christianity; a contemporary view

8/14/2019 Christianity; a contemporary view

1/47

BETWEEN THE TIMES

What can we sing in the city, you or I,

where arrogant chimneys bruise the sky

and birches are black in the white rain?

Sing in the temples of priests

who conjure ghosts into juice, and prey to a Peter Pan God,

and preach his social concerns, and briskly shake our hands?

The creative is gone from here,

the priests intone like valves in the wind,

there is only estrangement from earth and the blood.

Or sing in the office,

martinis and memos for lunch,

and speak of creative machines, or soaps that redeem?

Sing of this, and stand on the rooftops of Harlem,

and feel the shuddering subways of greed,

and feel the thudding of pain

the mutter of mobs, the sobs of a child

that show the creative shut and abused.

No, we can only sing in the nights,

for all your gods are dismembered and dead,

our bones are estranged from mystery and power,

and deep in our blood, we ache for freedom of nights.

The city dons her diamonds of light,

the avenues flam with electric marquees,

and downward we enter the dark discotheque.

The air is throbbed with neons of song,


2/47

the flesh is warm as Neanderthal fires

we sense our creative from drums and guitar,

and trust in this, and let our bodies go wild.

Then all night, the dark creative happens in us,

rippling and throbbing in dialogue dance,

signing a Christmas in bones and the blood

our veins remade, and crimsoned with light.

We sing our creative and dance it to drums,

and time dissolves; the night is riven with power: There,

we see a new city, its towers tall in the sun,

their every roof a garden of trees

where children play in the wide winds of the day.

The avenues flourish with laughter of men

who lunch with wine, and speak the service of man,

and lovers twine in the parks, unafraid

there is no fear, nor blindness of gin,

for men at last had left Peter Pan,

and owned his blood, and sag as it shined.

Then, he created machines for serving his kin,

and built the city of man, and loves the Creator as lord.


3/47

WHEN WE WERE NEW

FOR A NEW LOVE

MY APRIL GIRL

I love the sweetness of your sweat

a hairlines breath beneath you curls

and kiss the tenderness of need,

then downward to the gentle [softer] hollow

to taste your sweet tween girlish breasts

and I grow dizzy, for now in loving

the all of you by special partsand tingle brain to toes until

I plunge, so gathering to explode.

for now


4/47

THE END OF THE WORLD

Quite suddenly, unexpected by all

But a few, as Mr. and Mrs. were watching

The television huckster sell beer and child

Was crying over his heaped fragments of toys,

While massed brains behind glass panes

Were developing the latest deodorant and

The typist was writing the last letter in a rush

Order for plaster, quite suddenly then

God blew the whistle on it all.

Blast on blast of light surprised the eyes,

And there, there where cold suns had spun,

The shepherding Christ walked down

The flaming skies; the living and dead

Were one, with lifted faces that started

Amazed by the white silence of His light.

published in The Christian Century, November 13, 1957


5/47

SPEAKING JESUSWISE

If Christ should come today, we would

Not crucify, not curse or praise

Nor stand aghast. We would instead

Shave him clean and go to Brooks,

Fit him with a hat from Knox,

Buy him shirts by Hathaway,

Equip him with best advice

And script, then put him on TV

Hed find a sponsor soon, and after

Tea he might provoke a sigh;

Indeed, why should we crucify?

published in The Christian Century, May 2, 1958

composed in early 1957


6/47

FROM MARS HILL

ATHENS: APRIL, 1959

Grass, and a white wind singing

Of blue Aegean mermaids. The gods

Mutter still in colonnades

And old Achilles storm to war

I near believe in ghosts today.

Zeus in the thin thunder, and VenusStrewing broken flowers. She models

For trinkets two epochs after Paul

Preached until their ears fell off

And loosed the running fire of God.

Now peddlers trade in ruins, and grass

Attest the ever-greening will

That split the galaxy and makes

The dust of gods to praise Him still.

Published in Christian Century, January 24, 1962

Published in His Magazine, April 1963


7/47

SUMMER BURNED OUT

Summer burned out in a blaze of surf

Children ran on the castled sand

The season splits on a trembling leaf

A brown wind scurries in the browning land

And gulls

Walk the white air of the littoral

Seeking debris of my summer self

With yellow beaks pleading a carrion song.

They slide upwind in soaring stealth

While I

Wingless, chill to seawater rising

In veins. I fold my picnicking basket,

Bury the papers of summer-swift day.

The birds verge into scarlet sundown

And the long

Roar of waves is scouring sand.

Winter-bent, I seek the cloistering town,

Picking for firewood in leaf-fall shadow.

A brown wind stings this browning land.

published in Mutiny Press, fall-winter issue, 1961-62

composed early September 1959 after a day at Jones Beach


8/47

IN SUBURBIA

Go pot yourself in split-level peace

And pull petunias around your ears,

Go carve your deity like pie

And shed your dead in perfumed flowers;

But I

In land of bland exhaust shall heed

The bitter blowing out of bones.

Where women etherize for birth,

Prune the child, and chirping men

Lime the earth

Of redding leaf and greening bud,

Here I have lain awake to know

The groan of God in the black trees,

Divorced my car and shot a hole

In my TV.

Now prowling like a tramp for trash

I praise the Lord for busted eggs,

My bodys end. Quietly camped

I hunker by the pre-dawn coals

In dewfall damp

And share the joke of me with God,

This humpty-dumpty selfish served

By automatic milk. He

Has a fine eye for the absurd,


9/47

The Easter lily

Blooming from a bilious bulb,

And laughs me into warmth. We

Laugh deep; one does, you know. The rose

Fire of sunup spills on the hills;

I rise

To walk in wind of cobalt day.

No more afraid,

For snap of God has entered my toes,

Imbued my veins and ascended my brain

And speaks from my fingers a greener year.

Published in Mutiny, Summer, 1961

composed in Teaneck, NJ, winter 1960


10/47

LOVE LETTER

O MY LOVE, what can I write?

Say

That night slides like a damp cat

That splits at corners in the streets of Cleveland

And elevators shut with steel precision

By rowed desks of my pink hotel?

I would

Scorn the mails and spin a bridge

To leap the airlines and quilted haylands

And span the winking island cities

Where autos wander in trickling neon

Id hang

The cables from the moon, and then

Swing lightly in the bedroom window,

See you curled with sleeptime book,

And kiss you til your hair lights up.

published in The Christian Century, March 14, 1962

composed in late May, 1960


11/47

NORTHLAND SPRING

A river crack broke my repose,

And now I walk the stream at dawn

Where tested ice has split in floes

That slam relentlessly to sea.

My God, the iceit suddenly

Split in sleep, and salmon spawn

In madness, swimming free

Up white cascades where April calls

Until the strongest find the falls.

Beyond, I know, one cannot leap.

Here they must leave their young and all

Plunge gratefully downstream to die.

These waters sing but terrify,

And yet this northbound spring Ill keep

Like any river man, though I

Know it runs through deeper sleep.

published in The Literary Review, summer 1962, Poets Under Forty Number

composed about 1957


12/47

A MOMENT OF WILD GEESE

I grope the path in woodland haze,

Seeking seaward, and pause in fright

A rustling, keener wing: I stare

As a higher rush compels my gaze

Aloft. The geese soar, bold as light

On instinct wings that ply the air

To greenest seas. O swift as time,

Like angels splitting clouds afar,

Can you direct my Bleeding climb,

or heed me in your pride of stars?

You blaze across the bare rods

Of tallest oaks, lean down the sky

Youre gone, trailing talk that leads

The wind, like chortling of the gods.

The path is clearer now, through I

Must walk in wintered woods, and bleed,

Beating through the brambled trees

Until I break to the green seas.

published in The Husk, October 1964

composed years before


13/47

IN SEARCH OF THE BEAST

Go praise your April, June, your festal

Noon of high July, go lover

To maidens careless-warm, the natal

Impulse of the year; but I

Am loose beneath the winter sky

To track the beast that prints the cover

Of windy white where vultures cry,

Trees stand like lines in Dantes Hell

And growls from ruined bushes tell

That she of noon now rides a broom.

Oh, once I loved her only, and well

I know: I almost died of gout,

But rose to curse a prayer and shout

Old bones to dying year. The moon

Lit pilgrim paths for me, turned lout

Of cunning mind a ragged clothes

Who tracks the greedy beast that goes

Before like shifting shadowI heard

It double back across the snows

Beyond my reach, but strewing near

The shards of men. Yet I dont fear

For Ive survived somehow, absurd

As lily that toils nor spins. The year


14/47

Will turn upon this hunt and bring

The final solstice of the spring.

For I shall find the beast that ravins

Man, shall track the fields and sing

Old hunting songs in icy caverns;

By god, Ill hunt the beast to lair

And face my own reflection there.

Published in The American Scholar, winter 1959-60

composed spring 1958


15/47

SNOWFLAKES

A FLAKE declines from the blind wind

And jewels uniquely on my sleeve,

A galaxy a breath away

Matchlessly reflecting light.

The whitened night

Roars in the naked frieze of trees

Bemused, I find myself implied

In random flake that imitates

A wizard breathes in elements

And suddenly

Amazed to be, amazed to stride

Upright in storm and lift my arms

In praise I praise

The Lord, whose breath has fashioned me.

published in The Christian Century, April 20, 1960

composed in Teaneck, NJ, Late winter 1960


16/47

KELP

LONG and umber, this plant was torn

By currents that scour the rippling seas

And flung flat on sun-burn reach,

As Cain was fished to judgment sands.

The mineral yields from leaf, and gray

Flesh of leaf dissolves near breakers

While sun dissects the stem, the torn

Roots. Each day uprooted bodies

Rid the waves to blaze beach

As though some deepest flow demands

To search each crannys worth. You may

Deny this beach and breast the breakers,

Beating moonward on the seas

They fold us in, and evermore

Surge implacably to shore.

published in The Christian Century, May 2, 1962

composed in late April, 1960


17/47

EASTER COMES FOR WALTER MCTAVISH

I.

The ocean blossoms sprays of cloud,bunching black the city

with sparkling rain and thundered fires

shimmering my copper eyes.

Then can I find some dim hotel,

or prowl the bars for gin and girls?

The sky collapses; shifting rain

walks the streets like angels ghosting,gliding grayblow my windows in

Ill seal the doors! A screeching cat,

blown from cornice, is falling twenty floors.

My mind, riven, flicks from lightning,

and rain is prying crumbled walls.

Its fingers slide the broken stairs,

plunge

where I have seen the smirking devil

tune his saw across my nerves

and whistle soot between my glands.

Then I, cross-hatched upon a bed,

my spine a broken railroad

where locomotives shudderedI

put on a smile, faced the mirror,

and saw the smoke blow out my ears.

Now, the rain

sluices down the falling stairs.

The iron city flows; the straws


18/47

of splayed umbrellas, shattered ladders

and tattered news are swirled and flung

in gutters striking down my mind,

pryingwhat are these living hands?

Ill call my analyst at tea,

or telephone to Daddy God!

But see

a childs fire struck, called hope,

which sirened once in magic rescues,

careen the flooded gutter, battered

with iron, rags, and bloated dogs.

The houses sag, their basements fold:

the tendril rain has pried the city

loose

the building shed their wire hair,

their steel is thinning in the rain,

etched by yellow leaves of lightning,

and twisting inward, collapseyield:

I tumble with the seaward street

where bridges, rails and towers crumbled,

and flail down in circling torrent

that twists us like a pythons tail;

and all is plunged in thunder tide.

II.

The girls play on misty sand,

the bells recede along the shore,

tolling, tolling ocean time,


19/47

time that stretches past the stars

and roots in deeper sea, spinning

down

where flows of streets and tumble bones

drift in oyster beds, in seaward

trees that grope the empty rooms.

The window eyes are popping pearls,

the ruins sea-change in falling sea,

startled, like bracken water turned

to wine, rent with sinewed current

plunging:

the motion hardens into form

the tendril streets and spouting towers

the city hold the precipice

where life refracts to lives and days.

Heres Venus, blooming from a shell,

and Zeus unfolding from the leaves.

Then spinning-tail Siva spawns

the devil, who dons his spiney angel

wings of mortal hope. Resigned,

I fall

the tendril streets to deeper light.

The angel fish strip mortal flesh,

and mermaids come, with flowing hair,

to lave and polish clean my bones.

Then I am hollowed for the kill.


20/47

III.

At city, center, the domed skull,

where lucid mind delaminates,

the man is formed upon the tree

the prism man, savior of gods,

hardening and refracting love

we meet, and do the ritual,

the spiking of his arms, which nails

mine:

Nail, shatter wings of hope.

Nail, shatter brain and sex.

Nail, shatter want for life.

Nail, shatter care for death,

and spiked with him upon the vine,

Im cancelled out of time, erased

and dying to the Center, being

z

e

r

o

The skull disintegrates to light.

The tides

drift sunward where the seas were born.

The stars diffuse

flicker

vanish

and I am zeroed into brilliance,

to unlighted light, source of all songs,

inscrutable One who opens the many,


21/47

to everywhere Center, deepness of space

who fountains the stars as visible cells,

the always of being, deepness of time

who spirals the nebulae, veining the skies,

throbbing, chanting, all life and our days:

and nothinged, Im pulsed in the rockering heart

of the God.

riven with brilliance, opened and opened,

hammering, hammering,

borne on implacable rhythming rise,

created and budding from unpreaching vine,

my cells rekindled with unlighted light,

boned, nerved, limbed, skulled, fleshed,

hearted and hammering radiant blood,

fingers outspreading

1 2 3 4 5,

6 7 8 9 10,

timespaceworldlife,

Christ,

the dawnlight brims the rising city,

in towers thrust from tinkling seas,

boned with humming life, bird-flashing.

The houses ride the morning tide

and root beside the verdant streets.

The trees are greening in the wind.

I fling the window up, and hum

an ancient chanty of sun:


22/47

chant with Zeus,

old Daddy sky

who helps the sun along.

Chant with Venus,

saucy girl

who strolls the lawn with suntan thighs.

Chant with mind remade of God,

hilled and veined with solid light.

published in Motive, April 1965


23/47

MY HAUNTED HOME

What, you still alive? The most

Debonair, persistent ghost

That stalked a man. Scream, you sudden

Spirit that smiles across my den,

You old deceita father image

Tom from boyhood love and rage.

You mock my order with April song.

But dont presume upon those long

Hours of butts and dishpan gray

When cigarettes seemed gritty days

Gone stale. Then I cursed and called

Your name, and you, you scorched my walls,

Gaily shifted books around,

Made shutters split and doors fall down.

Now look, youve come in whispered sun

And down the dagger rain you run

Besides my arm in the black streets.

Tonight at work I swore to keep

Your chaos out, and here I find

My careful files smashed and lined

In startled joy, their new array

Absorb as Lazarus recalled to day.

So go before Im mad. You gently

Shake your flamed-like head at me

And please stay back! But glowing bright


24/47

As sun you smile at my fright.

And come with brilliant gaze. I hear

The tramp of men from graves and clear

Fields marching to your song

Newborn or risen dead? They throng

Before my eyes, I grasp and turning

Cringe in awe as you come burning,

Burn my walls with splendid light

Until Im naked in your sight

And ask for Christsake please accept

And change my lethal madnessI kept

Presuming I had finished you

That day beneath the thunder blue

When jeering triumph, loss,

We splayed your body on the Cross.

Published in Motive, April 1963

(Composed 1959-60)


25/47

TRAVELER AT CHRISTMAS

OVER chained bays and neon grid

Where highways ram to outer dark

A single star descants a birth

To earth of littered straw where donkeys

Kneel, breath streaming white in innyards,

And Christ is born behind the gas pumps

Outside a blue motel. The men

Alight from diesels to pay him homage,

And all is rolled into the quatrain:

Birth in blood and soon the road,

A grassing near Gethsemane,

And ever the tangled earth must yield

Life redeemed from bones. My map

Has gone insane, all roads to Podunk

Come spinning here from Bethlehem

And onward to Emmaus. The lid

Has slipped from sky, the spine of time

Is snapped; we move around a new

Dimensionknowing, as children know

The rapture of a carousel,

That Christ is here, the Christ is here.


26/47

Published in The Christian Century, Dec 21, 1960

(Composed from Dec 1959 to Oct 1960)


27/47

CHRISTMAS ENCAMPMENT

THE last leaves lie in the lash

Of firelight, and the blue wolves float

Lightfooted near our encampment. Now

The forage is bad, the wolves grow bold;

We watch each other in fear. Next week

Man begins to eat man. Christmas

Is here. We have prepared the cross.

What man can brave the hooded wolf,

Our hands can dare to tear our blindfolds

Off? The night contracts: a cry

Declares our God has breached to life,

His hands the size of hummingbirds.

The sunrise comes in fires of ice,

The lightfooted wolves depart to hunt

This newer prey. We break our camp,

Free to movestrange, how the wolves

Went to stalk the child. Strange,

The crossed clouds that loom in the east.

Published in The Christian Century, Dec 20, 1961

(composed Jan 1961)


28/47

THE GNU

Oh gnu, drowsing in the zoo,

Who is mocking who? Now you

Seem antelope and lamb, with slow

Winking eyes that brown from deeps

Like pools that warm from primal springs

Content with sun and rain. Your face

Rests from appetites that reach

No further than your food. Our gaze

Flicks to yours and strays; we smile

And lip your name beneath the leaves

That fret the sun, between the hymns

And levering of soap and bombs

Which wont suffice, and shrug away

Before you question us the cost

Of wiser ways, oh blessed gnu,

With which we shut you in the zoo.

Published in Treasures of Parnassus: Best Poems of 1962

(composed autumn, 1961)


29/47

LINES FOR GOOD FRIDAY

FIVE POEMS BY STANLEY ROWLAND

A Roman Soldier

Strange, this warming fire and wine

Wont dim the day. You know they chose

Barabbasthey understood him, see?

He simply stole and killed. But not

This fellow Jesus. He flamed their minds

With God and talk of grace, his healingSabbath dayshe had a gift.

Theyre queer, these Jews, to kill or die

For faith, yet bend beneath our lash,

Groaning like a pregnant beast

About to bear. Well, they give

Us Jesus Yes, Ill have more breadAnd wine. They jeered him for faking

King, and started stoning. We

Put a stop to that. These Jews should learn

Religions made for playits not

A killing thing. Or else its all.

He thought it that, and scorned his chance

With Pilate. Stubborn! It made me wince

To watch him stand, head high, then take

The cross. We made the hill of skulls

Before the storm, and nailed the three

To crosses. Dive the spikes, and I


30/47

Slammed them through his hands. It isnt

Natural not to scream, though I

Saw his flinching palms spurt blood,

Neck wrenched and tendons jerking stiff

When we dropped the cross to socket.

Ye gods, Ive hung enough of them,

But never quite like this. I felt

Sickened with is blood, as if

I were nailed, and should have been.

I only did a soldiers duty!

This he seemed to know. There was

His blessing gaze, his sudden prayer

Yes, he prayed for me: My God,

Forgive the menthey dont know what

They are doing. I knew, or thought I did.

But now I cant be sure. Tonight

I doubt all gods and men. Who

Was he? I think he was the son

Of God, or else the greatest fool.

Caesars blood, we had a storm!

Here, bring another flagon.

Its not a night for sleep. I fear

My dreams. Ill wait the hours, for dawn.

Mary

My son, my son, O Jesus son,


31/47

My loins were aching at your birth,

The road became all hills that day,

And only straw to make our bed,

Yet I did bless the Lord, my son.

You pressed to life with a glad cry

And suckled warmly at my breast,

Soft and firm as heavens voice

Speaking in the gardenthat sudden

Joy, unraveled into blood.

That night, there was a star, the skies

Sang with light; then kings came.

The Lord seemed good, you grew with Joseph,

Muscles rippling as you sawed

Or sanded yokes. The others speak

Your miracles, but I remember

Your coming in with tunic torn

From tumbling in the field. They say

You spoke more wisely than the prophets

Words! No words can stop your blood

Or touch the unknown heart of God,

O Jesus! At supper, I remember

You wiped the sawdust from your brow

With a lean forearm, and liked the tender

Lamb when years were good. All these

Are real things. The angel, kings,

And rabble crowds seem distant stones

That clatter down the hilly years,

My promised son, they slew you high


32/47

In sight of Godyou called Him Father

And urged our love. How can I love

This God who pledged to show Himself

In you, but let our sneering mob

Hang and ravish you? The skies

Are spitting a cold rain. What hope

Can breed on such a night? Joseph

Tends a weary fire, my bones

Are cold as deatho Jesus, son.

Joseph

I cannot reach her, locked in grief

For him, her primal passion, joy.

Now thunder speaks across the hill

Where he is slainmessiah born?

God will judge, but I cannot.

He was a straight lad, and quick

To learn. Hed sand a roughened yoke

To sunlight softness, shapes its curves

To give a natural, easy fit

That made the burden light. He

Was singular with wood and tools

A chisel, sayseemed always new

To him, each task as fresh as dawn,

Through practiced past a fault. His face


33/47

Would bend above his chisel cut

Along a beam, his eyes would fasten

To curling chips, his lips a breath

Apart. If wood and iron were live

Id swear he loved them. He made the finest

Yokesthe ox of Zechariah

Could pull all day without a bruise.

At ten he had a dignity

Of innocencehow shall I say?

He seemed to live outside himself,

In work, in larking fields, at temple.

We knew wed lose himdrawn, he seemed,

To learn the ways of God. Our people

Beckoned to his preaching. He

Refused their sword and hewed to love

Singular, as always. Years

Of festered hate at Roman bondage

Sprang at him, my son, and fell

Blooding him, and now the sky

Yells its rage in light and rain

At us. It is a night to keep

Close, and tell our grief to God.

Peter

O master, what can I know or prey?


34/47

A cross and jeering shame have slashed

Your life and our deliverance.

Still we sweat in Roman yoke.

Our children breed in foreign ways,

And now were hunted men, just

When you had seemed like Moses, spoke

Of sacrifice in breaking bread

I felt an end had come, a new

Beginning. God would draw us out.

But then you grew quiet, and prayed

Among the trees as in grief.

When Judas brought the black police

You scorned my offered sword, and I

Denied you, turned, and fled aimless

Through the angry town, and wander

Now in rainy night. The footprints

Cross and blend in muddy streets

Grown still, the houses shuttered. You

Fulfilled Elijah and the prophets,

Healed and taught a straighter way,

Sowed Israel with hopethe seed

Pledged to Abraham, that all

Nations would be blessed in us,

And thousands strewed their palms and praise.

You bathed our feet and taught our hearts

To singyour yoke was our release.

I even saw you speak with God,

O glad redeemermy great, dead,


35/47

Jesus. You said we couldnt follow,

Yet we shall end as you. O master,

You are Israel, and slain,

And I am lost in strange streets,

While every morn the brainless rooster

Will wakes the nos I gave you.

This sin, my master, I pray you could

Live to blot, and make me new.

Gabriel

Tonight

Man must fight the dark angel

Of death beside a moonless sea,

And all must yield to the blind

Do-nothing of impotent grief

In men:

Mary, wondered like a shot drove,

Flutters in the angry anguish of loss.

Joseph becomes like the dry wood

Of the cross, grieving son and wife,

Peter rattles like a riven reed,

Lost in silence after thunder,

Despairing grace and cursing roosters.

Each who saw his truth, as spring

Wakens to the warm sky,


36/47

Must be plowed open to the core

To receive the seeds of greater truth.

The infidel must also break,

Cringing from the nailed lightning of grace,

And doubting the idols of a doomed age.

The death

Must be complete, the dark angel

Win and raven man, or else

The long, exultant shaft of God,

Like a golden shout breathed through time

To touch the still heart with birth,

And the roaring galaxy split with love

That yokes mankind to endless life,

Would seem a childs tale. So men,

Open the absolute splendor of God.

Published in Presbyterian Life, April 1, 1963

Composed Feb 1962


37/47

STATE HOUSEENUGU, NIGERIA

The flag is limp, the sentry stilled

This heat could etherize your brains.

Yet gardened, glassed, pillared, the house

serenely stands astride the hill.

By lilies wide as bloody mouths

the lizards dinosaur their hunt,

and trick along the garden paths.

We watch, and smile, from shady tea.

Fires evaporate the grass,

redding up the thicket ridge

they burn the bush, they kill the rat,

the soldier says, and bugles taps.

The notes define the wooded valley,

and lights, like anchored fireflies,

ignite and stay. A timeless people

now build their roads and cook their meals

by State House time. Its window lights

are beaconing the sullen night

where once the dancers raged the moon.

Instead of drums, a muted gong

orders us to linen dinner.

A panther, carved in ebony,

holds Aristotle on the bookcase.


38/47

We bow; the Governor pronounced grace.

Published in NEW, 1964


39/47

BUT GOD, YOU LAUGH

at me your faithful man, who walks

the June cement with frying shoes,

a stinking cold with a garbage nose,

fallen arches, a smoky headache,

and tired to my splitting toes,

and you laugh? Yes, and louder,

as though Im looking for Godot

to rescue me because I merely

got drunk, overweight, and sickly tired

from never going to bed at nights.

And mamma Godot has never come.

So for Christ sake God, please laugh

good and loud so I can join.

published in The Christian Century, Sept 18, 1963


40/47

PRAYER FOR ASH WEDNESDAY

Creating God,

guide me into keeping Lent

cleansed of bitter bones, free

of snickering by cocktail fires

with stale words and sticky hands.

I confess

Ive lied, have roistered with my pay,

and junked my thinking with TV,

til Im a noisy gong, a clunking cymbal.

So God,

send a leanness in my body

and warming toughness in my mind.

O hammer me with anvil grace,

and polish me for joyous use.

published in The Christian Century, Feb 12, 1964


41/47

AT A GRAVE ON EASTER

Earth wayfares through the spangled void,

Drifts like stars and the strewn birds

That curve in the long throbs of instinct,

Turning to the lucid instant of God

He is

Transfixing dust and the fool rain

That rattles on my childs grave,

Age three and slain with cancer, He was

Projected like a star from me,

A quickened body swirled to flesh

And shred, like Jesus screaming sides.

Nor can the worlds gravel tears

Return his flesh or cancel life

He is gone

And women sorrow to the tomb

to find the linen thrown aside,

The stench of death replaced, the grave

Still like the held breath of God

He is gone

They stole his broken flesh, and only

The strange gardener walks the morning:

Mary, why are you weeping now?

Mary, whom seek you in a grave?

And lightning splits to her nerve ends

Yet he lives


42/47

Mary ragtimes through the streets,

The bonnet ladies peer and fluster,

And even the fool fly can hear

Her cry that stones the firmament,

That rolls the dawn into a ball

And hurls it flaming down the wind

He is risen

At Emmaus breaking bread

And smashing through the doors of time,

He strides the nights and sandy days,

Born before the world congealed,

A quickened body swirled to blood

And killed for being flesh and God,

Slain into a new dimension

He is risen, and here

Walking in the dawn of cool rain.

The body lives in different forms;

If flesh can rise, then fleshless body

As time is cracked for newer time

And bursting suns must keep his pace:

I shall not judge the galaxy.

I go in peace. The child lives.

published in The Christian Century, March 29, 1961

reprinted frequently


43/47


44/47

THE BROADWAY CHRIST

walks the rivering of lights,

mutely in the millioned night,

where neon people pillage life:

they nail him in streets and bars

with whiskied talk, with tinsel strife,

with jeering shows, with hired cars

the yellow flame of taxi wing

flys the drive of Central Park

(where lovers littler budding sighs)

and dumps the drinkers in a ring

of China, Harlem, Spain and Denmark

jiving joints that cries.

They subway home in stale cars

and taste the waste of burn-out days.

Their covered cries, unleashed, flare

their winged need against the bars

of thought, habit, pride, mazed

doubt: each trapped, unless he dares

confront who he has crucified:

then in his heart the Christ can rise.

published in Creative Art, December 1966


45/47

OUR LOVING GOD

fails to dust our frequent loves

alive in us, he thrashes lives

that dance before the supple thighs

of Venus, dressing her with stars

(desert the skies and rush to nestle

in your eyes its magic) and stars

and stripes forever as bugles bustle

Uncle Zeus along the street

tootle-de-doo. Our passions heat

these loves to Jealous Gods: Venus

screams at us for mink chemises,

while bloated Zeus bestrides the cities,

drumming on our childrens brains.

We serve them till we split our bellies,

and call it fate and sniff the drains,

and stagger as our temples, reared

Like Babel, collapse to dust and tears.

Still, insists his love in lovers

his rhythms tambourine from deeper

realms of space and timewe sing

praise the Lord and pass the wine.

True lovers are the clowns of living;

they heal our tootle-de-wounds, or wind


46/47

their arms around the comic girl;

for man was swirled too free, too filled of

God to laud a lesser love.



47/47

THE JET

is not as easy

as it looks from earth.

It soars up

too heavily, seems

to hesitate above the marsh,

then whispers into the clouds,

de-bump bump bump.

Im reminded of the devil

asking Christ to throw himself down,

He said no

absolutely;

the jet says no

as best it can:

Our safety is relative. We sip our tea,

riding on the engines wind,

and wink at death from the skys sea.


christianity; a contemporary view

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