poetry and religion: les murray

Religions are poems. The concert
our daylight and dreaming mind, our
emotions, instinct, breath and native gesture

into the only whole thinking: poetry.
Nothing's said till it's dremed out in words
and nothing's true that figures in words only.

A poem, compared with an arrayed religion,
may be like a soldier's one short marriage night
to die and live by. But that is a small religion.

Full religion is the large poem flowing in repetition;
like any poem, it must be inexhaustible and complete
with turns where we ask Now why did the poet do that?

You can't pray a lie, said Huckleberry Finn;
you can't poe one either. It is the same mirror:
mobile, glancing, we call it poetry,

fixed centrally, we call it religion,
and God is the poetry caught in any religion,
caught, not imprisoned. Caught as in a mirror

that he attracted, being in the world as poetry
is in the poem, a law against its closure.
There'll always be religion around while there is poetry

or a lack of it. Both are given, and intermittent,
as the action of those birds - crested pigeon, rosella parrot -
who fly with wings shut, then beating, and again shut.

Murray, Les. "Poetry and Religion" Upholding Mystery: An Anthology of Contemporary Christian Poetry. Ed. David Impastato, Ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 127-128.

the translation of raimundo luz: my imitation - scott cairns

I sold my possessions, even the colorful pencils.
I gave all my money to the dull. I gave my poverty
to the preseident. I became a child again, naked
and relatively innocent. I let the president have my guilt.

I found a virgin and asked her to be my mother.
She held me very sweetly.

I watched father build beautiful shapes with wood.
He too had a gentle way.

I made conversation in holy places with the chosen.
Their theater was grim.

I suggested they cheer up. Many repented,
albeit elaborately.

I floated the wide river on a raft.
I set Jim free.

I revised every word.
One morning, very early, I was taken by brutes and beaten.
I was nailed to a cross so sturdy I thought
father himself might have shaped it.

I gestured for a cool drink and was mocked.
I took on the sins of the world and regretted my extravagance.
I gave up and died. I descended into hell
and spoke briefly with the president.

I rose again, bloodless and feeling pretty good.

I forgave everything.

Cairns, Scott. "The Translation of Raimundo Luz: My Imitation" Upholding Mystery: An Anthology of Contemporary Christian Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 157.

the translation of raimundo luz: my incredulity - scott cairns

Lazarus, of course,
is another story altogether.

Lazarus does not
engage my better self, nor interest me.

Drink twice from the same
wrong cup? Say the idiot boy falls down,

gets back up and falls
again - this is some great trick?

Our giddy crowd should swoon?
Does the first runner turn back to mock the lost?

And if he does, should we
praise him for his extravagant bad taste?

No. His sort will not
profit close attention. His story -

neither lawful nor
expedient. Tear your linens to winding cloth.

Wrap him once for all.
When you've finished with your napkin, bind his lips.

He has had his say.
Bury Lazarus as often as it takes.


Cairns, Scott. "The Translation of Raimundo Luz: My Incredulity" Upholding Mystery: An Anthology of Contemporary Christian Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 319-320.

the pastor praises the creator - david citino

Dearly beloved, I mean today
to praise the God who gave the tribes
wine, the crisp flesh of suckling pig,
then told them "Thou must not."

Who gave them swords and ploughshares,
lambs and lions, demons and redeemers.
Who made half of them like pestles,
half like mortars, then told them

in themselves they were complete.
Cool soothing fingers and fevers
between the legs. Reason and gooseflesh,
curtains and candles, lightning and oak,

seven days to live and as many sins,
lungs and mold, books and blind men, veins
and age. Who fashioned them a harvest home,
then created wanderlust and roads.

Citino, David. "The Pastor Praises the Creator" Upholding Mystery: An Anthology of Contemporary Christian Poetry. David Impastato, Ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 262.

(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.