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duties, proper acts of charity,

      to hordes converted (to my rivals’ few).

      Yet which of these could I say came from me?

      At last I found the box my gift would fill

      and put inside the best I had, my will.

      Better than Best

      This little church

      that lives by slip and lurch

      will sing off-key

      and seldom will agree.

      But these are yours and work for You,

      and though their tones may be somewhat askew,

      as amateurs, they love You so

      that all their songs may not impress with polished show.

      We howl and growl to serenade our artful God.

      You do not think it odd

      that those You made should be so artless in their hymns,

      for they must use their limbs

      to till the social fields of sullen earth

      and bring to birth

      a fair facsimile of heaven’s town

      and your renown.

      Like men who dig, and wives who press,

      who love their children nonetheless,

      and touch their faces with a hand

      abrasive but as soft as sand,

      they honor You with secondary gifts,

      which, better than the best, may patch all rifts.

      The Benefits of Pain

      Now comes my pain that sweeps away the world.

      The cluttered workday, all the social weights,

      the habit that compels on mindless day—

      all gone, or hid, like minor creatures when

      a monarch makes approach. The pinpoint distant

      star, confronted so immense, becomes the sun,

      and I am intimate with You, and dead,

      for no one lives this close to all that is.

      My gratitude to You who send such pain,

      who melt our eyes to let us see the real,

      who break our legs so we will sit and think,

      who scorch our tongues so we may speak alone

      of You, think none but You, see who we are

      by seeing we are not the God of all.

      Distractions at Prayer

      Hear me, Lord, secluded here

      in this closed and quiet place.

      Surely You attend our prayers

      anywhere we call to You.

      Still, the human mind, it seems,

      wavers like a candle flame,

      moved aside by every hiss,

      upward and intent on You

      only when the air is still.

      Pain and anguish forge their own

      upright highway to your home,

      but our daily talk desires

      isolation and the calm

      of a pair who sit and talk,

      all their children now asleep.

      Hear me, Lord, my nagging chores

      set aside to be performed

      when You’ve filled my lungs with life.

      Needs of family and friends

      will not draw my thoughts from You

      if I hold them to your eyes.

      Now the thick, diurnal dust

      of a thousand minor aches,

      with a hundred pinprick jabs,

      umbrage taken, nurtured close—

      now I ask You clear away.

      Either pull them from my soul,

      or if it be more your will,

      let my inward ear be deaf

      to their buzzing. Let me be

      wholly focused on our talk

      here in this secluded place,

      here where holiness resides

      for the moment, for this day.

      Disaffirmation

      Why is my head a stone, my heart dry wood?

      Have I drunk poison and am paralyzed?

      Once towering, how am I now downsized?

      I creep and crouch who early marched and stood.

      These are declining days of febrile light,

      of wizened biceps, quadriceps of wax.

      A desperate inhabitant of shacks,

      I have misplaced my attitude and height.

      It may be for the best. I’ve died before,

      or almost did: on mountain roads, in slums;

      when pocket-poor, while feeding on scant crumbs,

      and sizing up for taste the shoes I wore.

      But now at least I’m grateful for this least:

      my height now grown by having been decreased.

      Bouquet

      This pink and yellow messenger of scent

      is in its seventh day and sags.

      But if its lovely form is spent,

      its gift remains and rises from these rags.

      The vase around it stands the same and still,

      and offers water like our God.

      But roses decompose until

      we sniff their memory and think, “How odd.”

      How odd that something permanent should take

      such pains for temporary bliss.

      And yet this vase stands for their sake

      and holds their beauty like a lifted kiss.

      The Lump of Clay to the Potter

      When You slap me onto the wheel’s exact center

      with your accurate eye, then set me dizzying around,

      may I not wobble, but sit still as I spin fast.

      When You insert your thumbs to open my mouth,

      may I yawn the perfect O of the perfect prayer.

      When You touch me both outside and inside at once,

      lifting me up, making me upright but more fragile,

      may I not collapse into an ashtray, but stand

      as your cereal bowl, your vegetable server,

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