Ella Hansen writes:
I began this poem on New Year’s Eve and finished slightly after midnight. Although the solar year is now nearly two months along, the lunar year, to which the lunar imagery seems fitting, has just begun. In this poem, I was particularly reflecting on my survival of the previous year’s difficulties and trying to look forward with hope.
Once in a blue moon, I look down and see
Around my heart this flesh, pallid and cold
In fear, but living still: So let it be
Tonight, while the full moon is red as gold.
Smoothly and still in safety runs so red
The river’s streams, pulsed, quickened by Your will,
O You the Living Light who ever led
Heart from its wilful darkness, and lead still.
Let me not live unless to seek Your face.
Let me have strength to say: I shall yet live.
Let me not fall save, Lord, upon Your grace.
Let me not doubt You that Your hand will give
Both in Your sovereign wisdom peace and pain.
Let me so trust that life is not in vain.
H. G. Roorda apologizes,
I normally wouldn’t do this, but it’s year three; and I’d hate to disappoint him now.
This isn’t a normal poem; I only wrote two words. The rest are stolen from John Donne, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Robert Frost. Is this a valid form of poetry? No, probably not. But perhaps it will broaden your knowledge. Before using Google, you might try your hand at discerning who wrote what: View Full Post
P. James McCord writes,
Caves
but for all those twisting tunnels,
stalactooned and misty-moist,
(where ghosty happenedings hide)
lair of barely-something thoughts,
those delve-deeped, dripped, sunk-secret caves
of my mind –
perhaps you might have seen it too
(I mean that far-off, shining hope
I tried to make you understand).
oh well.
it shimmered,
blue amid the sands,
and drained into unspoken lands.
Easter Island
roll o’er, rising
flush with sky
colors spritzed and cold
against that mystic king-cream
mountain-cloud
that swirls his warm breath over me
roll, roll on, roll over rising
backdrop of the sun-cracked trees
presents me like some meagre sacrifice
alone before this ancient tide -
a small, tear-beaded statue on a
time-soaked shore
loll and fritz-roll
living pink-skied sea!
bid my thoughts be still
before your splash-spread, mute monotony -
pouring out some barbarous peace
quell such civil blasphemies
Elizabeth Ten-Hove writes,
The world I knew is gone without a trace.
The walls and trees, the paths and where they led—
All’s lost behind a dancing veil of lace.
I crunch along as crystals sting my face;
There’s not a sound besides my noisy tread.
The world I knew is is gone without a trace.
Unsure of where I am, I slow my pace
And vainly search for landmarks up ahead:
All’s lost behind a dancing veil of lace.
Disoriented, lost in swirling space,
I wonder: is this where I’ll lay my head?
The world I knew is gone without a trace.
But I am sure of home in any place:
I never am alone, and need not dread.
All’s lost behind a dancing veil of lace.
I turn around and silently retrace
My wayward steps. How faithfully I’m led!
The world I knew is gone without a trace:
All’s lost behind a dancing veil of lace.
Carson Spratt stands gaping with his mouth open.
I stared and the golden sun
Made the world thin for me, and somehow
All was more glorious,
As if backlit by indescribable happiness
Filtering through a black veil that is rent in parts
Where we peep through at mysteries
Too old for us children.
The grass was not grass,
But a prism that broke up holiness
Into colours for my weakened mortal eyes.
The wind was the breath of peace
Stirring over a watchful land.
The mountain stood unshakeable
A solid psalm to God’s eternality.
And I, myself, a tiny character
Of Act Two in the play
On the stage of this earth.
I’ve forgotten my lines
In awe at my sudden eagle sight.
But now I remember them:
“Thank You. And Amen.”
Ella Hansen lights a Christmas candle and imagines the newborn Christ child.
When pieties are said, and lamps go dim,
That only moon and star touch midnight snows,
Beneath the shelter of a quiet hymn,
The first spark flickers, and a candle glows.
Did He whose strength kindled the fires of sun
See with such wide eyes candle-flame begun?
Ella Hansen starts to translate Catullus 31 and then wanders off in her own ideas.
Gem among islands, sweetest of all lands
Embraced by liquid lake or kissed by sea’s
Salacious waves, touching upon the sand,
Your lights among the green and shadowed trees
Are festal lamps. Shall I believe my sight,
That I have left the fields’ icy north glare
And see your palms in peace? Shall I, at night,
Lay down my body and my journey’s care?
Bright lions’ city, hail! Be glad and make
Your mistress’s joy your own, and waves, rejoice;
But softly now, and do not let her wake;
Gentle the laugh of your litoral voice,
Washing the dusk rocks of your eastern park,
Lest your dream fade your soaring lights in dark.
Ella Hansen offers a poet and dancer’s perspective.
Further up and further in! —C. S. Lewis.
Though for a time matter enthralls the soul,
The soul itself is such a thing apart
That, when the body breaks, it remains whole;
That life thrives ages past the beating heart.
For this, it goes unflinching through all pain,
Unmindful of its flesh, except as clay
To mould around what hindrances remain
Unyielding; the rest silent melt away.
For this, it fuses passion and the mind
To lose itself in rhythm, to be led
Forever inward, glancing not behind,
Slipped out of time, to stretch upward, ahead.
For this, when all its mortal strength is gone,
For this, in spite of this, the dance goes on.
John Ahern writes,
Leaves, roly polies
curl up when dead. Is God an
anthropomorphist?
Ella Hansen writes:
Because of an abundance of homework (Tuesday’s translation for the harder of my two Latin classes is four or five handwritten pages), the next chapter of In Enigmate is progressing very slowly; I do hope, however, to post it later this month. Until then, poetry must again suffice: this time, more recent.
***
Paronomasia
(Sept. 2009)
O poet, my friend, you are filled with conceit;
You think yourself finer and fleeter;
Until you have deigned, though, to go on your feet,
You never will travel a metre.
