a little to bring this one to light because it may be one of the more raw and for that one of the more true poems that I have ever written. Not true in the sense of portraying objective reality, but true rather in the grasping at a sense of the interior reality that sometimes becomes known to us.
So, as the audience is so tiny, and consists mostly of the sympathetic, I garner the courage to place this among the poems of the recent past.
Advent
They say a season of light
but this light comes from fuel
of the human heart and thus becomes
a season of ash and dust
a season of endless lament
as we wait for a joyless birth
as we wait for the disappointing
consummation of all.In the vast meaningless
emptiness of what we see and do
Advent is the hardest darkness
because the heart that has been
indurated cannot bear nor even see
the light.For some joy, for others an endless
tunnel and this hand is dealt out
blindly. God allows what He allows
and there is no stinting on it.
For some the love of God is made
manifest in this bitterness
in the taste of ash.
I can pretend no longer
His absence cracks my heart
and releases nothing
chained as I am to dust.
Somewhat more bleak (rueful grin) than some of the others--but a glimpse of the landscape. For those who have seen it, think of the Anthony Hopkins version of Titus Andronicus and the finding of the sister and you have a sense of it. It comes and it goes and it does not torment even as it does and I can't explain it any more than that--chained as I am to dust.
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Another for Cayo Hueso
The True Disciple
God's holy hate sanctifies my own
for hear these words He has uttered
Jacob have I loved but Esau have I hated
so simply He blesses me when I blast
those who do not know Him and many that do
the people who have abandoned Him and those
who lyingly stayed nearbyHe blesses every thought that passes through my head
they all are holy as He is holy
placed there by the Lord who is the God
who made me as I am
Holy in my lust
Holy in my hate
all my desires are sanctified by His will
all my spite righteous through His might and love
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:51 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Cayo Hueso, Cont.
The Friction of Trees
In this grey, loud noise
who would think that
it is the friction of trees,
bushes, grass, rocks, roads
that weeds the winds of the storm?
What seems a sandpiper's hop
from the shore, and yet
when the wind winds through,
combed and pulled by
leafy limbs, clawed by sawgrass
and palmettos, threaded and
braided by bush, brush, and grass
it is thinned from roar to shriek.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 2, 2008
Today's Cayo Hueso again
From a recent trip:
Boston Cobblestones
The narrow way between
the Oyster House and the Bell-in-Hand
is paved with cobbles that knew
and shaped the first streets here.I step on the same stones that bore
the weight of independence; that
carried those who planned
to tan the sea with British tea.And in the misty too cool
evening it is easy to see that
they walk here still--that what we are
and what we have was given to us
from the hands of ghosts
who linger here to remind us
of the meaning that is beyond us.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 6:44 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Continuing Cayo Hueso
Mortality
I carry this decay in my body
a sign of its destruction and the source
of my uneasy delight.
As I chart its progress
I see how what is outside
reflects what's within. No sign that this
may be a sickness unto death,
a small discomfort, a little pain
a swelling, a redness, the sweet
throbbing--almost bliss--that is the warning
not all is well. And I have within
my power, the ability to change
this, at least postpone what will be
awhile. And yet, frozen, I do nothing.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 6:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 1, 2008
Cloud of Unknowing
The first part of this poem appeared earlier:
Unknowing
And so I move from knowing
to unknowing--not merely ignorance
but undoing the knowing I have
untying the knots and staring underneath
at what cannot be known once it is known.When you choose to unknow
you cannot. It comes upon you
as a gift,the promise of bliss
that unmakes what you have known--
makes holes in what is
through which light might shine.But the gift is two-edged
and what is unknown
breaks the links between things
known. Knowledge leaks out
mystery seeps in.Our broken knowledge
is the gift of humility,
it isn't forgetting--a loss,
and absence. It is a secret
unraveling, a complete undoing.Not passive, not receding
prominent and pointed
as the needle that breaches
the fabric, making holes
that let us know what is real.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 6:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Untitled Poem [Cayo Hueso]
These clouds move with this wind
and their motion moves and
changes all the changes
they have made. What are they
that their change can make what
we see different? We
see in a new way, see
as we are meant to, as
we must if we wish to
know what cannot be known.
All changed by lax clouds, all
that we known is unknown
even by us, even
by those so near us, by
those who would love us, those
who would hate us, all who
touch us, whom we all touch.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 6:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Another Poem [Cayo Hueso]
Fort Jefferson
The world changed that day when the white rock shifted
and became the small shell of a turbaned
snail, harsh in sunlight against the red brick.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 6:47 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
More Cayo Hueso
Bahia Honda
When I try to see,
to match that blue that
eludes me, that sea
melting into sky--
when I try to see
it, become lost in
it, wear it ribbon-
like on my clothes. I
hear then the sound of
it, smell the smell it
makes. I see the sun
the clouds, the loose strife
of it broken on
the beach bench, stranding
the red-brown algae.
And wonder at seas
that hold so much brown
being, alone so
blue.Posted by Steven Riddle at 6:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 26, 2008
Nighttime Series
Shades of Night
I: Cornflower
Flat cornflower sky at the edge of dusk
the buildings, telephone towers, trees, and traffic
pressed hard against it, only their overlap
providing perspective. Behind a light
winks out and shadow deepens--the shadows
on the ground and pressed against the sky.II:Indigo
They took it out of the spectrum
because no one could quite say what
it was. They had stopped watching
nightfall, when cornflower
mixes with star black
until neither blue, nor black, nor
purple, nor any other color
but indigo rings the world with purpose
before starlight shatters it.[cayo hueso]
First two of what I hope will be a subsequence in the larger work.
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More Poems NOT about Buildings or Food
The Quantum of Desire
I discovered the quantum of desire:
the exact measure
of how much a prize
is treasured, how much
a woman is prized,
how much you will spend
to get what you think
you want. I have made
a measure, a pure
geometry of lust--
with my machine I
can measure what you
want against what I
want and will always
find that my desire
is greater. No one
can want as I want.[cayo hueso!!!]
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 25, 2008
Last for Today
[untitled]
She spoke and the world melted with her words;
what was green turned brown, and white became clear
streams flowing to the sea. Of what she said,
no sense or meaning. Simple word simply
spoken, no promise, no threat, no intent
beyond the magic of language.Who knew how powerful a single word?
[cayo hueso]
Posted by Steven Riddle at 6:36 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
And More
[Chained Fragments]
I have said one thing too many
times, so the words have worn smooth as
pebbles on the shingle and some
have worn away completely.The eyes I see with today have transformed
the world for me, coloring it with shades
that have taken a lifetime to form.What we wait for, what we dream, never comes
never because no matter how close
some difference remains.Three lines are enough to say what needs said,
more lines are just more lines.[cayo hueso]
Posted by Steven Riddle at 6:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Yet More
Chained to Dust
you'd think the spirit
would move easily
like a wind weaving
through the spaces between
motes setting them dancing.But it may as well be whistling
between electron cloud and nucleus
for all the motion it makes in this
relentless sedentary waste.If the spirit moves the earthly shell
contains and constrains it
so that at times a hollow moaning
sounds--a whirlwind echoing in the void.How could the All-Knowing
make such a marriage of eternal
and ephemeral?[cayo hueso]
Posted by Steven Riddle at 6:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Cayo Hueso??
Without offering more:
A Litany of Miracles
Take a look at the hand
that holds the pen or floats over keyboard
as though not attached to your humanity.
Ghost pale in glowing light, flex it, fingers
move in ways at once simple, beautiful,
light, impossible. Who would have thought such a
stretch was mere bone in flesh and not the pure
motion of the divine?
____________________What could be more
perfect, a better pointer to what is
beyond motion? No sign you can see shows
at the surface of skin, and yet it moves
the hand, powered by a stream of human
current, the shocks and jolts of jumping nerve
impulses across a chemical sea--
a distance so vast and so perfectly
spaced that everything moves together, so
a jazz-hand dancer, then a fist, then what?
Whatever the hand has been trained to do,
whenever it has been shown to move--all
motion not its own.Posted by Steven Riddle at 6:16 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 24, 2008
A Poem
At the End of the Road
What will happen
will. There's no need
to cover plants
in the cold, if
they cannot make
it through the night,
they don't belong
here anyway.[cayo hueso?]
Posted by Steven Riddle at 12:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Permettez-moi de vous presenter. . .
mon ami, Charles Baudelaire.
And while I'm not saying the intent is my intent, the capitalization of Toi allows me to read it in a way that perhaps M. Baudelaire did not intend. (Almost certainly did not intend given the title of his chief work--Les Fleurs du Mal.)
De profundis clamavi
Charles BaudelaireJ'implore ta pitié, Toi, l'unique que j'aime,
Du fond du gouffre obscur où mon coeur est tombé.
C'est un univers morne à l'horizon plombé,
Où nagent dans la nuit l'horreur et le blasphème;Un soleil sans chaleur plane au-dessus six mois,
Et les six autres mois la nuit couvre la terre;
C'est un pays plus nu que la terre polaire
— Ni bêtes, ni ruisseaux, ni verdure, ni bois!Or il n'est pas d'horreur au monde qui surpasse
La froide cruauté de ce soleil de glace
Et cette immense nuit semblable au vieux Chaos;Je jalouse le sort des plus vils animaux
Qui peuvent se plonger dans un sommeil stupide,
Tant l'écheveau du temps lentement se dévide!A translation, more poetic than accurate, but aiming at the spirit:
De Profundis Clamavi
Roy CampbellHave pity, my one love and sole delight!
Down to a dark abyss my heart has sounded,
A mournful world, by grey horizons bounded,
Where blasphemy and horror swim by night.For half the year a heatless sun gives light,
The other half the night obscures the earth.
The arctic regions never knew such dearth.
No woods, nor streams, nor creatures meet the sight.No horror in the world could match in dread
The cruelty of that dire sun of frost,
And that huge night like primal chaos spread.I envy creatures of the vilest kind
That they in stupid slumber can be lost —
So slowly does the skein of time unwind!And another, again, poetic, not literal
Out of the Depths
Jacques LeClercqSole Being I love, Your mercy I implore
Out of the bitter pit of my heart's night,
With leaden skyscapes on a dismal shore,
Peopled only by blasphemy and fright;
For six months frigid suns float overhead,
For six months more darkness and solitude.
No polar wastes are bleaker and more dead,
With never beast nor stream nor plant nor wood.No horror in this world but is outdone
By the cold razor of this glacial sun
And this chaotic night's immensities.
I envy the most humble beast that ease
Which brings dull slumber to his brutish soul
So slowly does my skein of time unroll.And then this, which comes from the same hand that gave us the delights of The Importance of Being Earnest
from De Profundis
Oscar WildeProsperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things. There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation. The thin beaten-out leaf of tremulous gold that chronicles the direction of forces the eye cannot see is in comparison coarse. It is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it, and even then must bleed again, though not in pain.
Which leads us to:
Psalm 129/130
De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine;
Domine, exaudi vocem meam.
Fiant aures tuæ intendentes in vocem deprecationis meæ.Si iniquitates observaveris, Domine,
Domine, quis sustinebit?Quia apud te propitiatio est;
et propter legem tuam sustinui te, Domine.
Sustinuit anima mea in verbo ejus:speravit anima mea in Domino.
A custodia matutina usque ad noctem,
speret Israël in Domino.Quia apud Dominum misericordia,
et copiosa apud eum redemptio.Et ipse redimet Israël
ex omnibus iniquitatibus ejus.Which, in those most magnificent of translations are:
Psalm 130
KJV
Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD.Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.
If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?
But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.
I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope.
My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning.
Let Israel hope in the LORD: for with the LORD there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.
And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.
1662 BOCP
OUT of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord : Lord, hear my voice.
O let thine ears consider well : the voice of my complaint.
If thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss : O Lord, who may abide it?
For there is mercy with thee : therefore shalt thou be feared.
I look for the Lord; my soul doth wait for him : in his word is my trust.
My soul fleeth unto the Lord : before the morning watch, I say, before the morning watch.
O Israel, trust in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy : and with him is plenteous redemption.
And he shall redeem Israel : from all his sins.
To which I append,[temp title] The Cloud of Unknowing
And so I move from knowing
to unknowing--not merely ignorance
but undoing the knowing I have
untying the knots and staring underneath
at what cannot be known once it is known.Later: Upon review I discovered that I was remiss in citing my sources. This very fine site presents the original poems from Les Fleurs du Mals with several different English translations. I took the poem and the translations from that site.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:03 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 14, 2007
Speaking of Critics
I love it when this happens and I'm alert enough to recognize it. This started out as a critique of something quite different and quite personal; however, as I allowed it to grow, it turned into something much more interesting. Yes--it probably still needs some work to get the remaining hitches out. But I rather like what it has become.
The Informed Churchman Examines Recently Confirmed Artifact 361752 ("Holy Grail")
Doesn't gold resist tarnish? and yet, look
there, that little spot from which no light shines.
And why, after all, gold and not silver,
wood, glass, or antimony pewter? While
we're at it, who designed this lumpen cup?
Didn't they know we'd make of it a chalice?
Could they not see how inelegant the
lines? Unseemly bulges, awkward in hand.
What are we to make of such unruly
work? Miracles? Pah. What's a miracle
with such a declassé design? Who cares
what superstition has imbued it with?
Anyone with half an eye can see it
for what it is--bargain basement gimcrack
finery. Our Lord (who had a fine sense
of style) would never have set lips to such
a cup as this. Who could think so? No, go
find another--this one will never do.Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 13, 2007
More Reflections
Pardon the pun. . .
Mirror
When we can penetrate the lies we do
not know we tell, and see for one moment
what we protect, we can begin to know.
Knowledge is a perfect mirror--bright, sharp,
hard, and cold--a knife all blade, no handle,
that cuts what it touches as easily
as it reflects light. To know truth invites
hardship and a long unknowing. And so
we avoid the knife as long as we can,
or many of us do; but some, wiser
perhaps, or more daring, learn the art of
naked steel, learn the caress of the blade
that opens up all. Knowledge is hard, but
not so stony and unyielding as willed
ignorance; it's blade cuts deep and yet heals.
To choose not to know is to lean too far
out a window without a sill, to stretch
our bodies out on the thin wind of a
perpetual fall, no skillful clean cut,
nor surgical strike; no--rather an all
out plummet to a meaningless blot,
a rorschach. Pain either way, no matter
what people end up thinking, no matter
which we choose. So, why not truth? Pain then in
the service of an end that brings us
all together, soldiers-in-arms against
the same sad nameless terminal disease.In making this I had to cut a simile that I like very much because it cuts two ways--"we are no more what we say than air is wind."
Later: If you stop by frequently you may have noticed two or three drafts of this. Lunch hour is remarkably productive.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 10, 2007
Final Poem for the Day
See H.P. Lovecraft's "In the Walls of Eryx." Yes, I know, a penny-dreadful inspiration for a poem, but the images of that story tend to stick with you.
A Condo in Eryx
Glass tunnel in a wide
open field, perfectly
clear so I cannot see
the prison maze that binds
me to my choices. I
make these walls, no one can
see me here, no one wants
to. In time I could die
here, out in the open
unseen, unmourned, unknown,
unneeded, and alone;
but until then, I build,
making walls with the fierce
determination shown
by colonies of ants--
labyrinthine, involute,
spiraling, in and out
but always ending in
hollow chambers, the lair
of the Queen, the meaning
of the colony. And
so, lacking a queen, this
endless building tends to
end--bloated nothingness.Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
After Robert Frost
Not really. For one thing Frost's poetry was more measured, less inclined to enjambment. However, I saw an anthology of poetry from some years back that was dedicated to and in honor of Robert Frost, and I thought about "The Road Less Traveled" and "How that made all the difference." And, in truth, it does. But that's not the road most of us end up seeing and so it seemed, another poem was required.
The Road Well Rutted
We travel as we travel; at the end
we are surprised to arrive at a place
we never thought to visit; and then, when
we glance at the map, we see empty space--Terra incognita, here be monsters.
The road we have worn, worn to uselessness,
has guided us here, and made us wonder
why we chose, a barren path to endlesswaste. Truth is, we don't see so well down here
beneath the level of the land. Once we
had bearings, could see the landmarks, over there
the pine barrens that guard the dunes and sea,over here the road to the city, winding
strange and imperfect through the lonely miles.
But we walk the same old ground, now tramping
down the earth, back and forth, restless now whilewe still can see, and becoming at home
as we obscure our vision. Sightless we
see what we always wanted to see, tombs
become palaces, walls-windows, we seewhat we dreamed only dimmer, until all
light goes out. The well-rutted road now falls
away, and we are left with appalling
signs of how foolish we have been--how small.Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Reflecting
Much of poetry is a kind of posed reflection--an internalized debate, conversation, or extended thought that has had the messiness pruned away and has been made ready for general consumption. When we encounter poetry that we don't "get" it is often because we don't understand the terms of the debate or the center of reflection. I say this because the poem I am presenting may have elements that are too personal for them to mean much to anyone else. And the job of the poet is to identify such poems and attempt to enlarge their terms so that they do mean beyond the narrow limits of the personal experience. However, this should be done within the poem itself. So, if you give this a couple of tries and still cannot make sense of it, please drop me a line to help in the revision of it.
Rock in Water
"Don't touch that!" the guide's words echo in the
empty chambers of eerie light, this rock
and void wonder that makes of Earth a womb,
and the object under protection of
so vigilant a guardian--living
rock, onyx growing through the ages. One
human touch, one fingerprint, kills the stone,
one sheen of oil seals out healing water
and the white rock ends. The human touch tends
to end all things and begin truncated
projects, odd and ends, all unfinished and
so always unending.
___________________ My totem in years
that were to come, the durable, shaped by
the ephemeral, the solid made whole by
the shifting. In the depths of the water
an egg of basalt, size of a football,
weight of a car, posed on a slate shelf, smoothed
and waiting for one who will carry it
away--and a waking dream of a stone
pillar swirled round by raging water, a
flood that does not move, cannot sway, lets stand
a rock unperturbed and changed entirely.
Story of a life the solid mired, swamped,
changed and the same amid all the shifting.Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 7, 2007
Too Short a Respite
See, a hiatus doesn't last all that long--unfortunately for you.
Shantytown
People to throw
away; discards,
the world's refuse,
underfoot dirt,
dust, and sweepings.Intended as
temporary--
thrown together
in less time than
it took to think
of it, age-stained
before they're done,
designed to make
each feel smaller
that humanly
possible.And more to come--beware.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 5, 2007
Reading too Much Roethke
Practical wisdom: Read not too much of poets inclined to depression and naturalism.
"I wake to sleep and take my waking slow. . ."
What waking and what sleep? What images
of all and nothing mixed, all one line one
meaning? The arrow through the small bedroom
with black-framed doors and yellow walls winds up
at here and now by the blue sea rising
only in memory. The sandcastle
crab scuttling through my earliest age,
and the dolphin and the shark that mark my
present time. A friend confided a ray
sounding spoke in salty dialect of
God who is not and hears not or does and
he instead does not hear.
[________________________] This slow waking,
this reach for light that comes when I go as
I am meant to, a sounding, surfacing--
grabbing hollow air to fill a hollow
man is all that moves me now, as I have
no motion that can be moved, no movement
that can mean or be or stay or away
drift--red autumn on dark water. Where I
found myself, between rock and water, soothed
and rounded by the cool swirl, made real by
the insects and fish that move with the true
motion of innocence, of what needs no
redemption because its only fall was my
own fall--pulled down in sullied brotherhood
and brought up again in light and darkness
that mix in the autumn waters of streams
that follow their own motion and make it
new.
{___} To join them then and there in the pools
where darkness cannot consume the light and
all motion moves in secret silence and
what is know is what is seen--innocence
is the unchurned, sun-warmed top twelve inches
still and moving where they must. An ending
that is not seen and so becomes a new
beginning that is.
__________________Full memory is
sorrow, an unending world of shadow
that shifts and shapes a life unlived but walked
through. Who I am and am to be is known
only in the motion I do not make.I'd like to explain it, but any explanation would take far, far too many words and leave what is here spoken in ways that mean less while they say more.
And I should note that some lines were suggested, indeed nearly cribbed from a great underpublished poet friend of min, Jay Bradford Fowler, Jr. The world is a lesser place without him.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 4, 2007
Aphorisms That Form a Whole
Call them a form of admonishment--a reminder. Nothing profound, but worth recording for reasons all my own.
Aphorisms
Powerlessness is bred of my motionlessness.
I fail because I do not, not because
I cannot. I have never tested "can."Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
What Can Be Shown
Excerpt from a journal:
Either/Or
It seems there is a choice to live in fear,
regret, jealousy, and gradually
increasing bitterness, or to be alive,
casting habits of fear aside, become
open, outward, alive, loving, looking
for meaning beyond what most frightens me.
Fear is emptiness, the true death of trust,
or perhaps the knowledge that trust never lived.I remarked to a correspondent that all of my prose is broken poetry, and that exalts my prose too much, but I hear within it the struggle to mean in the relationship of words by sound. There are echoes and echoing phrases and bells and drums within words that wrap the words around and make them mean. And so, I write what I must write and I recognize it for what it is--poor poetry, worse prose. But poetry is the exercise of control on language, it is the struggle for meaning in the mundane--it is the high frontier of communication and so, better to lose the struggle there than to never attempt it.
Boy that sound pretentious. It doesn't mean to be--but it's difficult to say in other words what is meant. I suppose each writer is stamped with the form most familiar, most comfortable, most reliable--for me, for better or worse, that form is poetry--and if I make a mess of it, well that certainly isn't the fault of the muse.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Two Ways of Saying the Same Thing
Two quite similar poems about the same thing:
Dark, Dark My Light, and Darker My Desire
The world is haunted
by shadows
flattened people and places
words spoken once
repeated endlessly
in a million places
all at once.What we see is not
real and all that is
real is haunted by the shadows
that change the warp and weft
of what is.We quote words we've
heard too many times
but never spoken
by a person--only
the words of colored shadows.
ShadowlandsWe live in the shadow of shadows
in the haunted specter
of what once was real
and has no substance even nowa world haunted by shadows
flattened people and places
that grow to be more real
than those we walk through every day.We listen to the words spoken
once and resounding
through the universe
filling up time and space.What we see is not now real
and it replaces what we
can touch as more cherished,
more worshipped, more respected.As poetry, I don't suppose either is terribly good. I'm not pretending that. But I like the idea behind them enough to preserve them and perhaps work from them to a more robust representation of what is in my mind.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 31, 2007
A Theory of Poetry
Not really. Theories of poetry are bloated, self-referential, and filled with all sorts of erroneous assumptions. Let's call this more self-referential revelations about one poet.
And there won't be many of those. I just wanted to note that while I greatly appreciate those poets who are able to use rhyme naturally and fluidly--Eliot and Frost come to mind, my own poetry doesnt' fit well into that schema. I have found over the years that I tend to prefer alliterative, assonant, and resonant poetry. I like the internal and external sounds of the words to work in more intricate ways than rhyme. I like the complexity of the music of words. And it was hammered home to me more and more as I wrote the following:
These Woods
How very easy it is to become
lost, to wonder down the wrong trail looking
for some sign of having passed by this way,
forgetting that the only motion is
forward, even when it seems like standing
still or continuous circling. Shadow
and light, the sound of leaves in wind, perhaps
a nearby stream trickling over rocks in
the late summer heat. Or, if these trees were
mangroves and the scuttling black ghosts were
crabs, the vision beyond the tangled limbs
would be the sea--blue-green immensity
stretching out to a sky that thins, becomes
transparent and lingers on the distant
horizon.
[_____] Or, these woods are a muddle
a confusion of all forests, all lands,
all times. Whatever they are, I am lost
in them, stopped by a pebble from moving
forward, transfixed by a shadow, caught out
by the sudden unsearched for splash of sun--
light in eyes more blinding than the dimness
of the domain in which I wander. Where
am I? I want to call out shattering
a sylvan stillness, thoughtless blind silence.
And within me, the echo, "Where indeed?"
Still stopped, now I stoop to touch the pebble
that seemed to bar my way and feel its cool
damp surface and it's sun-stored warmth all at
once.
[__] When will I want to move on? Is it
even a question I should ask? Still here
touching the smooth white that first distracted
me in my headstrong stomping through the gloom,
I dare now to ask what I would not know.Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 30, 2007
Morning Thoughts
You know, poetry really says it all. If you bother to listen to the voice under the voice, if you read between the lines, or if you just enjoy for the moment and let the moment linger--poetry says it all. I suppose that is one reason, one very good reason for praying the psalms. Poetry is, by its nature, closer to God. Which is not to imply that God is a poem--but God is at the heart of every good poem--just as He is waiting to surprise you in every work of art and nature, if only you are willing to be surprised.
It's amazing to me how the night
passes and the morning thoughts
born of dreams pass silently away,
unencumbered by the obligation
to teach, unaffected by the need
to nurture. They present and then fold
passing briefly into the light of memory
and fading with the stronger morning.Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Stumbling into the Light
Time has always intrigued me, and the experience of time is even more fascinating. I have nothing deep or insightful to say about it. Nevertheless, to attempt to say it I shall because I have ever learned that discretion is the bitter part of valor. [No, that wasn't a typo.]
The Mystery of Time
A clock ticks, arbitrary measure
of a moment--a waterclock drips
and each tiny splash gives weight to now:
but what is now? And even as I
think the word the now of that moment
passes and the thought became memory
of what slipped by.
[______________] There is no now, each
now is gone before it can be named.
A chronic waterfall, the seconds
wash over the rock ledge and vanish
with a tumble and turn; at this joint,
poised on the brink, I can see but can't
move the water flowing to, water
cascading away; no more can I
halt it, stop it on the brink, study
it, name it, and then let it flood pst.
One moment it is the unspoken
future, trips over the rocky juncture
and then is past, but no held, not owned
not ever my present, but always
passing.In some sense now is never. That is, by the time you recognize NOW it has already slipped by. By the time you think NOW, that now is an instant in the past. In a sense all though is memory. It happens in the moment, and people constrained to our linear experience of it, it seems like now.
The Buddhists seek to plumb this mystery by mindfulness--living in the now. And if one could truly live in the NOW one would actually be living in eternity where all the chained together nows have a meaning the transcends the sequential NOW of our experience.
Or something like that.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 29, 2007
The Way Words Shape Themselves
This poem started off going one direction and ended up in another entirely. It isn't particularly good and isn't presented as a sterling example of the poetic art, but rather as what happens when poetry begins to take over prose. These are essentially stray thoughts from a journal--although that wasn't the intent upon composition.
And so we're back to the observation made the other day regarding authorial intent with particular reference to William Butler Yeats. It doesn't much matter what an author intends, means, or even overtly states as he writes because meaning is, in some sense, collaborative--it is the work of the artist that brings it forth, but the work of the reader and the place of the reader at that time that gives it force. If the reader intends differently from the author, the work can likely be interpreted in that light. I often wonder about the many works of scholarship surrounding written work. I suspect there are darn few authors who would admit it, but the object of composition is not necessarily deep meaning--in fact, there may be no object at all--it may simply be that the artist cannot do otherwise; it is in the nature of the beast.
Karma
The actions put in place today
spring from seeds planted in the past.
The actions taken today
set seeds that form the future.
In the moment of movement the past
and the future are fused
to become the present.
We cannot see the present come
into being, the bridges between
seconds are burned as one
instant ticks over into another.
But in some shared space
we enter together the only
time any of us have.Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 28, 2007
The Wonders of Waiting
Sam has three hours of dance classes on Monday night. As a result there is much waiting. Last night as I was pacing up and down in front of the strip mall where the dance classes occur, a middle aged, probably Vietnamese lady emerged from a nail salon. As she opened the door and turned to lock it, I caught a whiff of acetone and it resulted in this:
Nail Salon
A life of volatile organics--of
making life better by painting the stuff
of beetle wings bright red, soft pink, polished
orange, dusty cherry, hot brick, beryllium
blue, cobalt, aster, seafoam, or buffing
them to high gloss shine and making them as
nature intended, flesh and pale off-white.
Who's to say if it could be lived better?Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Next to Last for the Day
Study in Red
Not a shred of it--
not in the rolling river
or mid-day sun-drenched
sky or trees limned against
the etched and eerie never-ending horizon,
or in the grass-bleached, burnt brown
by rainless days and dewless evenings
nor in the road that threads
the landscape, nor in the wildflowers
relentlessly blue, so blue, so sky-blue deep
blue they tip the scales
and roll into purple.There in purple petaled blossom
splendor it hides, the only tinge
the only suggestion of it in
the whole world.Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Another Observation
[untitled]
To stand for just an evening moment
and see the oak, spanish-moss tufted, pinned
against a still blue but fading sky, scraggly,
mostly naked branches, knobbed and curled, spiky
balls of bromeliad, pierced through on twigs--
sea urchins on a thread--is to know with
some assurance how strange we really are.Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Providing Insight
Praying the Psalms
Words on paper, meaning in black and white
and I wonder how to transform static
image into heartfelt prayer.
[--------------------------------] A pause
a silent moment thickening into
a knot that hardens in the throat. What once
I prayed eagerly, I pray now as dust.
The overfamiliar words stumble out
of my mouth, overflow my lips, and when
they mean, they mean lightly, barely denting
the lips, barely weighing on the tongue, now
falling off, vanishing in weeds that choke
what wheat sprouts.
[----------------]And yet isn't there something
in obedience? Is there no merit
in doing what you've been charged to do? In
saying the words and joining the torrent
that flows through the centuries, baptising
the world anew in each generation? But
beautiful words and bright blossoms don't change
a landscape of ash--the bitter ashes
of obedience, humility, and
duty.
{----} The good that is done is buried
with us, words not ours have refreshed the world
and borne us to the grave with no sign of
any difference. We're told that our words do
untold good, sanctifying the hours and
redeeming the unredeemed day. Weary
and tired of prayer's trying toil, I try
to remember how much worse all might be
if I did not pray, and for a brief time
I'm on fire again. This moment dies in
an ashy sirocco, a dust-devil
through the solitary inner desert
landscape of prayer when the wadi's dry.Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 27, 2007
Another Poem
Writ in Water
Who you are changes
with the day.
Yesterday's poet is long gone
replaced now
by the accountant, husband,
father, unquiet man,
disturbed soul, unrested in his
rest with all this change.
Changed and changeable
look around
for the person you remember.Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Another, with a couple to come
[as yet untitled]
Words have no weight
no heft, no meaning
unless you are there
to make them mean.They say what others
say they say and so
they say nothing at all
of what you intended.But should that stop you
from saying at the start?
Should the novel rest unwritten
the poem unpenned?What weight words have
will gives them, intent
imbues with purpose;
a sentence unsaidfor fear it will be
resaid, misunderstood
is a tragedy and a selfishness--
depriving all.I wrote this upon reading Harold Bloom's comments on W.B. Yeats. He typified Yeats as "virulently anti-Christian," and yet, one can read Yeats very much within a Christian context and have it make perfect sense. In a sense, this must be enormously frustrating (for Yeats, who is in a position to no longer care). But for me it is one of the great wonders of the written world. What I write will mean differently as it is encountered by different people who read the poem from the poem they are.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 23, 2007
A New Poem
In the Sequence:
Seed
Can we count the branches of the tree
from the oak's catkin?
The needles on the branches
from the pine cone?Can we tell how well
it will winter? What burden of snow it will
shed? What summer's heat will wilt
and burn--all from a seed?And from this one, how many others?
Can we know whether from this one
a whole forest springs or the sapling fails?Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:59 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack