Posted on 01/02/2006 7:52:08 AM PST by Soaring Feather
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Thanks for the ping Knitting A Conundrum.Can I put it in Our Lady's newsletter?
Be my guest!
Thank you,freepmail me if you want to use your real name.I am working on the Lenten issue and this poem-prayer is so nice.
Freepmailed as requested!
Good afternoon, ms feather.
bump
I don't think I'm finished with this yet, but it's done well enough to read.
(another piece of Passion meditation)
After the Earthquake
After the earthquake
and you got up off your knees, Centurion,
as your men remembered who they were --
soldiers, and not frightened children, and took their places back --
did you look long and hard
on that limp, empty body hanging there on the cross,
battered and beaten at the hands of your men,
and think about the stories about him you had heard?
Had it bothered you as the day wore on,
the impassioned politics of this day screaming for blood,
winding about their strange God in this strange land,
in ways you didn't quite understand?
But you had seen the amount of hate he had generated
in the shallow, grasping power plays
by men who would spit on you if they thought you weren't looking.
Jerusalem,
a city smoldering with tension
as the festival peaked,
threatening to blow up in a conflagration -
and as he hung there like a blood sacrifice designed to appease something unseeable,
did it dawn on you that you and your men were the tools
in the hand of forces beyond your vision,
that painful march from palace to execution site
a dark lustral procession
with you as master of ceremonies?
Such a day.
Standing there, transfixed by his dead gaze,
the blood-streaked face,
the blood-wetted hair
as you looked up into a face touched with no anger, no hate,
but a weary bloodied acceptance,
and a certain, strange peace as in a job well done.
After it all,
after the mockery and the forgiveness,
after the darkness,
after the last drawn out cry,
after the earthquake,
you no longer questioned -
you knew that you had been touched by the hand of Heaven.
"Surely this man,
this righteous man
was the son of God."
you said loud enough to be heard.
Would you have been amazed to know
how long those words have been remembered?
This series is great.
The mental images are very strong in this poem.
Thank You.
Ping to this poem!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1550597/posts?page=568#568
After the Earthquake
This has scope, and imagery to spare. This feels like a longer poem perhaps, and the depth of detail makes it a tour of mental images that tell a story on several levels at once. I look forward to the whole series!!!!!!!!
WOO HOO!
Hello there. ;)
Stanzas
by Charlotte Brontë
If thou be in a lonely place,
If one hour's calm be thine,
As Evening bends her placid face
O'er this sweet day's decline;
If all the earth and all the heaven
Now look serene to thee,
As o'er them shuts the summer even,
One momentthink of me !
Pause, in the lane, returning home;
'Tis dusk, it will be still:
Pause near the elm, a sacred gloom
Its breezeless boughs will fill.
Look at that soft and golden light,
High in the unclouded sky;
Watch the last bird's belated flight,
As it flits silent by.
Hark ! for a sound upon the wind,
A step, a voice, a sigh;
If all be still, then yield thy mind,
Unchecked, to memory.
If thy love were like mine, how blest
That twilight hour would seem,
When, back from the regretted Past,
Returned our early dream !
If thy love were like mine, how wild
Thy longings, even to pain,
For sunset soft, and moonlight mild,
To bring that hour again !
But oft, when in thine arms I lay,
I've seen thy dark eyes shine,
And deeply felt, their changeful ray
Spoke other love than mine.
My love is almost anguish now,
It beats so strong and true;
'Twere rapture, could I deem that thou
Such anguish ever knew.
I have been but thy transient flower,
Thou wert my god divine;
Till, checked by death's congealing power,
This heart must throb for thine.
And well my dying hour were blest,
If life's expiring breath
Should pass, as thy lips gently prest
My forehead, cold in death;
And sound my sleep would be, and sweet,
Beneath the churchyard tree,
If sometimes in thy heart should beat
One pulse, still true to me.
"It Will Not Change"
by Sara Teasdale
It will not change now
After so many years;
Life has not broken it
With parting or tears;
Death will not alter it,
It will live on
In all my songs for you
When I am gone.
Thank You, for Blessed Assurance.
Sleep well my friend.
One and the Same
She moves like Jazz flows,
hot and subtle, mixing and then alone.
She is a single note of perfect tone,
echoing as she turns and goes.
Stopping at the door, she turns and looks back,
and every invitation is made, mine to follow.
I feel the promises, even as my heart fears shes hollow,
another heartbreak with the dawn, alone in the sack.
Still, I remember how she moved, her soft scent,
and will for a long, long time, such is need.
Lost in memories I drink, as others smoke weed,
listening to the music of the inner blues lament.
There is something in that music that grabs me,
pulls from me, my very heart, my soul.
And for a little time I feel a bit more whole,
even as she breaks my heart again you see.
Sweet and low the music comes to me,
and I let it soak away my tired pains.
Tears like rain on window panes,
wash me clean, note by note as it will be.
Whoa, this is fabulous!
What a Blues poem!!
I love it.
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