(from) a song of mercies - david brendan hopes

Mercy on me Spirit,
   for my excessiveness in all things,
   unrepentant, sorrowing that there
   was not always substance nor occasion for more.
   What I have touched I have worn out.
   Where I have gone has wished to
   see the back of me.
   What I have sought has been run to ground
   or soared off honking
   where none could find it anymore.
   Whom I have loved has turned from me
   finally in exhaustion -
   and I know that saying it this way
   makes it sound, almost, a virtue,
   a fire, consuming or refining, in either case white hot -
   but you decide, and permit the proper mercy to descend.

Mercy on me Spirit,
   for the fierce lucidity,
   the stuff of poetry, but the man-destroyer,
   the fender-off of hearts;
   for the charity almost never withheld
   but sometimes crammed down the wrong throat,
   a feast for the merely peckish,
   the starving left with a high smile and a poem
   prostrate in the road;
   for the ingratitude that takes Arcturus and the Pleiades
   and Bach, El Greco and the red tailed hawk as merely due;
   for the pride that would unmake the world
   to make You answer me, to
   make You yield me what is mine,
   to make You love me as you must have promised
   in that swaddling hour only I remember.

Mercy on me Spirit,
   lame with anger, song by anger struck out of my mouth,
   dancer of the Kali-dance: revenge, revenge;
   by anger's red moon put to sleep,
   by anger's red sun wakened,
   poems wrenched into timepieces of retribution,
   nights into counting houses of Your slights and wrongs,
   reveries and friendships shattered;
   having built a house of anger to dwell within;
   having been a river of anger plowing underground;
   having been a wind of anger blackening the petals,
   freezing the boats of me in harbor;
   cruel, cunning, haywire, weeping, full astray
   in the Gehenna of anger, O in mercy, take it away,
   having filled my mouth with dust, the Serpent
   lashing its tail in the desert of its victories....

Hopes, David Brendan "A Song of Mercies" Upholding Mystery: An Anthology of Contemporary Christian Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 304-306.

the cestello annunciation: andrew hudgins

The Annunciation. Sandro Botticelli, 1489-90.

The angel has already said, Be not afraid.
He's said, The power of the Most High
will darken you. Her eyes are downcast and half closed.
and there's a long pause - a pause here of forever -
as the angel crowds her. She backs away,
her left side pressed against the picture frame.

He kneels. He's come in all unearthly innocence
to tell her of glory - not knowing, not remembering
how terrible it is. And Botticelli
gives her eternity to turn, look out the dorrway, where
on a far hill floats a castle, and halfway across
the river toward it juts a bridge, not completed -

and neither is the touch, angel to virgin,
both her hands held up,both elegant, one raised
as if to say stop, while the other hand, the right one,
reaches toward his; and, as it does, it parts her blue robe
and reveals the concealed red of her inner garment
to the red tiles of the floor and the red folds

of the angel's robe. But her whole body pulls away.
Only her head, already haloed, bows,
acquiescing. And though she will, she's not yet said,
Behold, I am the handmaid of the lord,
as Botticelli, in his great pity,

lets her refuse, accept, refuse, and think again.

Hudgins, Andrew. "The Cestello Annuciation" Upholding Mystery: An Anthology of Contemporary Christian Poetry. Ed. David Impastato, Ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 106-107.

to the unseeable animal - wendell berry

     My daughter: "I hope there's an animal
     somewhere that nobody has ever seen.
     And I hope nobody ever sees it."

Being, whose flesh dissolves
at our glance, knower
of the secret sums and measures,
you are always here,
dwelling in the oldest sycamores,
visiting the faithful springs
when they are dark and the foxes
have crept to their edges.
I have come upon pools
in streams, places overgrown
with the woods' shadow,
where I knew you had rested,
watching the little fish
hang still in the flow;
as I approached they seemed
particles of your clear mind
disappearing among the rocks.
I have walked deep in the woods
in the early morning, sure
that while I slept
your gaze passed over me.
That we do not know you
is your perfection
and our hope. The darkness
keeps us near you.

Berry, Wendell. "To the Unseeable Animal" Upholding the Mystery: An Anthology of Contemporary Christian Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 135-136.

the monastery orchard in early spring: kathleen norris

God's cows are in the fields,
safely grazing. I can see them
through bare branches,
through the steady rain.
Suddenly, fir trees seem ashamed
and tired, bending under winter coats.

I, too, want to be light enough
for this day: throw off impediments,
push like a tulip
through a muddy smear of snow.

I want to take the rain to heart
and feel it move
like possibility, the idea
of change,
through things
seen and unseen:
forces, principalities, powers.

Newton named the force that pulls the apple
and the moon with it,
toward the center of the earth.
Augustine found a desire as strong; to steal,
to possess, and then throw away.
Encounter with fruit is dangerous:
the pear's womanly shape forever mocked him.

A man and a woman are talking.
Rain moves down
and bare branches lift up
to learn all over again
to hold their fill of green
and blossom, and bear each fruit to glory, 
letting it fall.

Norris, Kathleen. "The Monastery Orchard in Early Spring" Upholding Mystery: An Anthology of Contemporary Christian Poetry. Ed. David Impastato, Ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 32-33.

after "mindwalk" - denise levertov

Once we've laboriously
disconnected our old conjunctions -
'physical', 'solid', 'real', 'material' - freed them
from antique measure to admit what,
even through eyes naked but robed
in optic devices, is not perceptible (oh,
precisely is not perceptible!): admitted
that 'large' and 'small' are bereft
of meaning, since not matter but process, process only,
agthers itself to appear
knowable: world, universe -

then what we feel
in moments of bleak arrest,
panic's black cloth falling
over our faces, over our breath,

is a new twist of Pascal's dread,
a shift of scrutiny,
                           its object now
inside our flesh, the infinite spaces discovered
within our own atoms, inside the least
particle of what we supposed
our mortal selves (and in and outside,
what are they?) - its object now
bits of the Void left over from before
teh Fiat Lux, immeasurably
incorporate in our discarnate, fictive,
(yes, but sentient,) notion of substance,
inaccurate as our language,
flux which the soul alone
pervadess, elusive but persistent.

Levertov, Denise. "After 'Mindwalk'" Upholding Mystery: An Anthology of Contemporary Christian Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 332-333.