COLUMBA IN THE CHURCH ALONE

Columba in the church alone
So long ago on Ionan island
Light streamed through the shuttered windows
Through the seams of doors it flowed
Did he not converse with angels?
Fantasy and myth and legend
Say the ones whose shutters close
Whose doors of love are firmly fastened
Whose house is cold and always darkened
This is country of the blind
The country of the clever senseless
And yet although the walls are thick
And the doors ingrown with mold
Angels stand around the house
Waiting, thronging in a circle
Calling out to be admitted
And the light that shines from them
Faces brighter than the sunlight
Streams against the stubborn walls
And the hymns of glory ringing
From the walls of bliss rebounding
Call again, again to praise
Awake, awake your voices raise
And they listen for response
Antiphons of living senses
Pray the dead can see the glow
Of what the saints and mystics know

ASSUMPTION OF THE MOTHER

Hugo van der Goes (c. 1440–82), “Death of the Virgin”
Groeningemuseum, Bruges
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Assumed, she is, of Nazareth
Mary Mother, Virgin blessed
Who bore a Baby glorious
To live and teach and die for us

She of flesh in frailty
Gave birth to all Eternity
Forever feeding at her breast
To Whom as Christ we have confessed

Weakness which He will forgive
When loving we still try to live
And she who bore this little Child
Rises to the Undefiled

Mother of the spirits there
And Christ the Infant in her care

COLUMBA IN THE CHURCH ALONE

STRANGER OF THE NIGHT

Barred Owl; Photo by Tim Zurowski, Shutterstock
Courtesy American Bird Conservancy

Barred owl, what are you doing here
At bay in a tall pine tree
Where the small birds curse and jeer?

This is mid-morning, not evening shade—
Glide quickly to the hillside den
Where shadows of the moon are made

Turn your rounded head and stare
Swivel at the trail
Your great dark eyes protected from the blue sky’s glare

Once we could converse, we were not different
So much as given offices to bear
You to silence, we to praise the firmament

Alien to alien, each species has unlearned
What Eve and Adam knew before
The precious gifts of God were spurned

We did not name so much as speak
One to the other
And afterward the prattle of the mouse’s squeak

Stranger of the night, your presence here blasphemes,
Go back to your robber’s den
Where daylight ventures only in its dreams

DO NOT FORGET

Jesus Curses the Barren Fig Tree
Courtesy Bible Chat

A fig tree grows beneath my window
Yes, it’s true, a fig tree grows,
My wife has eaten of the fruit,
Green and inside red as rose

Red as blood, red as wine
Red inside as April, ripe
As redbud blossoms or the sky
Of summer dawn’s uprisen night

A fig tree like the Christ-cursed tree
He made an object to be sterile,
A fig tree in whose spreading shade
John’s Jesus saw Nathanael

No fig tree in a metaphor
No fig tree in a dream or book,
It grew and I was unaware
But all I had to do was look

Come notice me for I am real
I am within the world and yet
My life is greater than you fathom,
See me grow, do not forget

THE STUBBORN, THE BLIND AND THE DUMB

Paulus Potter (1625–54), “Figures with Horses by a Stable”
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Take Stonewall and Jack by their halters
And lead them out of the stable
To graze in the bright green meadow,
They will come without question behind you

But if God takes a man by the shoulders
And leads him out of his prison
Of death to walk in the meadows
Of Paradise Green, he will cavil

The world is my stall and my stable
And I know of no other but these,
And the dark is gathering quickly,
And I do not believe, says he

The horses know how to obey,
They are under the power of Man,
They lower their heads to the grazing
But we are afraid and remain

Soon He will come to remind us
That the time of the strolling has come,
He will lead us to where He intended—
The stubborn, the blind and the dumb

FERMI’S QUESTION ANSWERED

Sign in the Heavens
From Annales Laurissenses maiores, 12th Century
Courtesy Beyond the Palette

They’ve come. They’ve come. They’ve found us,
Those Earth-devoted visitors from space
Or somewhere off the world apart and luminous,
It may be in a time not present here or anyplace

Why don’t they come to Earth, descend?
Our leaders, soldiers, dignitaries wait
With florid ceremonial, agreeable intent
And speeches of the pageantries of state

They hover overhead in probability—
Would they not, if we were they, come down
To meet the representatives of world community,
The businessman, the politician, and the clown?

And they with senses tuned to what we are
Pick out the infant’s wailing and the agony
Of massacre and famine, torment, war,
And for an unknown reason they delay

Silent fall around us in an orbit
More and more eccentric, low and high,
As if they might proceed at any moment
To leave again without explaining why

DEBT OF HONOR

Ilya Yefimovich Repin (1844–1930), “Jeremiah Lamenting over the Ruins of Jerusalem”
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

O Jeremiah, they threw you in a pit,
The bull’s eye of derision, the target of their wit,
Ridiculous foretellings, stupid fuss and feathers,
Envy of prosperity and the power of his betters

The era of good feeling will go on and on and on
With credit from the bankers and the King of Babylon,
What has been before us will be ours forever after,
Prophecies are rubbish, the receptacles of laughter

But on the far horizon the vastness of a cloud,
On the streets disorder, confusions of the proud,
There is a debt of honor, a liability
More than wealth of money, but none have heeded me

Jeremiah said: The debt has not been paid,
It is the debt of honor that makes me most afraid

IT IS ENOUGH

William Holman Hunt (1827–1919), “The Light of the World”
Manchester Art Gallery, UK
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Light fled from the universe
Perhaps it was the viciousness of Man
Enough, cried the stars
Enough, cried the sun
Light was revoked
And of the sights of being there were none
Not one
Nor a single photon

Not blindness, not sightlessness
Not a room enclosed from light
Not midnight, not the tomb
Or the grave, the darkness of the moon
There was no light at all
There was no night to fall

Be of good faith and reassurance
I said
This is not darkness of the dead
For Christ is here and with us
Always, and His love is luminous
More than light itself
And this is why:
It is enough to see by
If the sun and stars should die