__ East Coker IV __
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer’s art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam’s curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.
The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.
The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.
The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
~ T.S. Eliot - from Four Quartets
_____ Good Friday, 1613 _____.
ReplyDelete_____ Riding Westward ______
Let mans Soule be a Spheare,
___ and then, in this,
The intelligence that moves,
___ devotion is,
And as the other Spheares,
___ by being growne
Subject to forraigne motion,
___ lose their owne,
And being by others
___ hurried every day,
Scarce in a yeare
___ their naturall forme obey:
Pleasure or businesse,
___ so, our Soules admit
For their first mover,
___ and are whirld by it.
Hence is't, that I am carryed
___ towards the West
This day, when my Soules forme
___ bends toward the East.
There I should see a Sunne,
___ by rising set,
And by that setting
___ endlesse day beget;
But that Christ on this Crosse,
___ did rise and fall,
Sinne had eternally
___ benighted all.
Yet dare I'almost be glad,
___ I do not see
That spectacle of too much
___ weight for mee.
Who sees Gods face,
___ that is selfe life, must dye;
What a death were it then
___ to see God dye?
It made his owne
___ Lieutenant Nature shrinke,
It made his footstoole crack,
___ and the Sunne winke.
Could I behold those hands
___ which span the Poles,
And tune all spheares at once
___ peirc'd with those holes?
Could I behold
___ that endlesse height which is
Zenith to us,
___ and our Antipodes,
Humbled below us?
___ or that blood which is
The seat of all our Soules,
___ if not of his,
Made durt of dust,
___ or that flesh which was worne
By God, for his apparell,
___ rag'd, and torne?
If on these things
___ I durst not looke, durst I
Upon his miserable mother
___ cast mine eye,
Who was Gods partner here,
___ and furnish'd thus
Halfe of that Sacrifice,
___ which ransom'd us?
Though these things, as I ride,
___ be from mine eye,
They are present
_ yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them;
___ and thou look'st towards mee,
O Saviour, as thou hang'st
___ upon the tree;
I turne my backe to thee,
___ but to receive
Corrections,
___ till thy mercies bid thee leave.
O thinke mee worth thine anger,
___ punish mee,
Burne off my rusts,
___ and my deformity,
Restore thine Image,
___ so much, by thy grace,
That thou may'st know mee,
___ and I'll turne my face.
~ John Donne )1613)
Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
ReplyDeleteThat I can stand,
___ O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop
___ Thy blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?
Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief
___ lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter,
___ weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;
Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces
___ in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness
___ at broad noon ––
I, only I.
Yet give not o’er,
But seek Thy sheep,
___ true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses,
___ turn and look once more
And smite a rock.
~ Christina Rossetti (1866)
TENEBRAE FACTAE SUNT
ReplyDeleteNow from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man calleth for Elias.
When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.
And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.
~ Tenebrae factae sunt [There was darkness over all the land]
Matthew 27:45-47; John 19:30; Luke 23:46
__________ CRUCIFIXION __________
ReplyDeleteHe was a man who came to show the way.
It never was for him an easy task.
Sadly, politicians of His day
Cruelly sought His death. They’d never ask
Revealing questions in pursuit of Truth.
Undermining good they sought to hold
Crookedly to Power. Their uncouth
Initiatives to godliness were cold.
Freedom from corruption causes fear
In those who by coercion seek to rule.
Xiphoid, ego kills what should endear,
Instead of letting Self die to renewal.
On tiptoe oft we creep and hold our breath,
Not challenging the ones who cause His death.
~ FreeThinke
V
ReplyDeleteSo here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
TS Eliot, "East Coker"
______ For Love of Leonardo ______
ReplyDeleteSupper seems a too congenial term.
Eating flesh and blood seems much too grim.
Perhaps symbolic, but contains the germ
Advising us to cannibalize Him
Ritually –– in some rites once a week!
Admittedly insipid where the elders serve
Tepid grape juice to the ones who seek
Expiation hoping for the nerve
Chalice, Host, while Kneeling might provide.
Hiding hypocrisy with pious show
Encourages confidence in a false guide
Creating thus a cheap and tawdry glow.
Keeping sacred tenets deep within
Saves us best from sanctifying sin.
~ FreeThinke
FINAL CHORUS from BACH'S ST. MATTHEW PASSION IN ITS ORGINAL GERMAN
ReplyDeleteWir setzen mit Tränen
Und rufen dir im Grabe zu:
Ruhe sanfte, sanfte ruh!
Ruht, ihr ausgesognen Glieder!
Euer Grab und Leichenstein
Soll dem ängstlichen Gewissen
Ein bequemes Ruhekissen
Und der Seelen Ruhstatt sein.
Höchst vergnügt schlummern da die Augen ein.
FINAL CHORUS from BACH'S ST. MATTHEW PASSION in ENGLISH TRANSLATION
ReplyDeleteWe sit down with tears
And call to you in your tomb
Rest gently, gently rest!
Rest, you exhausted limbs!
Your grave and tombstone
For our anguished conscience shall be
A pillow that gives peace and comfort
And the place where our souls find rest.
With the greatest content there
___ our eyes will close in sleep.