Eclectic Amateur

Let nothing disturb thee;
Let nothing dismay thee;
All thing pass;
God never changes
Patience attains
All that it strives for.
He who has God
Finds he lacks nothing:
God alone suffices.

-- St. Teresa of Avila.

Labels: poetry

1979: II

Another Sunday morning comes
And I resume the standing Sabbath
Of the woods, where the finest blooms
Of time return, and where no path

Is worn but wears its makers out
At last, and dissappears in leaves
Of fallen seasons. The tracked rut
Fills and levels; here nothing grieves

In the risen season. Past life
Lives in the living. Resurrection
Is in the way each maple leaf
Commemorates its kind, by connection

Outreaching understanding. What rises
Rises into comprehension
And beyond. Even falling raises
In praise of light. What is begun

Is unfinished. And so the mind
That comes to rest among the bluebells
Comes to rest in motion, refined
By alteration. The bud swells,

Opens, makes seed, falls, is well,
Being becoming what it is:
Miracle and parable
Exceeding thought, because it is

Immeasurable; the understander
Encloses understanding, thus
Darkens the light. We can stand under
No ray that is not dimmed by us.

The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways that it cannot intend:
Is borne, preserved, and comprehended
By what it cannot comprehend.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by
Your will, not ours. And it is fit
Our only choice should be to die
Into that rest, or out of it.

Labels: poetry

1997: I

Best of any song
is bird song
in the quiet, but first
you must have the quiet.

Labels: poetry

                      "By the Babe Unborn"

                      by G.K. Chesterton



              If trees were tall and grasses short,
                As in some crazy tale,
              If here and there a sea were blue
                Beyond the breaking pale,
            
              If a fixed fire hung in the air
                To warm me one day through,
              If deep green hair grew on great hills,
                I know what I should do.
            
              In dark I lie; dreaming that there
                Are great eyes cold or kind,
              And twisted streets and silent doors,
                And living men behind.
            
              Let storm clouds come: better an hour,
                And leave to weep and fight,
              Than all the ages I have ruled
                The empires of the night.
            
              I think that if they gave me leave
                Within the world to stand,
              I would be good through all the day
                I spent in fairyland.
            
              They should not hear a word from me
                Of selfishness or scorn,
              If only I could find the door,
                If only I were born.

Labels: ChesterBelloc, Culture of Death, poetry