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Photo from Wikipedia Commons
THE LONG GREEN
A dragonfly recurs
To feast on smallest
fry
Four wings a blur of
lavender
Great goggle eyes
And keel a chord in air
Drawn by a whisper
Come back
When the mosquitoes
rise
And the sparks
Of fire flies
But eat no fire
In the dark
Avoid the leaf
Where mantis preys
By day
That long green thief—
Catch and be not
Caught
THE TWELFTH
WORM
Those suave white tents
Those silken seraglios
Defoliant havens
Harems of worms
Turbans in branches
Tent caterpillars
Emergent they turn
Summer to winter
Those blasphemous
Christ haters
See how their frass
Falls to the ground
BRAINLESS ONE
On a sandbar in the
river
A muddy hillock
clambers out,
Rumple neck and rubber
feet
Uphold a gaping horny
snout
It is the air, the
sun, the flow,
The safety of the mud
below
Draws this animal of
brown
Earless bottoms up and
down
A river and a legless
throne
To bask an animated
stone,
Brainless one who
teaches me
To rise to such
eternities
THE
ASCENSION
Day was rising when Our Lord rose up,
Sun was rising, wind was rising,
Dew was rising from the meadows—steps
Of angels rose as if on ladders climbing
Why do you stand gaping overhead
You friends of Jesus? Sorrowing is done;
Christ the Lord has risen from the
dead,
The kingdom of salvation has begun
Or will it vanish, never to be seen?
By sunlight and by starlight we remember
Purity and kindliness unstained,
Storm and calm and sanctifying power
Friends of Jesus, why do you distrust
His promises, for did He not foretell
He would return within the Eucharist,
Prevail by grace against gates of hell?
When you feel His love within you burn
Take this as a sign He will return;
When you see a flame consume a flame
Soul by soul He will His
kingdom claim
—From
Mysteries and
Stations
in the Manner of Ignatius (Kaufmann
Publishing, 2005)
HOW SMOOTH IS EVIL…
How smooth is evil,
how uncanny in its mimicry
Which can dispense
philanthropy and sympathy,
Pronounce full and
sufficient orthodoxy,
Display its pious
courtesy, gentility
But if there is no
continence of will,
No sacrifice of
appetite, that it be stilled,
Then every outward
charity infects and kills—
No loving is that is
an exercise in skill
The outward drape of
inner base intent
Impoverished and
soiled, impaired and bent
Will not be
straightened by its sentiment—
Appearance of a good
is evil’s armament
But evil will reply: I
am combined
And mixed, for
excellence and ill I was designed
Listen
to Pavel read "The Father"
(MP3 format).
THE
FATHER
(translated
from the German: “Der Vater,” by Albrecht Haushofer, 1903–1945.
Haushofer was shot
by the SS near the gate of Moabit Prison on April 25, 1945)
The
deepest folktale from the eastern lands
Tells us
that some spirits of the foulest force
Rest
imprisoned in the midnight seas,
Sealed
up by the Lord God’s worried hands,
Until
once in a thousand years, there comes
A
fisherman who’s granted this decision:
Release
the awful powers from their prison,
Or cast
away at once those fettered demons.
For my
father there was this to choose:
Push the
demon back into its cell,
By
strength of will confine it to its hell.
My
father broke the seal and let it loose.
He did
not see the breath of evil’s flight.
He let
the demon drift into the night.
FIRST AND LAST
Suppose the April sun
which rises earlier
And earlier these
April mornings were
To rise still higher,
brighter than it did before,
Earlier trespassing on
the midnight stars
And if it set still
later in the April dusk
And entered into umbra
and penumbra shade,
Surrounding all the
planet with a golden husk,
Enfolding both the
hemispheres, the night delayed
Until all light were
daylight and the Earth were
clothed
From zenith to horizon
to the firmament,
And every wave and
furrow of the sea exposed
And every rolling
contour of the continents
That would be the
telling of the end of all,
And it will come at
last, that was the first to
fall
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