A Contribution of Statistcs (Wislawa Szymborska)

 

A Contribution to Statistics

 

Out of a hundred people

 

those who always know better

-- fifty-two

 

doubting every step

-- nearly all the rest,

 

glad to lend a hand

if it doesn't take too long

-- as high as forty-nine,

 

always good

because they can't be otherwise

-- four, well maybe five,

 

able to admire without envy

-- eighteen,

 

suffering illusions

induced by fleeting youth

-- sixty, give or take a few,

 

not to be taken lightly

-- forty and four,

 

living in constant fear

of someone or something

-- seventy-seven,

 

capable of happiness

-- twenty-something tops,

 

harmless singly, savage in crowds

-- half at least,

 

cruel

when forced by circumstances

-- better not to know

even ballpark figures,

 

wise after the fact

-- just a couple more

than wise before it,

 

taking only things from life

-- thirty

(I wish I were wrong),

 

hunched in pain,

no flashlight in the dark

-- eighty-three

sooner or later,

 

righteous

-- thirty-five, which is a lot,

 

righteous

and understanding

-- three,

 

worthy of compassion

-- ninety-nine,

 

mortal

-- a hundred out of a hundred.

Thus far this figure still remains unchanged.

 

 

~ Wislawa Szymborska ~

 

 

(Poems: New and Selected, trans. by S. Baranczak and C. Cavanagh

Sonnets To Orpheus, Part One, XII (Rilke)

Sonnets to Orpheus, Part One, XII

 

Bless the spirit that makes connections,

for truly we live in what we imagine.

Clocks move along side our real life

with steps that are ever the same.

 

Though we do not know our exact location,

we are held in place by what links us.

Across trackless distances

antennas sense each other.

 

Pure attention, the essence of the powers!

Distracted by each day's doing,

how can we hear the signals?

 

Even as the farmer labors

there where the seed turns into summer,

it is not his work.  It is Earth who gives.

 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

 

 

(In Praise of Mortality, translated and edited by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

Spent (Mark Doty)

Spent

by Mark Doty  

 

Late August morning I go out to cut

spent and faded hydrangeas--washed 

greens, russets, troubled little auras 

of sky as if these were the very silks 

of Versailles, mottled by rain and ruin

then half-restored, after all this time...

When I come back with my handful 

I realize I've accidentally locked the door,

and can't get back into the house.

The dining room window's easiest;

crawl through beauty bush and spirea, 

push aside some errant maples, take down 

the wood-framed screen, hoist myself up. 

But how, exactly, to clamber across the sill 

and the radiator down to the tile?

I try bending one leg in, but I don't fold 

readily; I push myself up so that my waist 

rests against the sill, and lean forward, 

place my hands on the floor and begin to slide 

down into the room, which makes me think 

this was what it was like to be born: 

awkward, too big for the passageway...

Negotiate, submit? 

                          When I give myself

to gravity there I am, inside, no harm,

the dazzling splotchy flowerheads

scattered around me on the floor.

Will leaving the world be the same

--uncertainty as to how to proceed, 

some discomfort, and suddenly you're 

--where? I am so involved with this idea 

I forget to unlock the door, 

so when I go to fetch the mail, I'm locked out 

again. Am I at home in this house, 

would I prefer to be out here, 

where I could be almost anyone? 

This time it's simpler: the window-frame, 

the radiator, my descent. Born twice 

in one day! 

                In their silvered jug,

these bruise-blessed flowers: 

how hard I had to work to bring them 

into this room. When I say spent, 

I don't mean they have no further coin.

If there are lives to come, I think

they might be a littler easier than this one

Earth Your Dancing Place (May Swenson)

Earth Your Dancing Place

 

Beneath heaven's vault

remember always walking

through halls of cloud

down aisles of sunlight

or through high hedges

of the green rain

walk in the world

highheeled with swirl of cape

hand at the swordhilt

of your pride

Keep a tall throat

Remain aghast at life

 

Enter each day

as upon a stage

lighted and waiting

for your step

Crave upward as flame

have keenness in the nostril

Give your eyes

to agony or rapture

 

Train your hands

as birds to be

brooding or nimble

Move your body

as the horses

sweeping on slender hooves

over crag and prairie

with fleeing manes

and aloofness of their limbs

 

Take earth for your own large room

and the floor of earth

carpeted with sunlight

and hung round with silver wind

for your dancing place

 

~ May Swenson ~

 

(Nature: Poems Old a

In Search of a Roundtable (Chuck Lathrop)

In Search of a Roundtable

Concerning the why

and how

and what

and who of ministry,

one image keeps surfacing:

A table that is round.

It will take some sawing to be roundtabled,

some redefining and redesigning

Such redoing and rebirthing of narrowlong Churching

can painful be for people and tables

But so was the cross,

a painful too table of giving and yes

And from such death comes life,

from such dying comes rising,

in search of roundtabling

And what would roundtable Churching mean?

It would mean no diasing & throning,

for but one King is there,

He was a footwasher, at table no less…

For at narrowlong tables,

servant and mirror

became picture framed and centers of attention

And crosses became but gilded ornaments

on bare stone walls

in buildings used but once a week only

But the times and the tables are changing and rearranging

And what of narrowlong table ministers,

when they confront a roundtable people,

after years of working up the table

(as in ‘up the ladder’)

to finally sit at its head,

only to discover

that the table has turned around???

Continued rarified air will only isolate

for there are no people there,

only roles

They must be loved into roundness,

where apart is spelled a part

and the call is to the gathering

For God has called a People,

not ‘them and us’

“Them and us’ are unable to gather around,

for at a roundtable, there are no sides

And ALL are invited to wholeness and to food.

At one time

Our narrowing churches

Were built to resemble the Cross

But it does no good

For building to do so,

If lives do not.

Round tabling means

No preferred seating,

No first and last,

No better, and no corners

For the “least of these”.

Roundtabling means no preferred seating,

no first & last,

no better,

no corners for ‘the least of these’

Roundtabling means being with,

a part of,

together,

and one

It means room for the Spirit and gifts

and disturbing profound peace for all.

And it is we in the present

who are mixing and kneading the dough for the future.

We can no longer prepare for the past.

To be Church,

And if He calls for other than a round table

We are bound to follow.

Leaving the sawdust

And chips, designs and redesigns

Behind, in search of and in presence of

The Kingdom

That is His and not ours.

- by Chuck Lathrop

GOOD FRIDAY REPROACHES (Janet Morley)

GOOD FRIDAY REPROACHES

(by Janet Morley, Bread of Tomorrow)

Holy God, holy and strange,

holy and intimate,

have mercy on us.

O my people, what have I done to you?

How have I offended you?

Answer me.

I brooded over the abyss,

with my words I called forth creation:

but you have brooded on destruction,

and manufactured the means of chaos.

O my people, what have I done to you?

How have I offended you?

Answer me.

I breathed life into your bodies,

and carried you tenderly in my arms:

but you have armed yourselves for war,

breathing out threats of violence.

O my people, what have I done to you?

How have I offended you?

Answer me.

I made the desert blossom before you,

I fed you with an open hand:

but you have grasped the children’s food,

and laid waste fertile lands.

O my people, what have I done to you?

How have I offended you?

Answer me.

I abandoned my power like a garment,

choosing your unprotected flesh:

but you have robed yourselves in privilege,

and chosen to despise the abandoned.

O my people, what have I done to you?

How have I offended you?

Answer me.

Holy God,

Holy and strange,

Holy and intimate,

Have mercy on us.

I would have gathered you to me as a lover,

and shown  you the ways of peace:

but you have desired security,

and you would not surrender your self.

O my people, what have I done to you?

How have I offended you?

Answer me.

I have torn the veil of my glory,

transfiguring the earth

but you have disfigured my beauty,

and turned away your face.

O my people, what have I done to you?

How have I offended you?

Answer me.

I have laboured to deliver you,

as a woman delights to give life:

but you have delighted in bloodshed

and laboured to bereave the world.

O my people, what have I done to you?

How have I offended you?

Answer me.

I have followed you with the power of my sp irit,

To seek truth and heal the oppressed:

But you have been following a lie,

And returned to your own comfort.

O my people, what have I done to you?

How have I offended you?

Answer me.

Holy God,

holy and strange,

holy and intimate,

have mercy on us.

(Janet Morley, England, 1988)

(Genesis 1, 2:7; Psalm 22:9-10, 104:28; Isaiah 35:1, 46:3-4, 53:1-4; Matthew 27:51; Luke 13:34, 19:41-44; John 16:20-22)

PUCCINI ARIA
by Kenny Tanemura

It's the way we'd sound if the office work didn't turn
our voices into pens without ink scratching semaphores
on white snowscapes some dead author dreamt.
This one hour is a plum waiting to be picked

off a Japanese screen where Buson looks at
ice on the junipers, one word cutting 
into another, as if it couldn't be helped.
The pleasure in reading is the same as the pleasure

in the forbidden, Helene Cixous said.
And what of listening, as I listen now
to Kiri Te Kanawa sing Sole e amore, watch midnight
streetlights filter through her single voice?