something to spice up the mix

Now Playing: Bach, prelude and fugue for organ in A minor

I've just returned from listening to a long and interesting lecture by a physicist from Caltech, Kip S. Thorne. We read one of his books for Honors class and were required to go to this lecture (for which I had to miss Bible study!). The great hall in the student union was packed, standing room only. (I couldn't help but notice wryly that when a rather famous poet came to campus to give a reading and talk, there were only about twenty people who gathered in the small faculty study in the library to listen to her.) He talked about black holes and warped space time and such things.

Anyhow, this is some of the stuff I've been working on for the past couple of weeks for an assignment for Lyric class. Not nearly so technical or earth-shattering as physics. But just think how dull life would be without poetry to make everything confusing once in a while....

(As though physics isn't! :o)

The poems I've used here are ones we read for Lyric class. When reading, especially the first one, keep in mind the Biblical parallel between humans and poetry: Ephesians 2:10, "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works...." The word "workmanship" is in Greek "poiema", the same word as our English "poem". Also, the idea of mortality and transience, for art and for the humans who make art.

And after you've suffered through these, I'll post a couple more with some explanation, perhaps.

Enjoy! :o)

I.

From Shakespeare, Sonnets 106 and 107, and D.H. Lawrence, “Bavarian Gentians”

Our blazon calls. Down darker, darker stairs,
Go ladies blue and smoking, dark-blue knights,
Where moon shines through fresh ribs, the darkness rich
With mortal beauty, men like poems—white
Into the darkness winds the chronicle,
Pen-strokes and rhymes dropped, as their masters, join
All mortal men, down down into the dark.
Each rhyme lived once, but here their crowns are spent:
To speechlessness our songs fade, like blue gentians
In cold September sightless—we are swept
Invisible, lost rhymes into the dark.

II. journaling

The sunlight on the meadow where we went,
The wind like waves around our splashing feet—
We had our walk around the lake in March,
Ran through uncurling woods until the dark,
When sunset eddied out across the sky,
Left clouds like tide lines on blue beaches. I
Remember this now, sitting here alone
Beside the window in my darkened room,
Where I peer at this book, the lights unlit—
Loneliness grows strong from fellowship.
The grass has faded into blue, the day
Rippled back into the sea, all colors drained.
Yet as I read these rhymes scrawled in my book,
The curling cursive catches what evening took.
I rob my robber and restore the day
Between the leather bindings on this page.

III.: in the coffee shop

Our books and papers spread across the table,
Between our half-full mugs of orange clove tea.
People pass around us, faces in a fable,
Leave cups and crumbs, their shelled festivities.
The shop door opens. Smoke blows in, the brazier
Outside filled with hot coals against the night.
Along the ochre walls hang glossy pictures
Of London, Spain, New Orleans, black-and-white.
Sitting here with you, I try to hold
This evening in a frame of tea and faces,
A painted picture, bold with brown and gold—
The more I try to frame, the more it fades
To black-and-white, a sketch without an edge,
A blurry sentence smeared across a page.

IV.

From Psalm 90 and Dylan Thomas, “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower”

Lord, you have been our dwelling place for ages,
From parents’ parents to the children’s children.
The days fly by across the earth like pages
Blown by the wind, and our young years are hidden.
We whirl away like words half-heard and fall
On silence, an eternal requiem
That echoes through a chapel’s crumbling walls,
Lyrics blurred to echoes ere their prime.
So end our days in darkness, like a sigh.
We cannot hold our loved ones or the light
Unfurling in the spring—the very light
That draws the leaves to birth draws them to die.
Now free us, save us from mortality
To blossom in your still eternity.