Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926) is an Austrian poet born in Prague. Although he is not a Christian, he did receive an intensely Catholic upbringing through his mother. This provided him with Christian imagery and stories, which significantly influenced his concepts of the spiritual life as he created his own mythological landscape.

When Rike refers to God he has his own pantheistic ideas in mind — although for a reader with Christian understanding of who God is, the interpretation might often remain orthodox.

Rainer Maria Rilke is known for his lyrical intensity — particularly in his Duino Elegies which begins, Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angelic / orders? And even if one of them pressed me / suddenly to his heart: I’d be consumed / in his stronger existence…

In my own poem “Response to Rilke” I have my angelic narrator reply,
----There are few angels---to firsthand hear your cries
--------for some circle the earth
----------------turning away terrors you’ve no knowledge of…
----& though I once was called---to oversee your sojourn
----it was never mine---to turn you left or right
---------------------------or hold you in my embrace…

So many translations of Rilke’s poems appear in journals, anthologies, books, and on the internet, including by such noteworthy poets as Seamus Heaney. Since, like most of you, I don’t speak German, I must content myself with English translations, comparing one with another, and hanging onto the versions that grip me most.

I have been arrested by Rilke’s poem “Autumn” (“Herbst” in German) from The Book of Images many times in various translations. The subtleties from one translation to another deepens my appreciation of the original poem.

Susan McLean translates the opening couplet as
----The leaves are falling, falling from on high,
----As if far gardens withered in the sky.

And Robert Klein Engler has the third line read:
----to teeter with the grace of letting go.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The following beautiful version is a translation by Charles L. Cingolani.

Autumn

The leaves fall, as from afar,
as if withered in heaven's remote gardens;
it is with reluctance that they fall.

And during the nights weighty earth falls
from all the stars into solitude.

All of us fall. This hand falls here.
And look at others: All of them fall.

But there is One, Who holds what falls
with infinite tenderness in His hands.

Even though this is my favourite translation, I appreciate some alternate ways certain lines are carried into English.

Edward Snow renders the final couplet as:
----And yet there is One who holds this falling
----with infinite softness in his hands.

And J.B. Leishman translates it:
----And yet there’s One whose gently-holding hands
----This universal falling can’t fall through.

Despite Rilke’s fragmented acceptance of a Biblical concept of God, his poem does draw us toward a beautiful truth.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Stella Nesanovich

Stella Nesanovich is a poet who was born and raised in New Orleans. She has published two collections: Vespers at Mount Angel (2004, Xavier Review Press) and Colors of the River (2015, Yellow Flag). She has also published four chapbooks. She is Professor Emerita of English from McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Philip C. Kolin said when Colors of the River was about to appear, “With her exquisite new collection, Stella Nesanovich is undoubtedly one of Louisiana’s most gifted poets and a contributor to the Southern elegiac tradition…”

Since that time, her poem “Everyday Grace” has received significant attention after it first appeared in the literary journal Third Wednesday in 2016. Ted Kooser featured it in “American Life in Poetry” — a column which was included in numerous newspapers. “Everyday Grace” can be read on the website of The Poetry Foundation and has been posted to many other internet sites.

The following poem first appeared at Reformed Journal.

Blue Light

The color of deep ice, the blue
frozen in crevasses, a hue
like none other. Such ice
holds memory in that intensity,
a siren song that calls the body.

The early dark of autumn
afternoons, the sky’s cobalt
evoke delight even as sun
departs, leading us
to the depths of night.

One fall, I sat in blue light
cast by stained glass,
a luminous veil. Amazed
by a message I heard
in prayer, I lingered
in tinted brilliance, gazed
about to see if others knew.

Was Gabriel an azure shimmer
when Mary heard him speak
the miracle to grace her life?
Often our answered prayers
are wisps of such light.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Emperor Kangxi

Emperor Kangxi (1654—1722) — whose personal name is Xuanye — ruled in China for 61 years, during the Qing Dynasty, including for several years as a child under four regents until he came of age. He is revered for establishing a period of peace, and for encouraging the pursuits of literature and religion.

Under his influence vast encylopedias were compiled, as well as the Kangxi Chinese dictionary. In 1705, he commissioned The Complete Tang Poems —a collection of 49,000 lyric poems by more than 2,200 poets.

In 1692, Kangxi issued the Edict of Toleration, which barred attacks on churches, and legalized the practice of Christianity among Chinese people. He wanted to maintain oversite of Chinese Christians himself, and resisted the control of Pope Clement XI who issued a papal bull in 1715 condemning certain traditional Chinese religious practices. The emperor responded by banning missionaries from entering China.

Various people have sought to claim Kangxi as an adherent of their beliefs. He was a Neo-Confucian, who sponsored the construction, preservation, and restoration of many Buddhist sites, and who wrote poetry — such as the following poem of Christian faith.

The following qi-yen-she poem follows a traditional format — using seven Chinese characters in each line, and including the numbers one through ten.

基督死
功成十字血成溪 ，千丈恩流分自西。
身列四衙半夜路，徒方三背兩番鸡。
五百鞭达寸肌裂，六尺悬垂二盜齐。
慘恸八垓惊九品，七言一毕万灵啼。

The Death of Christ

When the work of the cross is done, blood flowed like a river,
Grace from the west flowed a thousand yards deep,
On the midnight road he was subjected to four trials,
Before the rooster crowed twice, three times betrayed by a disciple.
Five hundred lashes tore every inch of skin,
Two thieves hung on either side, six feet high,
Sadness greater than any had ever known,
Seven words, one completed task, ten thousand spirits weep.

Since all ten numbers don’t come through in this English translation, they are laid out here:
----1- — once for all, the finished work, or the one task
----2- — two thieves
----3- — three times denied
----4- — four trials back and forth
----5- — five hundred stripes
----6- — six feet high on the cross
----7- — the seven last words of Christ from the cross
----8- — eight compass points — to the furthermost point of the world
----9- — nine ranks of officials — all walks of people
----10 — Chinese numeral ten, which is the pictograph of the cross

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Bede

Bede — often referred to as the Venerable Bede (673—735) — is an Anglo-Saxon poet, priest, theologian, scholar and historian. His best-known work is Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731), which outlines a history of England, beginning with the invasion by Julius Ceasar in 55 BC, and describes the conversion to Christianity of the Anglo-Saxon people. From this work came the method of dating events from Christ’s Birth (BC and AD).

At age seven, he was sent by his family to the monastery of Monkwearmouth to receive his education. He spent most of his life in the monastery, and its sister monastery at Jarrow, although he also travelled to various monasteries throughout Britain.

It is through Bede that we know that Cædmon (657—680) — besides his one surviving hymn — also wrote many poems about Genesis and the Gospels.

The following poem — also known as Bede’s Lament — is the most-copied Old English poem in ancient manuscripts; according to tradition it was written on his deathbed, although there is no evidence that he was the author. Here are a couple renderings of the poem in English. I include them both to assist us in our reflections.

Bede’s Death Song

Facing Death, that inescapable journey,
who can be wiser than he
who reflects, while breath yet remains,
on whether his life brought others happiness, or pains,
since his soul may yet win delight's or night's way
after his death-day.

Bede’s Death Song

Before the unavoidable journey there, no one becomes
wiser in thought than him who, by need,
ponders, before his going hence,
what good and evil within his soul,
after his day of death, will be judged.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Luke Harvey

Luke Harvey is a poet who describes himself as “living in the interstate / between two worlds” — that is, in Chickamauga, Georgia, just ten miles from Chattanooga, Tennessee. He works as a high school teacher in that other world. He also writes for and works on the poetry editorial panel for The Rabbit Room.

Harvey’s debut poetry collection Let’s Call It Home has just appeared as part of the Poiema Poetry Series from Cascade Books. I am honoured to have worked with Luke in editing this fine book for publication.

The English poet Malcolm Guite has written of this new collection, “Time and again these poems do what poetry does best: they transfigure the familiar and so reveal something of its meaning: …from the mystery of the earthworm rising towards the rain, to the family who find that feeding a child pureed peas is an entirely sacramental act, in poem after poem Luke Harvey gives us a glimpse of what George Herbert called ‘Heaven in Ordinary’.”

The following poem is from Let’s Call It Home.

After the Murder

The crux of the matter is what to do.
with the body now crumbled

in your hands. Logic says dismember
it, scrubbing beneath your fingernails

to rinse away any condemning
evidence of having been at the scene

of the slaughter, then bury the axe.
Or maybe you play it cool, act

like it’s nothing new to hold a carcass
in your cupped palms, like really this

is something you do on a weekly basis,
nonchalant as a Sunday stroll. Of course,

you wouldn’t be here in the first place
if you were one to listen to logic,

so disregard that. You’re holding the flesh
and blood of another. This is no time for logic.

Pray for forgiveness and devour it,
wiping first one cheek, then the other.

Posted with permission of the poet.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Adam Mickiewicz*

Adam Mickiewicz (1798—1855) is often referred to as Poland’s greatest poet. “He was at once the Homer and the Dante of the Polish nation,” said the poet and critic Jan Lechoń.

In 1824, after having been briefly imprisoned for pro-Polish independence activities, Mickiewicz was banished to Russia. He quickly became popular in the literary society of Saint Petersburg and Moscow, and befriended Alexander Pushkin. After five years of exile he was given permission to travel to Europe; he settled in Rome, and later in Paris.

In the Preface to the book Metaphysical Poems (2023, Brill) — which includes essays about Mickiewicz and a large selection of his poems (both in the original Polish and in English translation) — the selection of poems are said to show Mickiewicz to be,
----“…part of the diverse culture of European Romanticism, as well
----as the great metaphysical and mystical tradition extending from
----the classical culture of Greece and Rome, through mediaeval
----Christendom, to the early-modern Reformation and Enlightenment.
----In these poems Mickiewicz testifies to a spiritual longing for God
----and the meaning of human existence, a longing which transcends not
----only national, ethnic and linguistic boundaries, but also
----religious denominations.”

The following poem was translated by Mateusz Stróżyński and Jaspreet Singh Boparai and appears in Metaphysical Poems (2023 Brill).

Reason and Faith

When I have bowed proud reason and my head
Before the Lord like clouds before the sun:
The Lord raised them up like a rainbow bright
And painted them with myriad dazzling rays.

And it will shine, a witness to our faith,
When from the heavenly dome disaster flows;
And when we fear the flood, the rainbow will
Remind us of the covenant once more.

Oh, Lord! Humility has made me proud,
For even though I shine in heavenly realm —
My Lord! — the shine’s not mine! It’s but a weak
Reflection of your glorious, dazzling fires!

I looked upon the lowly realms of Man,
On his opinions’ varying tones and hues:
To reason they appeared large and confused,
But to the eyes of faith they’re small, and clear

All the proud scholars! Also you I see!
The storm is throwing you around like trash.
You are enclosed like snails in little shells,
While you desire to comprehend the globe.

They claim: “Necessity! It blindly rules
The world like the moon which governs the waves.”
While others say: “It’s Accident which plays
In Man like winds that frolic in the sky.”

There is a Lord who has embraced the sea
And made it trouble Earth eternally;
But carved for it the boundary in rock,
Designed to act as an eternal check.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Adam Mickiewicz: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Seamus Heaney*

Seamus Heaney (1939—2013) is one of Ireland’s most respected poets. He grew up in the north and — not for political or religious reasons — moved to the south in 1972. He has also been shared by the US (he taught for one semester a year at Harvard for 20 years) and England (he was Poetry Professor at Oxford for five years).

In his poetry he frequently preserves memories of the past — the sound and feel of how tasks were accomplished during his childhood, other aspects of the way rural life was, and memories of family, church, and school life. He said, “Almost always [a poem] starts from some memory, something you’d forgotten that comes up like a living gift of presence.” For Heaney, though, such thoughts require further reflection. “That is the kind of poem I really like: the stimulus in memory, but the import, hopefully, more than just the content of memory.”

The following poem is, by my count, the third time Heaney has taken on this story from the Gospels (Matthew 9, Mark 2, Luke 5). The first was in his book Seeing Things (1991), the second in Human Chain (2010) — and this one appeared in Poetry Ireland Review in 2014, after Heaney’s death. As far as I know, it has not been collected in a posthumous poetry collection.

The Latecomers

He saw them come, then halt behind the crowd
That wailed and plucked and ringed him, and was glad
They kept their distance. Hedged on every side,

Harried and responsive to their need,
Each hand that stretched, each brief hysteric squeal –
However he assisted and paid heed,

A sudden blank letdown was what he’d feel
Unmanning him when he met the pain of loss
In the eyes of those his reach had failed to bless.

And so he was relieved the newcomers
Had now discovered they’d arrived too late
And gone away. Until he hears them, climbers

On the roof, a sound of tiles being shifted,
The treble scrape of terra cotta lifted
And a paralytic on his pallet

Lowered like a corpse into a grave,
Exhaustion and the imperatives of love
Vied in him. To judge, instruct, reprove,

And ease them body and soul.
Not to abandon but to lay on hands.
Make time. Make whole. Forgive.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about Seamus Heaney: first post, second post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Ann Griffiths*

Ann Griffiths (1776—1805) is a hymnist of rural Wales whose poetic achievement is treasured by those who speak the Welsh language. She grew up in a family who faithfully attended their parish church and, like their neighbours, enjoyed traditional noson lawen evenings of singing with the harp and dancing.

In the mid-1790s, she embraced the spiritual renewal of the Methodist revival that was sweeping through Wales. This is when she began composing her hymns and poems, only a few of which she actually wrote down.

She recited them to her friend Ruth Hughes, who also committed them to memory. After Ann Griffiths died, it was Ruth’s husband, John Hughes, who published them. John was a teacher and preacher who had corresponded extensively with Ann as a spiritual mentor.

In the Dictionary of Welsh Biography, Gomer Morgan Roberts describes her verse as “characterized by a wealth of scriptural allusion, by deep religious and mystical feeling, and by bold metaphors.”

The following poem, translated into English by George Richard Gould Pughe, is from a collection called, The Hymns of Ann Griffiths, of Dolwar Fechan, which was published in 1900. It is available online through Project Gutenberg.

Hymn VI

“But God is faithful” 1 Cor. x, 18.

“Cofia, Arglwydd, dy ddyweddi,”

Lord, remember, we implore Thee,
----And defend from every foe
Thy poor spouse that bends before Thee
----Palpitating as a doe:
Be Thou unto her a Pillar
----To direct her in the night,—
To illuminate and fill her
----With the lustre of Thy Light.

Life is far more strange than fiction,—
----But its immortality
In defiance of affliction
----Magnifies its mystery.
When the winnowing commences,
----Lord, enable us to stand
Purified from past offences
----At the last on Thy Right Hand.

O that, as a cloud ascending
----Upwards to the skies above,
We may rise, and with unending
----Rapture realise Thy Love!
Three in One, The Same as ever,
----God proclaims His Name to be
Alpha and Omega, never
----Failing in fidelity.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Ann Griffiths: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Andrew Lansdown*

Andrew Lansdown is a significant Australian poet. His new collection, The Farewell Suites has just been published by Cascade Books as part of the Poiema Poetry Series.

Fransesca Stewart wrote of his Abundance: New & Selected Poems (2020, Poiema/Cascade) in Westerly Magazine from the University of Western Australia,

-----“Abundance offers a rich and varied view of the world through
-----Lansdown’s eyes. By noticing the miraculous and the mundane,
-----and with an ever-present awareness of the passing of time,
-----these poems pay attention to ordinary life and bring a captivating
-----intensity of presence and emotion. Lansdown… by turning the poetic
-----gaze upon himself… displays acute self-awareness and disarming
-----vulnerability in observing his mind, emotions and reactions to life.”

With his new poetry collection, Andrew Lansdown becomes even more publicly vulnerable. Here he carries us through all the heartache of losing loved ones — the death of three brothers, his wife’s miscarriage, and the final farewell to a dearly loved mother and father. For the rest of us, who have experienced varying degrees of the same thing — or who soon will — The Farewell Suites is an eloquent reminder that in this we are not alone.

I am honoured to have worked with Andrew as his editor for both of these books.

Lamplight

The lamp of the Lord—
that’s how the word of the Lord
describes the spirit of a man.

And looking at my father
sunken into his deathbed
I sense and see the truth of it.

Now his spirit has returned
(a little ruined, a lot redeemed)
to the Lord who gave it,

how dark it is, his body,
how utterly given over
to bleakness and blackness,

its lamplight all extinguished.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Andrew Lansdown: first post, second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Venantius Fortunatus

Venantius Fortunatus (c. 530—c. 609) is a Latin poet who was born in the northeast of what is now Italy, and was educated at Ravenna. He later travelled as a wandering minstrel, and as a pilgrim to worship at the shrine of St Martin in Tours and other shrines. It is believed that his intent in moving to Metz, in what is now Northeast France, was to become a poet at the Merovingian Court.

Fortunatus performed a celebration poem for a royal wedding in 566, and soon found patrons among the nobility and bishops. Around 576 he was ordained, and by around 600 he became the Bishop of Poitiers.

The following poem was translated in the 19th century from the Latin by Edward Caswall. It appears in Burl Horniachek’s anthology, To Heaven’s Rim: The Kingdom Poets Book of World Christian Poetry.

Sing, My Tongue, the Saviour’s Glory

Sing, my tongue, the Saviour's glory;
Tell His triumph far and wide;
Tell aloud the famous story
Of His body crucified;
How upon the cross a victim,
Vanquishing in death, He died.

Eating of the tree forbidden,
Man had sunk in Satan’s snare,
When our pitying Creator did
This second tree prepare;
Destined, many ages later,
That first evil to repair.

Such the order God appointed
When for sin He would atone;
To the serpent thus opposing
Schemes yet deeper than his own;
Thence the remedy procuring,
Whence the fatal wound had come.

So when now at length the fullness
of the sacred time drew nigh,
Then the Son, the world’s Creator,
Left his Father’s throne on high;
From a virgin’s womb appearing,
Clothed in our mortality.

All within a lowly manger,
Lo, a tender babe He lies!
See his gentle Virgin Mother
Lull to sleep his infant cries!
While the limbs of God incarnate
‘Round with swathing bands she ties.

Thus did Christ to perfect manhood
In our mortal flesh attain:
Then of His free choice He goeth
To a death of bitter pain;
And as a lamb, upon the altar of the cross,
For us is slain.

Lo, with gall His thirst He quenches!
See the thorns upon His brow!
Nails His tender flesh are rending!
See His side is opened now!
Whence, to cleanse the whole creation,
Streams of blood and water flow.

Faithful Cross! Above all other,
One and only noble Tree!
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit thy peers may be;
Sweetest wood and sweetest iron!
Sweetest Weight is hung on thee!

Lofty tree, bend down thy branches,
To embrace thy sacred load;
Oh, relax the native tension
Of that all too rigid wood;
Gently, gently bear the members
Of thy dying King and God.

Tree, which solely wast found worthy
The world’s Victim to sustain.
Harbor from the raging tempest!
Ark, that saved the world again!
Tree, with sacred blood anointed
Of the Lamb for sinners slain.

Blessing, honour, everlasting,
To the immortal Deity;
To the Father, Son, and Spirit,
Equal praises ever be;
Glory through the earth and heaven
To Trinity in Unity. Amen

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

David Gascoyne*

David Gascoyne (1916—2001) is an English poet whose first poetry collection appeared when he was just sixteen. He travelled to Paris in 1933 and became not only influenced by the surrealist movement, but became its spokesman to Britain — translating the poetry of Salvador Dali, Benjamin Peret, and André Breton.

Gascoyne also became a significant poet himself, writing original surrealist verse in his well-received second book of poems Man’s Life Is This Meat. By his third collection, however he had lost faith in surrealism, and began writing the mystical poems of an anguished Christian seeker. Elizabeth Jennings wrote, “I do not think … he really found his own voice or his own individual means of expression until he started writing the poems which appeared in the volume entitled Poems, 1937–42…”

The following poem is one of them, which was written in 1938.

Kyrie

Is man’s destructive lust insatiable? There is
Grief in the blow that shatters the innocent face.
Pain blots out clearer sense. And pleasure suffers
The trial thrust of death in even the bride’s embrace.
The black catastrophe that can lay waste our worlds
May be unconsciously desired. Fear masks our face;
And tears as warm and cruelly wrung as blood
Are tumbling even in the mouth of our grimace.
How can our hope ring true? Fatality of guilt
And complicated anguish confounds time and place;
While from the tottering ancestral house an angry voice
Resounds in prophecy. Grant us extraordinary grace,
O spirit hidden in the dark in us and deep,
And bring to light the dream out of our sleep.

The following is one version of a piece by Gascoyne from his New Collected Poems, although I’ve encountered a significantly different version elsewhere.

The Son of Man is in Revolt

The Son of Man is in revolt
Against the god of men.
The Son of God who took the fault
Of men away from them
To lay it in himself on God
Has nowhere now to rest God’s head
But in the heart of human solitude.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about David Gascoyne: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Jack Ridl

Jack Ridl is an American poet who served for 37 years as a professor at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. Two of his recent poetry collections are Saint Peter and the Goldfinch (2019) and Practicing to Walk Like a Heron (2013) which won the National Gold Medal for poetry by ForeWord Reviews; both were published by Wayne State University Press.

His newest collection, All at Once, will be published by CavanKerry Press this fall. Check out his “Letter to an Aspiring Poet” published earlier this year at Reformed Journal.

In 1996 The Carnegie (CASE) Foundation named him Michigan Professor of the Year. Perhaps a greater tribute to his teaching, is that nine of his students are included in Naomi Shihab Nye’s anthology Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25 (2010, HarperCollins), more than 90 of Jack’s students have earned MFA degrees, and more than 100 are published authors.

The following poem first appeared in Image.

Bartholemew: Disciple

I never knew what was going on.

He would say, “Let’s go,” and we
would follow. “Follow” was his word.

And we would. Fools we were to let that
take us all that way. Why we did to this day

I don’t know. Look how it ended. Look
what it became. But what did we have

to stay for? Nothing. There wasn’t much
work. Nothing much to do. There were no

stories left. Bread. Fish. So we ended up
with more bread and fish. But we did find

stories and stories. Well, what else is there?
I never did much along the way. Look it up.

In the big deal painting I’m the one who appears
rather glassy eyed, and believe me, it wasn’t the wine.

I just went along. The miracles had been done before.
I will say, though, that it was his words. Words!

Imagine. Words had never done what his did.
I’d listen, and I wasn’t much of a listener. Then

later I would try to make sense of them. I couldn’t.
But I could feel them. And maybe that was it, how

they got inside you and made you wonder and wrinkle.
They got in my brain’s garden and made it seem like

the roots were above ground and all the flowers and
vegetables, all the nourishing, were now below.

He didn’t reverse things, exactly—the first shall be
last and the last first and all that. It was that everything

changed inside me when he said those things. It was
what happened to me. I started looking at lepers and the poor

and paid no attention anymore to the kings and scribes and
Pharisees. I had thought the world of them. Now they seemed

unimportant in their importance. See? See how hard it is to
explain this stuff? You just started seeing everything with a

new mind. You began to be drawn to a whole new world,
and it was a world. Like now. A world within a world, one

drawing you, the other imposing itself on you. Why am I
telling you what you already know? Erosions. That’s it.

The reversals were erosions. And in what was left, I
wanted to plant what didn’t belong. Lilies in fields.

You might say, okay, whatever, and yet those words
did become flesh, my flesh. And my flesh, my body, held

the kingdom of God, and if it’s a place that’s a place
for children, then most of what I know really doesn’t matter.

Labor doesn’t, and money, and reason, and, well, you
go make a list. He’d get me so confused. And then we’d

head off worrying about how we would eat and where
we’d sleep. Our feet were filthy. My God, we were always

filthy. We stank. And then he’d go and point at birds or
stalks of grain, even stop and have us kneel before a flower,

and then he’d smile. That haunts me still. That smile.
And then he died. He brought out hate, not love. He had

a terrifying sense of justice. Nothing he said or did
was impossible. Maybe that was it. It was all possible.

Posted with permission of the poet.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Jacob Stratman*

Jacob Stratman is the author of two poetry collections. His first, What I Have I Offer With Two Hands, is part of the Poiema Poetry Series (2019, Cascade). His new release is The Shell of Things (2024, Kelsay Books).

Jill Peláez Baumgaertner of The Christian Century says, “These are strong and sturdy poems,” but she reserves her highest praise for “the stunning, lyrical sequence which describes the author’s residency in Korea where ‘he can only see the shell of things’ as he lives in a new land and language, requiring acts of creation provoked by an unfamiliar setting as he finds his footing and searches for the words to describe what he observes.”

He is a professor and dean at John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, where he lives with his wife and two sons. As mentioned above, he and his family spent a year at Handong Global University in Pohang, South Korea, where he taught writing and literature courses.

The following poem is from The Shell of Things.

A Prayer for My 15-Year-Old, Who Is Set Apart

He won’t come out of his room very often—
only to eat what we’ve prepared, only to receive
love that doesn’t always look like anything he wants,
yet time is a friend of the God who creates it.


He won’t come out of his room very often,
or speak in complete sentences or listen
long enough to attend to the beauty of silences
yielded here, prepared just for him. Not yet.

He won’t come out of his room very often,
out of himself very often, but we will wait,
leaving this space empty of our wishes
You will fill with hope, with Your self.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Jacob Stratman: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Henry Constable

Henry Constable (1562—1613) is a poet and diplomat who is particularly known for one of the earliest sonnet sequences in English — Diana (1592). After graduating from Cambridge in 1580, he moved to Paris to begin his diplomatic career. From there he transferred to Heidelberg, and perhaps after that to Poland.

He spoke up in support of Protestant causes while at Queen Elizabeth’s court, where he became a favourite. In 1589 he was sent to Edinburgh to attend the marriage of King James VI of Scotland. Though at first outwardly appearing to be a Protestant, Constable eventually made public his conversion to Catholicism.

In 1595, Constable fled to the continent to avoid prosecution for his Catholic views. He wrote many letters to England, seeking assistance, visited Scotland, and around 1602 returned to England in secret. He was soon captured and held in the Tower of London. Even after his friend James I came to the English throne in 1603, he was not released — not until late in 1604. Several years later he left England for good, and died in Belgium.

O Gracious Shepherd

O gracious Shepherd! for Thy simple flock
By guileful goats to ravening wolves misled,
Who Thine own dear heart's precious blood didst shed,
And lamb-like offered to the butcher's block:
O gracious Shepherd! unremoving Rock
Of succour to all such as thither fled,
Respect one of Thy flock which followèd
These cursèd goats, and doth repentant knock,
To be with mercy taken to Thy fold.
I know Thy grace doth still for wanderers look;
I was a lost sheep once: dear Lord! behold,
And in compassion take me with Thy hook.
In one lost sheep new found, Thou dost rejoice;
Then know Thy sheep, which knows his Shepherd's voice.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Julian of Norwich

Julian of Norwich (1342―1416) is a mystic and theologian known almost exclusively through her writings, which are the earliest-surviving works in English by a woman. It is not even certain that her name was Julian, for that may have come from St. Julian’s Church in Norwich, where she lived most of her life as an anchoress.

Her story is that on the eighth of May, 1373, while she was believed to be on her deathbed, a curate, holding a crucifix above the foot of her bed was administering to her the last rites. Staring at the crucifix she began to lose her sight, and saw Jesus beginning to bleed. From this beginning she received sixteen visions of Christ.

The following excerpt, although not originally set out as poetry, has been placed in stanzas on the page to emphasize the poetic quality of Julian’s writings.

from Showings or Revelations of Divine Love

And in this he showed me a little thing
the quantity of a hazelnut,
lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed.
And it was as round as any ball.

I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding,
and thought, ‘What may this be?’
And it was answered generally thus,
“It is all that is made.”

I marvelled how it might last,
for I thought it might
suddenly have fallen to nothing
for littleness.

And I was answered in my understanding:
It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it.
And so have all things their beginning
by the love of God.

In this little thing I saw three properties.
The first is that God made it.
The second that God loves it.
And the third, that God keeps it.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Pat Schneider

Pat Schneider (1934—2020) is a poet and workshop leader who founded Amherst Writers & Artists in Massachusetts in 1981. She served for thirty years as the director of AWA. She describes the writing method she developed to help others discover their deepest stories in her book Writing Alone and With Others (2003, Oxford University Press).

When she was ten, growing up in St. Louis, she was sent to an orphanage because of the difficulties her single mother faced with poverty. This experience influenced her, and her husband Peter (a Methodist minister) to devote themselves for years to social justice ministry.

She wrote five poetry collections, including Another River: New and Selected Poems (2005). She taught at the University of Massachusetts, the University of Connecticut, Smith College and was an adjunct faculty member at the Graduate Theological Union and Pacific School of Religion. She is also known for her libretti and plays, which have been widely performed, including at Carnegie Hall.

Welcoming Angels

Between the last war
and the next one,
waiting for the northbound train
that travels by the river,
I sit alone in the middle of the night
and welcome angels.
Welcome back old hymns, old songs,
all the music, the rhyme and rhythm,
welcome angels, archangels,
welcome early guesses,
at the names of things,
welcome wings.
I have grown tired of disbelief.
What once was brave is boring.
Welcome back to my embrace stranger,
visitor beside the Jabbok.
Welcome wrestling until dawn,
until it is my hip thrown out of joint,
my pillow stone, my ladder
of antique assumptions.
Welcome what is not my own:
glory on top rung, coming down.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

George Mackay Brown*

George Mackay Brown (1921—1996) is a poet of Scotland’s north coast Orkney Islands. He studied with Edwin Muir at Newbattle Abbey College, near Edinburgh, and earned his MA from the University of Edinburgh, where he did post-graduate research on Gerard Manley Hopkins.

While in Edinburgh he became part of the Milne’s Bar crowd, which included Hugh MacDiarmid and Norman MacCaig. He was briefly engaged to Stella Cartwright — “the muse of Milne’s Bar” — but returned to his hometown of Stromness, where he lived unmarried for the rest of his life.

George Mackay Brown once wrote that his themes were "mainly religious (birth, love, death, resurrection, ceremonies of fishing and agriculture)…"

The following poem is from his collection Carve the Runes and appears in Selected Poems 1952—1992.

Daffodils

Heads skewered with grief
Three Marys at the cross
(Christ was wire and wax
festooned on a dead tree)

Guardians of the rock,
their emerald tapers touch
the pale wick of the sun
and perish before the rose
bleeds on the solstice stone
and the cornstalk unloads
peace from hills of thorn

Spindrifting blossoms
from the gray comber of March
thundering on the world,
splash our rooms coldly with
first grace of light, until
the corn-tides throb, and fields
drown in honey and fleeces

Shawled in radiance
tissue of sun and snow
three bowl-bound daffodils
in the euclidian season
when darkness equals light
and the world’s circle shudders
down to one bleeding point
Mary Mary and Mary
triangle of grief.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about George Mackay Brown: first post, second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Luci Shaw*

Luci Shaw is 95 years old, and a trail-blazer for generations of Christian poets who value her accomplishments as a model for how to walk the precarious path of faith and art. Her seventeenth poetry collection Reversing Entropy appeared from Paraclete Press this spring. She says in the Prologue,

-----“Our universe, and the systems within it, constantly shift from
-----their created states of order towards disorder, or chaos. The
-----second law of thermodynamics asserts that entropy, or disorder,
-----always increases with time. Creative human activities such as art,
-----architecture, music, story, or film are human efforts to halt and
-----reverse this loss of meaning…. [Poems] reverse entropy because
-----they are moving from a state of disorder (all the random ideas,
-----words,and phrases available to the writer) into an orderly form
-----designed by the writer to create meaningful images and concepts
-----in the reader’s mind….This transfer of images, concepts, and ideas
-----into the mind of a reader is the task of poetry and the calling of
-----the poet. Just as a composer of music gathers rhythms, notes,
-----melodies, or harmony, organizing them into fugues or sonatas
-----or concertos, so poets work and write to discover ways of
-----arranging their responses to the world in words that introduce
-----meaning and beauty in the mind of the reader. Which is what I’ve
-----been trying to do for most of my life."

The following poem is from Reversing Entropy (2024, Iron Pen/Paraclete).

Older

Aging haunts, will hunt us all, a predator,
rapacious, ravenous, toothed with sharp anxieties.
The scars of old and unhealed wounds hide
in the folds of soul skin. Blood stains the ground.
Failures, regrets have left torn tissues,
ragged blemishes and a crimson trail
across the room. You feel it wet, sticky, seeping
between your bare toes. In the thick night,
You wrestle with dreams, contend with confusion.

How good it would be if the anxiety of aging,
bulky and useless, were a piece of furniture.
You might remove it from the living room and
store it somewhere dark, out of sight—
in the basement, perhaps, locked behind
the cellar door. Then you could climb back up to
the clean kitchen, a room predictable enough
to allay suspicion. You’d open a window,
maybe prepare a simple meal. Pray.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about Luci Shaw: first post, second post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Yared

Yared (505—571) is an Ethiopian composer, hymn writer, and priest, who was a leader in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church which venerates him as a saint.

He is renowned for having established his own system of musical notation, which predates the familiar European system, and is still in use today.

One of the important festivals within the Ethiopian Church is Meskel, where they celebrate the reputed discovery of the true cross by Queen Helena, the mother of Constantine. The story goes that while she was seeking for the Holy Sepulchre, she prayed for assistance, and was directed to where the cross was buried by the smoke from a fire. What interests me most here, is not the artifact’s authenticity, but the extent to which Yared and his contemporaries valued it, because they celebrated the work Christ did on the cross.

The following selection from Yared’s “The Finding of the True Cross” was translated from the Ge’ez by Burl Horniachek with Ralph Lee, and appears in Burl Horniachek’s anthology, To Heaven’s Rim: The Kingdom Poets Book of World Christian Poetry (2023, Poiema/Cascade).

From The Finding of the True Cross

Look and proclaim, how good
it is that men have obtained
this exalted wood.
Brief gold was not the currency
----to purchase back man’s soul,
--------but with his precious blood
------------he chose to pay that toll.
The cross shines out.
The cross shines out and is so bright
that earthly kings do trail its light;
the thing that seemed so dark and damp
is now the world’s great guiding lamp.
The cross’s feast takes place
----both high in heaven’s face
and low upon the earth.
----We know its worth,
prize and praise it, with no dearth
----of trust. It is man’s rebirth
and help in need.

Posted with permission of Burl Horniachek.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge*

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772—1834) is a significant figure in the Romantic Movement in English poetry — which he and William Wordsworth established. Besides the poetry he is known for, he wrote literary criticism, philosophy and theology.

Malcolm Guite writes in his biography Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2017, Hodder & Stoughton) that “Prayer is not only the turning point, but the very subject of The Ancient Mariner, and any reader of Coleridge’s letters and notebooks will be struck by the frequency, range and depth of the prayers that weave through his writing.”

The following poem was sent in a letter to his friend and brother-in-law Robert Southey, in September of 1803, as Coleridge had just walked an incredible 263 miles in eight days in his efforts to defeat his addiction to opium. The poem was first published in Christabel (1816). Malcolm Guite emphasizes, “Once again, like so much of The Mariner, [this] poem is focused on prayer.” Listen to Guite reading The Pains of Sleep, here, where you'll also find his commentary.

The Pains of Sleep

Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,
In humble trust mine eye-lids close,
With reverential resignation
No wish conceived, no thought exprest,
Only a sense of supplication;
A sense o’er all my soul imprest
That I am weak, yet not unblest,
Since in me, round me, every where
Eternal strength and Wisdom are.

But yester-night I prayed aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd
Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me:
A lurid light, a trampling throng,
Sense of intolerable wrong,
And whom I scorned, those only strong!
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning still!
Desire with loathing strangely mixed
On wild or hateful objects fixed.
Fantastic passions! maddening brawl!
And shame and terror over all!
Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which all confused I could not know
Whether I suffered, or I did:
For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe,
My own or others still the same
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.

So two nights passed: the night’s dismay
Saddened and stunned the coming day.
Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me
Distemper’s worst calamity.
The third night, when my own loud scream
Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
O’ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
I wept as I had been a child;
And having thus by tears subdued
My anguish to a milder mood,
Such punishments, I said, were due
To natures deepliest stained with sin,
For aye entempesting anew
The unfathomable hell within,
The horror of their deeds to view,
To know and loathe, yet wish and do!
Such griefs with such men well agree,
But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?
To be loved is all I need,
And whom I love, I love indeed.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Samuel Taylor Coleridge: first post, second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Irina Ratushinskaya

Irina Ratushinskaya (1954—2017) is a Russian poet who in 1983 was accused of “Anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda in poetic form.” Her poetry has far more to do with her observations of the natural world than with politics, but its repression ironically brought international attention to human rights violations by the Soviet regime.

It is uncertain why she was singled out, being merely a primary school teacher who abhorred the government-sanctioned atheism, and sought to influence her students towards her Christian faith.

She spent three years in a forced-labour camp “where she worked to make gloves for Soviet workmen and was fed little more than bread and rotten fish broth”. Her poems were written on cigarette papers and smuggled out of the camp to her husband, who arranged for publication in the West. She was freed in 1986 on eve of the Reykjavik summit between the US president Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Her collection Beyond the Limit appeared in 1987, and her memoir, Grey Is the Colour of Hope in 1988.

Joseph Brodsky said — “a crown of thorns on the head of a bard has a way of turning into a laurel,” and he wrote of her as “a remarkably genuine poet.” She and her husband returned to Russia in 1998, to raise their sons as Russians. She died of cancer in 2017.

Somewhere a pendulum moves

Somewhere a pendulum moves, and softly a cuckoo is weeping,
Why should she count the hours, and not the long years for us.
And in the abandoned house, the old woman opens the shutters,
At the appropriate time, and with the same care as before.

Somewhere in the gloom a lamp is burning, the knitting continues.
And the rare letters are kept, and news is awaited.
And she, as is her custom, grieves only with her eyes.
And needlessly straightens the portraits of the children who have grown.

And what is all this for, And who before her is not sinful?
And over whom, departing, did she not make the sign of the cross?
But the one that she loves, may be comforted, saved.
And the one whom she awaits, may he find her on his return.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Barbara Crooker*

Barbara Crooker is a Pennsylvania poet whose poems have been well-received by many who know the artform well. They’ve been featured many times on The Writer’s Almanac as read by Garrison Keillor — and for The Slowdown podcast, read by then U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith.

I was pleased to see Barbara, along with other friends from our tight-knit poetry community, at the Festival of Faith and Writing in April. She gave me a copy of her tenth book, Slow Wreckage which had just appeared from Grayson Books. Her other recent books include: Some Glad Morning (University of Pittsburgh Press) and The Book of Kells (Poiema/Cascade) which was honoured as the Best Poetry Book of 2018 from Poetry by the Sea.

She has won numerous other awards including the Paterson Award for Literary Excellence, the WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and she is a sixty-one time nominee for the Pushcart Prize.

The following poem first appeared in my web-journal Poems For Ephesians — and is from Slow Wreckage.

Sonnet From The Ephesians

----- — Ephesians 1:16

I do not cease to give thanks, especially in November
even as we lose an hour of light, drawing
the curtains at 4:30 to keep out the cold. To remember
you are dust seems appropriate now. Crows are cawing
black elegies in the bare trees. Just past the Day of the Dead,
and I’m thankful for every friend who has blessed
my life, gold coins in a wooden chest. Who said
no man is an island? We’re all peninsulas, I guess,
joined to the mainland, part of the shore. We’re the sticks
in the bundle that can’t be broken. Even if
it doesn’t seem that way, the bickering of politics,
the blather on the nightly news. Maybe we speak in hieroglyphs,
unclear, always missing the mark? So let me be plain.
I’m grateful for the days of sun. I’m grateful for the rain.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about Barbara Crooker: first post, second post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

John Bunyan*

John Bunyan (1628—1688) is an English writer and Puritan preacher who is the renowned author of The Pilgrim’s Progress.

At age sixteen he joined the Parliamentary Army during the early stages of the English Civil War, serving for three years. Years later he became involved with a nonconformist sect who met in Bedford, and he became a preacher. After the restoration of the monarchy he was arrested and spent twelve years in prison for refusing to abstain from preaching. During this time he wrote his spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, or a Brief Relation of the Exceeding Mercy of God in Christ to his Poor Servant John Bunyan, which was published in 1666. This was also when he began work on The Pilgrim’s Progress.

In the second part of The Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian is led by Mr. Greatheart through the Valley of Humilation, where he hears the following song being sung by a shepherd boy.

The Shepherd Boy

He that is down needs fear no fall,
He that is low, no pride;
He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his guide.
I am content with what I have,
Little be it or much:
And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
Because Thou savest such.
Fullness to such a burden is
That go on pilgrimage:
Here little, and hereafter bliss,
Is best from age to age.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about John Bunyan: first post.

The most recent post at Poems For Ephesians is also a poem by John Bunyan.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Scott Cairns*

Scott Cairns is Curators’ Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University of Missouri, and is presently facilitating the transition of the Seattle Pacific University low-residency MFA program in Creative Writing to Whitworth University.

He is the author of ten poetry collections, the most recent of which is Lacunae (2023, Iron Pen/Paraclete Press). The word “lacuna” means a blank space, missing part, or empty hollow — and Cairns uses the word in various contexts, such as in the introductory poem, “Recuperating Lacunae”:

-----No, not so much---------------an emptiness, never yet
-----an emptiness.------------------Think, rather, a discrete

-----cove proving still---------------to offer—and ever
-----to offer—what one-------------cannot, can never,

-----comprehend…

He has long been a poet striving to describe the indescribable, and slow to accept common theological interpretations as the whole truth.

Robert Cording recently wrote, “For Cairns, language is a form of faith, faith that reaches out towards what is inexhaustible and uncontainable, and faith that trusts words can be a means of coming nearer to what necessarily remains out of reach… Lacunae is the work of a faithful and faith-filled man unafraid of letting his ego be seared, of living in time that continues ‘ticking in perplexity.’”

The following poem is from Cairn’s new poetry collection, Lacunae.

Implicative Lacunae
-----…It was like
-----A new knowledge of reality.
-------------------------— Stevens

Entering the clearing, he knew
That he had heard it, the single
note expanding beyond the reach
of any single note, as if,
finally, his dim ideas
about things showed themselves to be
stick figures failing to evince
the fullness of the body. She
said to him so, at long last you
have heard it, yes? He stood just there
at the clearing’s edge, daring not
to speak. He closed his eyes that he
might better listen, and the note
became a space like the clearing
into which all that could be sung
found dwelling, and he became
like a man without a doctrine,
became a man intent on praise,
a man whose freedom would ever
expand, would ever reach toward.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about Scott Cairns: first post, second post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819—1891) is a writer best known for writing one of the greatest American novels — his ambitious 1851 masterpiece Moby-Dick. He wrote many novels during his early career, often based on his own experience at sea and other travels. It was not until well into the twentieth century that the reputation of Moby-Dick began to grow.

One fascinating resource for Melville scholars online, is Melville’s Marginalia. It is an archive of books owned or borrowed by Melville which influenced his work. The most referenced book there is his well-annotated copy of The New Testament and The Book of Psalms — a volume he clearly often had at his side while writing. The following paragraph comes from the introduction, to this resource by Brian Yothers (University of Texas at El Paso).
-----In reading Romans 14.22, Melville paused to underline this
-----sentence: "Hast thou faith? Have it to thyself before God."
-----And in the top margin, he inscribed an elliptical response:
-----"The only kind of Faith—one's own" (274.2:4-5). This and
-----other marginalia in the New Testament and Psalms constitute
-----a compelling chapter in Melville's spiritual autobiography
-----and contribute greatly to our understanding of his own kind
-----of faith and how it related to his personal life.

In 1863 Herman Melville moved to New York City, where he had been born, and from then on he focussed on writing poetry. In 1866 his collection Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War, which reflected on the American Civil War appeared. This was followed by Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876). His novella Billy Budd was published posthumously in 1924.

The Martyr

Good Friday was the day
-----Of the prodigy and crime,
When they killed him in his pity,
-----When they killed him in his prime
Of clemency and calm—
----------When with yearning he was filled
----------To redeem the evil-willed,
And, though conqueror, be kind;
-----But they killed him in his kindness,
-----In their madness and their blindness,
And they killed him from behind.

--------------------There is sobbing of the strong,
-------------------------And a pall upon the land;
--------------------But the People in their weeping
-----------------------------------Bare the iron hand:
--------------------Beware the People weeping
-------------------------When they bare the iron hand.

He lieth in his blood—
-----The father in his face;
They have killed him, the Forgiver—
-----The Avenger takes his place,
The Avenger wisely stern,
----------Who in righteousness shall do
----------What heavens call him to,
And the parricides remand;
-----For they killed him in his kindness,
-----In their madness and their blindness.
And his blood is on their hand.

--------------------There is sobbing of the strong,
-------------------------And a pall upon the land;
--------------------But the People in their weeping
-----------------------------------Bare the iron hand:
--------------------Beware the People weeping
-------------------------When they bare the iron hand.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Brad Davis*

Brad Davis is a Connecticut poet and the author of four full-length collections. His new book On the Way to Putnam: new, selected, & early poems (Grayson Books), appearing May 8th, is a summation of his career to this point.

His previous books from which this new volume draws poems include: Opening King David (2011, Emerald City), and Still Working It Out (2014) and Trespassing on the Mount of Olives (2021) which are both from Cascade Books and the Poiema Poetry Series.

Sydney Lea, Poet Laureate of Vermont (2011—2015), said of Brad Davis’s poetry in the forward:
-----“What happens for me is a strong measure of spiritual refreshment.
-----Davis never professes simple faith, but wrestles with
-----countervailing impulses, ‘the darkness and sorrow in our hearts.’
-----Over the span of his sustained and sustaining vocation, no matter
-----all the world’s deep defects—posturing and deceptions of late
-----capitalist powers, widespread war, starvation, bigotry, hypocrisy,
-----and plain callousness—for him a cautious optimism and an incautious
-----joie de vivre and delight in the natural world prevail.”

The following poem, clearly set during our experience of Covid, is from On the Way to Putnam: new, selected, & early poems (Grayson Books). This is it’s first appearance.

Sunday News

-----Psalm 24:1

After two days of heavy rain
along the Natchaug, Diana’s Pool
(named, some say, for a suicide)
was all aboil. We arrived at noon
hoping for the whitewater kayakers
we’d heard wait for such water.
But either it was too early

in the season, or the first arrivals
deemed it too dangerous and
pushed out a note to the network
of other crazies we went out to see.
So we settled for a leisurely negative
ion fix, witnessing the happiest
water south and west of Putnam.

Happiest, that is, until we returned
to town where our Quinebaug
over Cargill Falls was roiling
like a Pentecostal congregation
in the grip of a Holy Ghost anointing.
Even the Little River was feeling it,
a little. And so today, though oil

prices climb and stocks tumble
and the virus claims another few
thousand, the joyful spring waters
amped by heavy rain preach
our homily, giving voice to an old
story that’s a rollicking antidote
for all the recent woes of the world.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about Brad Davis: first post, second post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.