re times when it is over before it really take root; that is what this Lent has felt like to me. I had GREAT plans and disciplines this year...... but only one loaf of bread got made - and it while it was tasty it was more like a hockey puck than the staff of life. And only two books on my list were finished and way too much music and prayer fell by the wayside.
Still, there was a wedding feast in Tucson and two study groups and an exploration of a "spirituality of Eucharist" at church. What's more, I got the chance to spend time with some of my young guitar buddies in the congregation and encourage the making of joyful music in their hearts. And we'll have a feast with both daughters this weekend before a full Holy Week that will include Tenebrae, foot washing, a Good Friday "sounds of solace" gathering and the Celebration of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday.
This year I have invited the clergy in the congregation who are not serving a church to vest and join me in the celebration - and our young seminarian from Yale will be a part of the fun, too. (It is a sweet irony and blessing that she is the daughter of my predecessor - another encounter with our "still speaking God's" enormous grace - and she brings to us all a new sense of being embraced by God's presence in ways beyond o
ur understanding.)
Nevertheless, Lent has nearly evaporated - and I wish there was another week or two - but that, too, is beyond my control. Made me enjoy this poem by Mark Conway all the more...
I'm afraid of nothing but the world my son
will inherit, don't think I'm not caught
like all the rest. I just don't want him here
watching the thin men memorize the sorrows.
Unforgivers, they sit in dark cafés,
their endless clubs and halls, stirring
beers, mumbling, calling out small dreams
of violence: how they ought to—should have—
tossed out the wife, knocked the shit out
of the neighbor. They're doomed to remember
and rage, rage and reminisce. They sleep
like horses, standing, and keep their teeth
in kerosene to be reminded of revenge. And
I'm one of them, a gifted scholar of the sorrows:
I remember, I'll always remember you.
B
ut why worry, my son can't see the gray men
invisible as pigeons. He's taking in the Campo
like there's no tomorrow. He's heard the latest
revolutionary rumors: that his parent's imperial
order will soon be overturned. He can feel his youth
come in and is free in the complete indifference
of Italian time, both of us off the map and wandering.
We eat in the old shops, play and beat on
the same crooked pinball machine, I watch him
watch the lovely woman walk her sweatered pug.
She's Roman, young, severely chic, a slender
polytheist out adoring the dusk and blue swifts
writing hieroglyphs above the Tiber. Who
could worship a god who doesn't love
the other gods? My son walks these paths
I walked with you, I adore the forms
the world puts on: eyes and mouths set above
a pantheon of necks and tanned chests,
a blur of endless changing faces, smoking,
standing in front of more faces, arguing
and eating. I adore the obstinacy of objects
that put on Renaissance façades and the sweaters
of dogs, then lose their features in the endless
rub and interrogation of the Tiber.
I look up, see my son leaning against
a wall of Etruscan rust and ivy. Near the corner
children wash a Fiat at the local fountain.
A parrot sits on the smallest girl's shoulder,
swearing slowly, cazzo, stronzo, cazzo, as the car
begins to shine inside a shield of ancient water
ur understanding.)Nevertheless, Lent has nearly evaporated - and I wish there was another week or two - but that, too, is beyond my control. Made me enjoy this poem by Mark Conway all the more...
I'm afraid of nothing but the world my son
will inherit, don't think I'm not caught
like all the rest. I just don't want him here
watching the thin men memorize the sorrows.
Unforgivers, they sit in dark cafés,
their endless clubs and halls, stirring
beers, mumbling, calling out small dreams
of violence: how they ought to—should have—
tossed out the wife, knocked the shit out
of the neighbor. They're doomed to remember
and rage, rage and reminisce. They sleep
like horses, standing, and keep their teeth
in kerosene to be reminded of revenge. And
I'm one of them, a gifted scholar of the sorrows:
I remember, I'll always remember you.
B
ut why worry, my son can't see the gray meninvisible as pigeons. He's taking in the Campo
like there's no tomorrow. He's heard the latest
revolutionary rumors: that his parent's imperial
order will soon be overturned. He can feel his youth
come in and is free in the complete indifference
of Italian time, both of us off the map and wandering.
We eat in the old shops, play and beat on
the same crooked pinball machine, I watch him
watch the lovely woman walk her sweatered pug.
She's Roman, young, severely chic, a slender
polytheist out adoring the dusk and blue swifts
writing hieroglyphs above the Tiber. Who
could worship a god who doesn't love
the other gods? My son walks these paths
I walked with you, I adore the forms
the world puts on: eyes and mouths set above
a pantheon of necks and tanned chests,
a blur of endless changing faces, smoking,
standing in front of more faces, arguing
and eating. I adore the obstinacy of objects
that put on Renaissance façades and the sweaters
of dogs, then lose their features in the endless
rub and interrogation of the Tiber.
I look up, see my son leaning against
a wall of Etruscan rust and ivy. Near the corner
children wash a Fiat at the local fountain.
A parrot sits on the smallest girl's shoulder,
swearing slowly, cazzo, stronzo, cazzo, as the car
begins to shine inside a shield of ancient water
Don't know why, but I thought of Sara Teasdale's elegaic There Will Come Soft Rain poem, perhaps a riff on our dying even as spring moves forward and Lent palls into Easter.
ReplyDeleteI don't know it but will check it out. BTW I LOVED the book Broken for You that you recommended and both Dianne and I loved the Malcolm Lowry book, too.
ReplyDeleteI'm delighted, James. Gosh, were those the only two books you made it through? :0
ReplyDelete