Posts Tagged: Poetry

Seeds

ATTENTE

Joseph dreaming
Jane Ray

Marie, c’est le Christ que tu portes dans l’ombre de la chair
Il est encore dans les entrailles pour un peu de temps
Tu vas le donner à la lumière du monde, lui la lumière éternelle.

Marie, quel fruit lumineux portons-nous dans l’ombre de la chair ?
Aide-nous à le porter encore une peu de temps sans le voir

Donne-nous aussi la joie d’une naissance
La naissance d’un fruit éternel, enfant de la chair et de l’Esprit
Porté, mûri, attendu, donné
Noël

Mary, it is Christ that you carry in the shadow of the flesh
He is still in the womb for a while
You’re going to give to the light of the world his eternal light.

Mary, what luminous fruit do we bear in the shadow of the flesh?
Help us carry it a while longer without seeing it
Give us also the joy of a birth

The birth of an eternal fruit, child of the flesh and the Spirit
Carried, ripened, expected, given
Noël

Halloween, from the fear of death to life

They stand beside us even as we grieve,
The lone and left behind whom no one claimed,
Unnumbered multitudes, he lifts above
The shadow of the gibbet and the grave,
To triumph where all saints are known and named;

from All Saints a poem by Malcolm Guite for Halloween

at Burwell Museum and Windmill

Visitations – Tom Darin Liskey

Visitations

I was ten
That winter night
When my brain
Burned with fever
And I lay
Dreaming awake
That you had come back
From the firmament;
An unwinged angel
Sitting at my bedside
Speaking words
That sounded like fire
In my ears.
I don’t know
If it was real anymore.
Maybe it was just yearning
To touch you once more
The way the blind read braille;
Or maybe it was just
The hot syllables of sickness
Wailing like sinners
At a tent revival
Behind my burning eyes.
But whatever it was
That night, with the snow
Beginning to fall
Your hand touched my skin
And the fever broke.

Tom Darin Liskey is a poet and a photographer
The photograph and the poem are his work

National Poetry day 2019

If you want to read one or more of their poems, click on their name in the tag list below

Mary Magdalene – a sonnet for her day, 22 July

Mary Magdalene: A Sonnet

Men called you light so as to load you down,
And burden you with their own weight of sin,
A woman forced to cover and contain
Those seven devils sent by Everyman.
But one man set you free and took your part
One man knew and loved you to the core
The broken alabaster of your heart
Revealed to Him alone a hidden door,
Into a garden where the fountain sealed,
Could flow at last for him in healing tears,
Till, in another garden, he revealed
The perfect Love that cast out all your fears,
And quickened you with love’s own sway and swing,
As light and lovely as the news you bring.

Malcolm Guite

Mary Magdalene a sonnet Malcolm’s blog.

“Go to the limits of your longing” – L’abîme en face

Gott spricht zu jedem nur, eh er ihn macht,
dann geht er schweigend mit ihm aus der Nacht.
Aber die Worte, eh jeder beginnt,
diese wolkigen Worte sind:

Von deinen Sinnen hinausgesandt,
geh bis an deiner Sehnsucht Rand;
gib mir Gewand.

Hinter den Dingen wachse als Brand,
daß ihre Schatten ausgespann
timmer mich ganz bedecken.

Laß dir alles geschehn: Schönheit und Schrecken.
Man muß nur gehn: Kein Gefühl ist das fernste.
Laß dich von mir nicht trennen.
Nah ist das Land,
das sie das Leben nennen.

Du wirst es erkennen
an seinem Ernste.

Gib mir die Hand.

God speaks to each of us as s/he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

(Rilke’s Book of Hours, I, 59)

    Rainer Maria Rilke

  Das Stunden-Buch

translation by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

C’est la chaude loi des hommes – Paul Éluard

Bonne justice

C’est la chaude loi des hommes
Du raisin ils font du vin
Du charbon ils font du feu
Des baisers ils font des hommes

C’est la dure loi des hommes
Se garder intact malgré
Les guerres et la misère
Malgré les dangers de mort

C’est la douce loi des hommes
De changer l’eau en lumière
Le rêve en réalité
Et les ennemis en frères

Une loi vieille et nouvelle
Qui va se perfectionnant
Du fond du cœur de l’enfant
Jusqu’à la raison suprême.

Paul Éluard

I Am Pleased to Tell You – Mary Oliver

Mr. Death, I am pleased to tell you, there
are rifts in your long black coat. Today
Rumi (obit. 1273) came visiting, and not for
the first time. True he didn’t speak with
his tongue but from memory, and whether
he was short or tall I still don’t know.
But he was as real at the tree I was
under. Just because something’s physical
doesn’t mean it’s the greatest. He
offered a poem or two, then sauntered on.
I sat awhile feeling content and feeling
contentment in the tree also. Isn’t
everything in the world shared? And one
of the poems contained a tree, so of
course the tree felt included. That’s
Rumi, who has no trouble slipping out of
your long coat, oh Mr. Death.

Mary Oliver

What is your Alethiometer?

My Contax was poetically described by my son, as my “Alethiometer,” from the Greek words aletheia (truth) and ometer (measuring device). An alethiometer is the compass-like device made famous in Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials.” This fictional device helps some holders find truthful answers to their questions.

These words from the French poet Paul Verlaine have been like a mantra for me: “Cache et montre au cœur qui s’étonne La vérité comme une étoile.” In English, it would read something like this: “Unto the astounded heart shows, Truth’s star now hidden, now revealed.”
That’s poetry. That’s photography.