24 June: Dipped in Grey.

 

I do not

wish to write

poems dipped in Grey

that everyone

seems so wild about

today as if Grey

makes them weigh

more be more

original

have more truth

 

what about

original light?

Light is true.

So let there BE

light.  Let it pour and

let there be

more and more

 

 

lashings of it

splashing everywhere

boat-loads bath-tub loads

bus-loads of original light

slapping up the sides

sloshing over

slopping over

 

waves of it

 

flooding

city streets

mountain meadows

washing

dirty clothes

my face

streaming off

factory walls

coursing down

ditches

running off

my nose

my fingers

 

this sentiment

will not make me

popular with

other poets.

but am I

writing

for them

or for

You

SJC.

May 5: Where Love Can Learn

 

I’ll have a garden full of flowers,
With many a corner-place;
Where love can learn from spiders’ webs
To make her mats of lace.

Since 1 March was Ash Wednesday this year, we missed out on  Saint David’s day. But let’s remember him now. David of Wales was very keen on little things: ‘Do the little things well’, he told his followers on his deathbed, so we offer another little verse from the Welsh poet W.H. Davies.  A garden verse, since it was in a garden that our first parents were brought together; it was in a garden that Christ was buried; in a garden that Mary met him on Easter morning.

The garden on the left, lacy with long stems, feathered leaves and daisy flowers was sown with English wild flowers on land that had lain neglected for years; the Easter Garden with its first little flowers of the year around the tiny empty tomb, we found in Northumberland, a country that knew the influence of the Celtic Christianity that formed David.

As Spring tempts out a new array of flowers, let’s continue  to look and learn; at ourselves, yes, but also at the world God has entrusted to us: Laudato si’!

MMB.

May 4: A pleasure shared

We walked home from church with a friend who wanted to see the bluebells in the wood. She had heard about them but did not know they were so close to home. A pleasure shared already, but she took pictures aplenty to share with her mother in East London, a pleasure further shared: her mother will enjoy not just the bluebells but the clear and infectious pleasure our friend received from them.

A gift that is special to an English spring.

A few days before we had walked that way with young Abel, who’s too small to damage the flowers as he walks, but he too loved the ‘blue flowers’: pleasure shared as a little child lets us into the Kingdom of Heaven. I don’t often quote Rupert Brooke, but I remember …

the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
    And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
        In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

The Kingdom of  Heaven is reflected in that very English carpet, but I’m less sure about an English Heaven? One that welcomes people from around the world, I trust, or it would not be Heaven, just an off-shore island …

14 April,Good Friday: Pilate’s Politics.

John Masefield wrote a play in verse about Good Friday. In an exchange after Jesus was condemned, we hear Pilate and and his wife Procula, who famously warned him ‘Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.‘ (Matthew 27:19)

Pilate:

Another charge was brought some hours ago,

That he was claiming to be that great King

foretold by prophets, who shall free the Jews.

This he persisted in. I could not choose

But end a zealot claiming such a thing.

… Procula:

It is a desecration of our power.

A rude poor man who pitted his pure sense

Against what holds the world its little hour,

Blind force and fraud, priests’ mummery and pretence.

Could you not see that this is what he did?

Pilate:

Most clearly, wife. But Roman laws forbid

That I should weigh, like God, the worth of souls.

I act for Rome, and Rome is better rid

Of those rare spirits whom no law controls.

He broke a statute, knowing from the first

Whither his act would lead, he was not blind.

‘Good Friday’ in John Masefield, ‘Collected Poems’, London, Heinemann, 1925, pp449-507.

Procula’s speech is as good an examination of conscience as any for today, but if you can find the text, the whole play is worth reading and pondering.

Tissot: The Message of Pilate’s Wife, Brooklyn Museum

8 April: Edward Thomas’ Anniversary

 

On 9 April, tomorrow’s date, a hundred years ago, Edward Thomas was killed in the Battle of Arras. He had enlisted in 1915 despite being a mature married man with children. Here is one of his poems, with the sadness of War not far beneath the surface. It matters not whether the trees were in England, France or his imagination: the desolation and the beauty are inseparable and painful.

 

The Cherry Trees

The cherry trees bend over and are shedding,

On the old road where all that passed are dead,

Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding,

This early May morn when there is none to wed. 

The photograph shows an orchard of new cherry trees at Amery Court, Canterbury. They will spend their spring-times protected from ravages of wind, rain, and birds and squirrels by nets rolled out on frames overhead. Few petals will reach the old road, now part of Cycle Route 1 from Dover to Scotland. But the farmer trusts that the expense of planting these trees will be repaid with many a harvest.

Edward Thomas and so many like him trusted that they were putting their lives on the line to help save England and bring about the end of War…

Also tomorrow we remember the Prince of Peace coming into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey, not a tank or armoured car. And it is still not too late to pray and strive for Peace, starting by sowing a seed of love and peace in our own hearts.

And may Edward Thomas and all who fell in War, through the mercy of God, rest in Peace. Amen.

MMB

5 April: We who are made brave and afraid.

God … Counts every tree, Makes every leaf.

Lent is a chance to sort ourselves out – a little at least. But as the first verse of Radclyffe Hall’s poem asks, ‘What can we do?’ I can remember understanding, from an early age, that there was a competitive edge to Lent: who could perform the most penances, collect the most pennies for the missions …WRONG!  the second verse reminds us to seek God in it all. Let’s not lose sight of that quest this Lent.

W

WE

 

We who are made

Brave yet afraid,

Happy yet sad,

Good and yet bad,

Sane and yet mad,

What can we do?

Turmoil and strife,

Passion and life,

Love and desire,

Can these inspire

Spiritual fire?

How can we live?

Stumbling feet,

Tasks incomplete,

Longings that kill

Even the will,

Left to fulfil,

How can we die?

Little have we

Bond and yet free,

Strong and yet weak,

Proud and yet meek,

Save but to seek

God in it all.

God with His hands

Holds all the lands;

Rules every sea,

Sets the winds free,

Counts every tree,

Makes every leaf.

Then shall we fear?

He placed us here.

If God commands

God understands,

Ponders, and plans;

Knowing it all.

 

 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/49277/49277-h/49277-h.htm

24 March: THE PRAYER

THE PRAYER

There stood beside the road a shrine,

In whose quaint, vaulted shadow smiled

With eyes of tenderness divine,

The Blessed Virgin and Her Child.

And I, who wandered all alone,

Along a rough and weary way,

Felt that a great desire had grown

Within my heart, to kneel and pray.

But lo! my voice had lost the power

To utter words so deep and sweet,

And so, I breathed them in a flower,

And left it, at the Virgin’s feet.

There are times when a prayer, a candle, can say what words cannot. We can leave flowers or candles at the site of disasters, or as here, murderous attacks. The Lord does not need our words, he is The Word.

From ‘Twixt Earth and Stars’ by Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall, London 1906.

The writer was a parishioner at Saint Anthony of Padua, Rye, Sussex

18 March: Human Will XII: To Singers

We continue reading poems by Radclyffe Hall. A great deal of her work has not aged well, but we have collected these  in Agnellus’ Mirror because they invite us to reflect.

This scrap of verse comments on giving the Human will full expression. Singers, dancers, writers, artists in any field; parents, teachers, carers: we will be more effective in our work if we combine mind and heart, intellect and soul; if we bring our whole selves to the work.

Sing with your intellect and soul combined;

Not all technique, nor yet all wild emotion,

Thus shall you touch the heart and please the mind,

Winning a real and merited devotion.

Radclyffe Hall lived in Sussex; this window of King David and others singing is in Sussex’s Cathedral at Chichester.

March 14: Love Triumphant

 

Another poem from Radclyffe Hall, sometime parishioner at Saint Anthony’s, Rye.

LOVE TRIUMPHANT

Ere the first grief was born

Love was.

And after griefs are gone

Love still shall triumph on.

Ere the first grief was born

Love was.

In Eden grief became

Love’s slave.

For in the dust and woe

Lost Adam still could know

Fond recompense, and so

Did grief become Love’s slave.

Grief as love’s slave: grief, Radclyffe Hall seems to suggest, did not keep Adam from loving God and Eve. His new self-knowledge, however incomplete, showed him he needed love. Fond recompense for his sin came in the shape of his love of God, his love of Eve; love in each case reciprocal. God’s love was there before Adam and Eve came to grief; God’s  love, humble unto death, continues to sustain their children.

26 February: The Most Natural Thing in the World.

Continuing with Father Andrew SDC.

It is to me a comfort to think that the most natural thing in the whole world is also the most supernatural, and that is love.

The Life and Letters of Father Andrew, p159.

And turning now to the Welsh poet, W.H. Davies, to amplify that thought.

Love is a staff, and Love’s a rod,
A wise man and a fool;
I thought that I was wise, until
Love sent me back to school.

The Song of Love IV, 1926.

Let’s pray for the humility to go back to school and learn from those we meet. God loves us, ‘supernaturally’ as we used to say, through their natural love for us, whether as spouse, parent, child, friend, or the one who smiles at us in the ticket office.

MMB.