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Seven Stanzas at Easter {poetry for lent}

Seven Stanzas at Easter
by John Updike

Make no mistake: if he rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
     reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
     eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that -- pierced -- died, withered, paused, and then
     regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, trancendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
     faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, no papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
     grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
     opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
     embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

Saint Sebastian {poetry for lent}

The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, Odilon Redon. 1910

Saint Sebastian
by W. S. Merwin

So many times I have felt them come, Lord,
The arrows, (a coward dies often), so many times,
And worse, oh worse often than this. Neither breeze nor bird
Stirring the hazed peace through which the day climbs.

And slower even than the arrows, the few sounds that come
Falling, as across water, from where farther off than the hills
The archers move in a different world in the same
Kingdom. Oh, can the noise of angels,

The beat and whirring between Thy kingdoms
Be even by such cropped feathers raised? Not though
With the wings of the morning may I fly from Thee; for it is

Thy kingdom where (and the wind so still now)
I stand in pain; and, entered with pain as always,
Thy kingdom that on these erring shafts comes.


an explanation of {poetry for lent} 

Kneeling {poetry for lent}

Kneeling 
by R. S. Thomas

Moments of great calm,  
Kneeling before an altar  
Of wood in a stone church
In summer, waiting for the God  
To speak; the air a staircase  
For silence; the sun’s light
Ringing me, as though I acted  
A great rôle. And the audiences  
Still; all that close throng
Of spirits waiting, as I,  
For the message.
                  Prompt me, God;  
But not yet. When I speak,  
Though it be you who speak  
Through me, something is lost.  
The meaning is in the waiting.



an explanation of {poetry for lent} 

Purvey Translates: In ipso enim vivimus et movemur et sumus {poetry for lent}

This is the third in a series of three poems I'm sharing from Thom Satterlee's Burning Wyclif.  For more background, read this first.


Purvey Translates: In ipso enim vivimus et movemur et sumus

Sometimes the words I translated
translated me, as when
I wrote, "In Him we live
and move and are." For days
I dwelled in that mystery
where all air seemed holy
and fearful. I believed
I was a rip running
through God's body, a tear
that only stopped
when I sat still. Then
at my desk, half in daydream
I felt myself placed
as a word on the page,
and suddenly I saw
the whole of who we are
and how we're bound together --
each one of us a word
in the Word of God,
and our life's goal as simple
as remembering the lines
He first drew us with,
the sound and sense
we made in that language
before languages.




Originally published in The Southern Review.

an explanation of {poetry for lent} 

Brethren of the Cross: Oxford, May 19, 1349 {poetry for lent}

This is the second in a series of three poems I'm sharing from Thom Satterlee's Burning Wyclif.  For more background, read this first.


Brethren of the Cross: Oxford, May 19, 1349

"Some element of the flagellant lurked in the mind of every medieval man."
-The Black Death, 64

Although in Wyclif the element was trace,
And not much lurked in his mind without his knowing,
Still he could not look away, and something --
Was it sympathy or kinship? -- went out from him
like a bird from its cage.

He stood among the crowd and watched
Over a hundred flagellants
Stripped to the waist, scourges in hand,
Grouped in a circle. Gradually their chanting
Rose in pitch and volume

As they beat their backs and chests
With spikes sewn into leather thongs,
Tearing their flesh, now bleeding
Openly, freely, in front of God, the crowd, and him
On an early afternoon with the shadown

Of St. Mary's spreading across the square,
The tip of its spire pointing
Like a finger at the righteous suffering,
As if to settle all the arguments
Over what would end this Plague:

Here, these few who give themselves
For the many.  Wyclif felt their blows
Himself and without thinking
Touched his chest, half expecting blood
To soak through his robe and stain his hand.

But when he took his hand away
And saw nothing, he knew
He had only lapsed into believing.
As suddenly as the cage had opened
It closed. He left without a word.



This poem first appeared in Roanoke Review.


an explanation of {poetry for lent} 

The Lesson {poetry for lent}

Over the next few days, I'm going to share three poems by Thom Satterlee. A novelist, poet, and translator, Thom is also a friend and fellow parishioner. In most of the poems in the collection Burning Wyclif, Satterlee imagines scenes from the life of John Wyclif, the fourteenth century scholar best known for inspiring the first complete translation of the Latin Bible into English.  A renowned Oxford scholar, Wyclif lived through the Black Plague, a Papal Schism, and the Peasant's Revolt. The "morning star of the Reformation," Wyclif was an early critic of the Roman Catholic Church. Embroiled in church controversies, he was condemned by the Pope as well as the Archbishop.

Thirty years after his death, the Council of Constance declared Wyclif a heretic, and ordered that his body be exhumed and his remains buried.

The collection Burning Wyclif begs to be read in one sitting.  The poems move chronologically through Wyclif's life and as I read them, the drama, character, and tension drew me in. Themes of death and the relationship between the living and the dead run through the book.

This first poem I'm sharing imagines Wyclif and an early brush with brokenness.


The Lesson
by Thom Satterlee

Once, as a boy, Wyclif carried a lamb
on his shoulders. Its legs dangled
across his chest, its head bobbed above his head.

He walked with it held high through the flock
as clouds gathered, darkened. At first
the rain felt good -- slow, fat drops splashing

cold against his skin while the underside
of the lamb warmed his neck. He rubbed
his face against its fine new wool.

But when thunder cracked and the sheep bolted,
the boy ran, too, tripped to one side and fell
with his whole weight on top of the lamb.

The sound of its leg when it snapped
was an echo of thunder, a noise
that entered his ear and never left,

not that long day with all its lessons,
beginning with the knife his father taught him
to run under the lamb's neck, down to its belly,

and then with his own hands to remove
the word of every organ, repeating their names
as his father patiently spoke them --

heart, kidney, liver, lung -- or later
when the family ate stew and the boy learned
how to laugh at jokes told at his expense,

then and years later the one lesson
that remained was a bone breaking
inside his ear, the aftersound of its splintering.


First published in the Anglican Theological Review.

an explanation of {poetry for lent} 

the {poetry for lent} link-up

In the Garden

“As I take my spade in hand, as far as I can see, great clods of earth are waiting, heavy and dark, a hopeless task.” - Kathleen Norris, describing her approach to the contemplative life

I spent an afternoon killing

weeds, cutting

earthworms into pieces, tilling

sod into furrows.

My arms ached,

a line of bruises crossed

my thighs;

I felt powerful.

Then snow fell,

the half-readied earth froze.

I returned

to bits of weed and grass

rerooted, my labor

null and void.

I spent an afternoon filling

wheelbarrows, spading

clumps out, dumping

weeds in the back pasture.

The hens followed me.
They know Mary Oliver says

“Poems should have birds,”

and mine pecked greedily at worms,

shitting in the tilled soil.

This is not a metaphor.

My heart is not the garden.

Or if it is a garden, it’s one

I’m still afraid to till.

I wonder if anything will grow

with death, and shit, and snow,

aching muscles,

clay and roots.



Today is the day for our poetry link-up!  Bravely add your poem, original or not, to the link up. I can't wait to read them.

An InLinkz Link-up