Now that April is almost over, I thought I should mention that it is National Poetry Month. I was inspired by Cindy’s rapturous enthusiasm for Shakespearen sonnets and Seussian rhyme, to obediently observe this fabricated ritual. Hope springs eternal, according to poet Alexander Pope, and so, eternal optimist that I am, I present more wonderful poetry for your perusal, hoping against hope that it won’t be met with the same chilly silence such experiments have garnered in the past.
Before I dose you with your poetry pill, here’s a little bit of sugar to help the medicine go down. Actually, it’s a bit of vinegar, cynically but humorously proposing anti-Poetry Month as an antidote to the annual attempt to make poetry appealing to the lowest common denominator:
As part of the spring ritual of National Poetry Month, poets are symbolically dragged into the public square in order to be humiliated with the claim that their product has not achieved sufficient market penetration and must be revived by the Artificial Resuscitation Foundation (ARF) lest the art form collapse from its own incompetence, irrelevance, and as a result of the general disinterest among the broad masses of the American People.
The motto of ARF’s National Poetry Month is: “Poetry’s not so bad, really.”
Well, it’s true…it’s not so bad. That doesn’t mean that there’s not a lot of poetry that stinks, though the bouquet is in the nostril of the sniffer. Yet poetry as an elegant form of communication has much to admire. Here’s some for you to admire, from Wendell Berry. I found these three poems in his Collected Poems, 1957-1982. I selected them from a section of his work which he dedicated, “To my mother, who gave me books.”
The Lilies
Hunting them, a man must sweat, bear
the whine of a mosquito in his ear,
grow thirsty, tired, despair perhaps
of ever finding them, walk a long way.
He must give himself over to chance,
for they live beyond prediction.
He must give himself over to patience,
for they live beyond will. He must be led
along the hill as by a prayer.
If he finds them anywhere, he will find
a few, paired on their stalks,
at ease in the air as souls in bliss.
I found them here at first without hunting,
by grace, as all beauties are first found.
I have hunted and not found them here.
Found, unfound, they breathe their light
into the mind, year after year..
The Way of Pain
1.
For parents, the only way
is hard. We who give life
give pain. There is no help.
Yet we who give pain
give love; by pain we learn
the extremity of love.
2.
I read of Abraham’s sacrifice
the Voice required of him,
so that he led to the altar
and the knife his only son.
The beloved life was spared
that time, but not the pain.
It was the pain that was required.
3.
I read of Christ crucified,
the only begotten Son
sacrificed to flesh and time
and all our woe. He died
and rose, but who does not tremble
for his pain, his loneliness,
and the darkness of the sixth hour?
Unless we grieve like Mary
at His grave, giving Him up
as lost, no Easter morning comes.
4.
And then I slept, and dreamed
the life of my only son
was required of me, and I
must bring him to the edge
of pain, not knowing why.
I woke, and yet that pain
was true. It brought his life
to the full in me. I bore him
suffering, with love like the sun,
too bright, unsparing, whole.
We Who Prayed and Wept
We who prayed and wept
for liberty from kings
and the yoke of liberty
accept the tyranny of things
we do not need.
In plenitude too free,
we have become adept
beneath the yoke of greed.
Those who will not learn
in plenty to keep their place
must learn it by their need
when they have had their way
and the fields spurn their seed.
We have failed Thy grace.
Lord, I flinch and pray,
send Thy necessity.
