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October 2015 (October 1, 2015–September 30, 2016)/© Pavel Chichikov

I SAW FROM MY WINDOW

Every new day is provisional, though, So is the sky, the rain and the snow, One at a time is what we receive, At morning arriving, at evening leave

Those who are trustful make up a plan But more arbitrary is nothing than, And yet in the regular semblance of things We wager we know what tomorrow brings

I saw from my window a fine autumn view The leaves that were falling said so will you too, But the branch will remain from which you have grown And you are a leaf of the Lord, His own

Pavel October 1, 2015

1


THE PROPOSITION

Now, until the end it will invite The faithful to renounce what they confess, The Presence in the Precious Blood and Flesh, The vow of faith and all its gentleness

That which hid before or only skulked From hiding will reveal itself in full, The parasite of light, the ugliness That uses human spirit as a tool

Frank solicitation now for all The time grows short and Hell is in a hurry, The Devil pops the question to the Church: I am Hell and would you like to marry?


2


IN PARADISE ONCE MORE

She said to hold my hands for prayer Not with the fingers parted, But pressed together matched and square That spirit be whole-hearted

She herself who came to me When I was sick with fear To answer to a desperate plea: Take comfort, I am here

And then I met another day While going to be saved, A little child who on the way Showed me a wordless wave

A bright consoling messenger Whom I had met before, We shall partake, I signaled her In Paradise once more


3


OUT ON A LIMB

Away from the trunk the branch, the stem For a quiet leaf away from them, The silk of dreams in which to sleep A snug cocoon in which to keep

But where is space in which to spin? This leaf has trembled in the wind And I must turn away to find Another place to wind, unwind

Who are they whom I must flee? I have small eyes with which to see And yet I know they hover near The wasps of hunger that I hear

Into the chasms of clear space I am the object of their chase, Then I will wrap myself inside My own dear self, it will be wide

Wide enough to winter past The killing winds that will not last, Hanging by my self-made thread The wasps will think that I am dead


At the End of the LeafPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

4


CAUGHT NOTHING ALL DAY

Said the men in the boat on a bright Fall morning We’ve never seen bass so unwilling to bite (The sun on the water glittered like crystal), Caught nothing all day and nothing to fight

Wait, there’s a tug on the hook and it’s strong Bending the rod to a near semicircle, A trout or a pike or a gar or a carp Or maybe the pull of a snapping turtle

Up came a weed that was more like a crest Was it a gollywog goblin with hair? Then came the dripping green creature below Ascending, the monster that shouldn’t be there

This is a lawful and homely old lake Said one to the other, and still the thing rose, What could it be? said one to the other I’m slack in the jaws and God only knows

The fisherman snickered, what else could he do The catch was so awful and so unforeseen, A shock for them both who were trolling for bass, And how could an ogre be gutted and cleaned?

But there was a face and there was a chin And there were two goggles, a tongue like a liver, Head in the form of a coral-shaped brain, Arms like the cables of kelp only thicker

Good God, throw it back, said the one at the stern, You’re the one caught, said the ghoul from the deep, I had more to come of my dreaming in peace But now have you woken me up from my sleep


5


Green FishPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

6


OH STUPID HERD

See that heifer, she’s in calf And soon she will be sold for need, But now along the hillside bears The slow instructions of her seed

But we who were for love conceived Have somehow lost the inner speech Of love forgiving and of grace So green and sweet beyond our reach

Learned unlearned forgotten gift With lowered head forgets to gaze, Oh stupid herd that will not lift Its eyes to love beyond and graze


HeiferPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

7


TREE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL

The émigrés came back to see In heavy fogs of ignorance The twisting sacred withered tree, The groves they’d made a wretchedness

When they held the poisoned fruit The plant they plundered grew diseased, Disfigured from the top to root That once the Lord of Hosts had pleased

Go back and come again once more Because the dead begin to rise In answer to the cosmic war That calls them up against your lies

Then the tree will leaf again The branches bear another yield, The fog disperse, the bow will bend The arrow fly that was concealed


Tree of the KnowledgePhoto by Pavel Chichikov

8


AS WHEN THE DEAD THROW OFF THEIR GRAVES

Judas came and Simon Magus To the edge of the perfect immaculate sea, Judas held a small clay flask: Here is our evil’s mystery

As drops of ink seep through the water Changed to their own profoundest blackness, So do vicious deeds forever Dye the world with human vileness

Uncorked the flask and with a feather Dipped the feather’s shaft in gall, Flicked a droplet in the water: Now it will dye a great sea, all

The sea turned black with one small droplet The great blue sea made black as pitch, Then what could filter the evil in it What could strain this ocean, which?

But I could see above the waves A dawn against the night opposed, As when the dead throw off their graves The sun of rising spread and rose


9


THE HAND IN THE GLOVE

This is the year 2015 Who would have thought that fools would be seen, That weakness of morals would bow to great force That lies from reality sue for divorce

The swindle a falsehood that does not connect To the last great good of the intellect: A mind on the world makes both eyes clear, The truth inescapable conquers fear

Not enough power in ages past Could not in its weakness make evil last, But now such capacity gathers such strength That evil can stretch to inordinate length

Do not be fooled by the hand in the glove: All for your pleasures and nothing for love, And they who will proffer it take for their own The power to lead you, and leave you alone


10


SMALL GAME SEASON

Squirrel, pheasant, but not quail If you see one, cottontail, Be a searcher or a waiter Bobwhite quail and grouse come later

Then if you would hunt a bear Scramble thickets if you dare, One a season, elk also Mighty antlers that they grow

Fox is free and so are skunk Hunt them sober, never drunk, Wear an orange cap and vest Conspicuous to be is best

Once there was a hunter who Sat behind a bush and blew. His turkey whistle to attract A tom and it was his last act

Do not make yourself a mark Or seek a blackbird in the dark, Killing creatures is no game, Food or vermin, never fame


Small Game SeasonPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

11


I LOVE YOU SO MUCH

I love you so much, said the woman in green Where did I know her from, whom had I seen, What garments were those in which she was dressed? She taught me to pray with my fingers pressed

Green is the color of life and is she The lady of light and the rosary, And is she the one who stands by the side Of the Christ of compassion, that none can divide?

He who has loved me, my Father from birth Will gather my spirit until I am earth, And she who is Mother will love me until The wandering dust of the spirit is still

Calm is the dust until it grows warm To be once again a breath that takes form, They who have loved us will love us forever, Love is immortal and perishes never


12


TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE NOW

Time is of the essence now But grace can still expire Although it never has before—And dispensations tire

Then the eyes observing us—Remote, they are no friends—Above their slow majestic dance Said: “This is how it ends

“The wicker trap is woven The fish swim in one side, But narrower and narrower The end is not as wide

“Nations are like schools of fish That see the bait ahead But never think to back away And let themselves be led

“Their brains are small, they will not turn Give up what they come for, And this is how the nations burn When they are trapped by war”


13


TEMPLES

The body created He enters and shares, The fraying thin garment of flesh that He wears, For us when we drink of it, eat of it, sign That even the perishing flesh is divine

Ennobled by Jesus who takes of its shape And which from extinction the spirit escapes, Gives it embodied a gift to His friends By which for its dying the Christ makes amends

Released from corruption by death that He tramples Each holy of holies as one of His temples, Penultimate temples that Christ can rebuild And these by the glory of God will be filled


14


EITHER, OR

A wall that moves the sky away With cold compelling massive power Changes seasons sine die Casts a cold and fitful shower

Soon there will be minor frost Then a sunshine bright and cold Then the reckoning and cost: Will summer’s capitals grow old?

Winter moves across the lands A coming prophesied long since, Above the streets a shadow stands: War’s improbable great prince

A foul advent not foreseen A culmination long forecast, Either Christ or godless fiend For this bright season will not last


Cold FrontPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

15


ALL THE CRUCIFIXES

The first word of the Creed suffices As Thomas doubting saw the five Raw wounds of all the crucifixes, Saw the risen Christ alive

Affirming as the risen Lord He lived again though much denied, His back and chest with whippings scored, Wounded hands and feet and side

I believe for I beheld Those awful wounds I could not touch But only listened as they told How they were wounded and how much

How love was lost and never came Again and would be ever lost, So that He took it in His name And kept it close at such great cost


16


SLEEP

Across the bridge that leads from death to sleep The souls take refuge from their self-told lies, Across the cleft where nothingness is deep There is a house where ignorance is wise

A height of walls because no one can bear The fullest truth, a brightness would us blind With that tremendous and revealing glare—We go in parables and roam the mind

Unmeasured is the house of metaphor, Illumination flaring by a spark, A code lets passage through succeeding doors To galleries amazed against the dark

Returning once again to fall awake The light of truth declining from a dream, The bridge is crossed, the drowsy heart will break, The back against the dark and flowing stream


17


RETURNING TO HIS EDEN

On one side of the Earth’s clean white-streaked sphere Westward of the slowly moving sunset A festival of autumn in a small town street

But eastward of the shadow toward deep mid-night Cities burn, the crack of ammunition echoes Victims in their basements hope for dawn

On some other planet where lucidity exists It would seem strange that on a single world Slaughter and serenity go on concurrently

Is there any hope for this odd race Which can allow or not does not know of this Abnormal fusion of the small and murderous?

Unlike the ants who raid the colonies of other ants For which they need a brain no larger than a grape seed We are the imbeciles who raid themselves

And like that man of myth who knew enough To cover what was shameful and conceal himself We camouflage our bloodiness with bluffing and deceits

Self-righteousness, the sly excuses of the moralist Will not give satisfaction to the one Creator Returning to His Eden in the sultry dusk


PumpkinfestPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

18


A WEAPON SWIFTER THAN REGRET

Self-exiled Jesus came to be Who was existence in Himself Without His glory what are we?

Brittle wood of snowy winters Leveled on the forest floor Powder scattered into splinters

The Devil comes in this disguise A feeble dying animal And then his incarnation dies

Skin retreating from the bone Imitation in the jaws Desolation on his throne

So the Devil’s parable That we also disintegrate Cadavers rank and pitiful

Abandon hope by this device Stop and see your own burlesque The face that Judas offered Christ

Every truth is allegory Every metaphor a truth Alluding to a better story

The tree decaying is the Cross The beast that dies is death itself A parody of human loss

Hold on to the metaphor A weapon swifter than regret With which the angels go to war


19


PUZZLES OF MORTALITY

The last black cricket of the summer looks To be turned out on a machinist’s lathe Neck the oval section of a tube Thorax with vestigial wings engraved

We heard you sawing on your black violin Two months ago when temperatures were tepid, An E string was the only string you had And as you cooled the bowing was less rapid

Burnished glossy now you are lethargic Even in the beaming of the sun, No one can be found to call you tragic, The sun conductor lowers his baton

Leap, we say, escape your silent dotage Those folded legs still keep elastic vigor, But there’s a difference between youth and age Tensile strength and senile mortis rigor

How you played when summer was still young The balmier it was the more you fiddled, Anthems of the summer night were sung And puzzles of mortality were riddled


The Last CricketPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

20


THERE IS NO WIND THAT WILL NOT DIE

The ancient banner was run down Instead we raised a flag so sheer It was transparent and it shook Its folds in breezes warm and clear

Look, they said, the sign can be Whatever symbol you might wish But only never of the past, The Crucifix, the Christian fish

There can be male and female signs Or something of them in between But never of the risen Christ, His resurrection is obscene

Authority reserves the claim Of regal and complete control Against the life and death of all Its citizens, the flesh, the soul

Now they said, salute this flag And may it wave forever high, But then it drooped and gathered up, There is no wind that will not die


21


I SAW THREE HORSES GRAZING ON A HILLSIDE

I saw three horses grazing on a hillside A sorrel horse, a chestnut and a white How sweet the grass must be and their delight

As when in Paradise at evening light The Lord strolled out beneath the myrtle trees While through the boughs there came a cooling breeze

He said I have provided you with these Three horses as a sign of my Godhood Which all of this domain has understood

But Adam’s brood remained as dumb as wood They said: there are three horses and not more Three we can perceive nor see we four

Three is three, the rest we can ignore Do not tax our minds with what we can Not sum with our own eyes and understand

But Zechariah knows the sovereign plan Three horses and another finely bred In shadow One well mounted on the red

Your cities will be cities of the dead But I will resurrect Jerusalem Those within, My light will live in them


GrazersPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

22


PAWN

To be moved to the fourth square To be taken en passant To guard the royal pieces in a skirmish line To be tipped and sacrificed

The sky above the square is gray and tedious Defenseless and exposed and given to the slaughter Those beside you falling at each side Into the box you go The queen and king to follow With the knight and with his castle And the sliding bishop in his miter

Into the darkness with the lid above With all of them and none are left to play But this they did not know: The players change, the pieces are the same You man of wood, you man of ivory


23


THE BROW OF CHRIST

Did they think that every murder Of their victims by their soldiers Would be wafted into ether Like the dust?

No, for every infant’s fate Their smugness will not compensate For punishment though it seems late In coming

They soil the earth, the sea, the sky With every stricken infant’s cry Though hypocrites may smile, deny Their own complicity

Though all the priests on Earth can pray That guilt and blame be scrubbed away The soiling of their souls will stay Indelible

Then who can offer payment for The debit charged to them by war In torrents heavy judgement pours Down rains of blood

Cry mercy, mercy to the throne For those who will their guilt atone By true contrition, this alone Can mitigate their penalty

For every child you forfeited To greed and violence wash instead In blood that many children bled In your repentance

It is the blood of Christ that pours From every wound that will be yours A wound for every thorn that tore The brow of Christ


24


SO DOES THE SOUL

Just as the Golden Plover With fearless wingbeat, need’s intent Soars out above the coastland over The sea not knowing where it ends

To reach a refuge in the sun, So does the soul set out above The endlessness of death’s dark ocean To reach beyond another love

By God’s compelling seize that gift Before so fearful willingly Spread out the wings of death and lift Above what seemed an endless sea


25


COACHMAN, TELL

Coachman tell, whose horses are Those two black geldings, going far? Yes, through the fields my master owns, When I come back I drive alone

But who he is I may not say Though his commandments I obey And those who climb aboard this coach Are sanctified—do not approach

Stand away, I soon depart, Departure is my craft and art And many wish to come with me When I explain the sights we’ll see

But you will never see them till You come aboard by your own will, Refuse me then you still must follow Footsore, hungry, thirsty, hollow

Then through grain you may not eat Following on your sore feet, Gracious hills you may not climb To see beyond, there is no time

If you climb aboard and ride You will see much you were denied Before I reined these horses in To beckon you and then begin


26


Who Is There?Photo by Pavel Chichikov

27


WE SET THE DOGS

We set the dogs on God but He had disappeared, They quartered and they followed scent, but God had veered Into the thick and thorny brush of time and fate Where tracks are lost and even bloodhounds hesitate

God is not a pheasant nor is He a quail He does not crouch nor does He leave the earth and sail, Nor can the bullet touch Him nor the quiver’s arrow But He is hidden in the hunter’s bone and marrow

To find Him and to bring Him down you tear apart Your soul, your spirit and the lair within the heart, There and only there will hunters find their prey Who says: Now you have found Me you may shoot and slay


Pheasant SeasonPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

28


HE ONLY LAUGHED

When he was nine years old he found his father Savaging his mother with his fists So then he got his father’s heavy shotgun

His older sister tried to take the blame She was thirteen and said that she had fired They found that she was lying for her brother

Everyone in town had known the line For what it was, a cruel and savage clan And who would charge a little boy with slaughter?

If his teacher threatened with a paddle For some misdeed in school the boy committed He only laughed and stepped up to be thrashed

No one could be sure who’d pulled the trigger But he and his two brothers went to prison When they grew up and no one was surprised

There comes a time when threats no longer work When toughened by abuse the soul rebels Or finds another way to go in peace

They crucified the Christ between two thieves One spat out a curse, the other prayed To be with Him in paradise that day


29


DO NOT TURN AWAY

When treated for his pancreatic cancer He lost four inches from his crumpled spine Shortened by the chemotherapy Hunched and pale but living in remission

It will come back, it always does, he says But meanwhile seems at peace not pessimistic Having toast and bacon for his breakfast Where all the crocks in town come in to gossip

Percussionist for decades in a band He moved back to the mountains where he came from, But winters are too hard and he will go South to where posterity has settled

We passed his house the other day and saw Ghouls and goblins, witches, fiends and specters Ranged along the front for Halloween, But something in ourselves is what we fear

The truth is much too fearful to be challenged, Unless we face it down it will pursue, Here is what I am, it says, behold me Do not turn away, for I am you


30


BUT THIS WIDE VALLEY

Ridge and mountain, ridge and valley Green and tawny dairy fields Of Holstein cattle and some Jerseys Notable for what they yield

The sweetest richest milk of all Within this crease beneath the hills, I see the copses of the fall With brazen golden color fill

Which now recalls impulsive thoughts Of how tranquility might spread, But milk is sold and milk is bought And trade is more than milk and bread

There are no secret paradises And then perhaps there never were, But if were such will not be twice Declares determined Lucifer

But this wide valley in a Cove So fat and peaceful must be such A fragment of where Judgement drove Us out and we lament it much


Cove 1Photo by Pavel Chichikov

31


WHO MIGHT WITH OUR BELOVED TAKE A SEAT

Last night the children came on Halloween For sweets on what was once entitled Samhain [sowen] That old denatured pagan festival Turned by now bad-mannered and faux horrible

Once, the writers say, it was believed That from their deathly durance were relieved The spirits of the long departed ones Parents and grandparents, daughters, sons

Who in the dying embers of the year Came to find the living and sat near, Crouched above the fire and its light Lived among the living for a night

How we yearn to see the darling dead Who into flames of darkness have been fed, All consumed with nothing left but coals Of memories of their beloved souls

But what if One had risen from those embers So He and we could join with the remembered, How petty then to settle for a treat Who might with our beloved take a seat


32


WHO IS IN CHARGE?

The Earth is a craft on a journey Flying through time-like dimensions, We are the petulant tourists Confined with our foolish contentions

Trapped in the reckless deception That we are the crew in control, Some of us fight to be captains Most of us do what we’re told

Who is in charge of the cockpit What is the plan of the flight? Now we are over an ocean Land has receded from sight

Soon we can feel through the cabin A shudder of turbulence spread, A few feel a cold apprehension Others feign coolness instead

A violent descent is upon us That terrifies even the dull, The stars in the vacuum around us Shine through the cracks in the hull

Where is the crew and the captain And who is in charge of the craft? Some rush about in confusion To the front or the ports or look aft

The vessel is tumbling and spinning Who are the villains to blame? Accuse whom you will if you want to But doom has arrived all the same

Pavel November 1, 2015

33


MANY WALK BLINDLY

White Oak leaves and wild rose vines The berries small and hard and red The leaves of the sapling a muted crimson With a flush of blue like venous blood

He says: this is My gift to you Even in decay I show My design Death in life, and life in death The rose and the oak together

Can you read and can you see? Many walk blindly Cross and oak, rose and thorn Berry and leaf and blood


Oak and RosePhoto by Pavel Chichikov

34


THE STORY

My maternal great-grandfather was a fur trapper We are not a distinguished or noble family He liked to drink, was known to be jolly and fair-tempered His Russian Imperial passport described him as “illiterate”

I am gloomy and pessimistic but I can read and write—The family is gone now, chewed by time and the Germans, What does it mean to have been alive and good-natured To have memories of snow stored in a mind dispersed by the gales?

Who will read life’s memories when I have died? If the cosmos is analphabet they will never be deciphered And by whom? The wind does not read, even a wind of light Or so I say. But the Light does know and scan and comprehend

And it says: What a story there is that My creatures have made A beginning and an ending, a plot and a purpose—When they have come to Me, all to Me We will sit and listen to the story we have made together


35


THE DYING GIVE CONSENT

We have our plot, I told my friend, He asked, have you your tombstone yet? A span’s uncertain to the end, I said, inscribed the end is set

Then when walking on the hill I saw my surname on a stone, A sculptor worked it with a chisel, Whistled in a monotone

I rushed to finish up the marker Both the dates are clean and clear, Said the faceless cheerful carver, There will be no unsureness here

He blew away the marble dust, Rubbed his hands and walked away Although I wanted to discuss How anyone could know the day

The sculptor turned and showed his face, I knew him as I’d known before His features and another place, A placid sea, a freezing shore

He was the winter rising sun His brow was rose transformed from crimson, He said, when life is lived and done You die the day that you have chosen

No one knows, how can that be? I asked the sun in puzzlement, But when they see what I can see, He said, the dying give consent


36


InscriptionPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

37


A SHINING REACH

A still November day Morning-bright and windless, The lake can carry voices Miles across the surface

Almost but not fairly Distinct enough to hear What the voices tell us Seeming to be near

Just like that the voices With faintly muffled speech Carried over distance Across a shining reach

If we would catch distinctly Their words and hear them well They might speak of the burden Of love they need to tell


Voice across the WaterPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

38


YOU WILL KNOW THE DEVIL

You will know the Devil this way That what he does will split us, each from each, He dwells alone and all his minions live alone

He thrives on our hatred, his food and drink, His sacrament the bitter gall Offered to the dying Christ on Golgotha

He feeds on fear and secret denunciation And his true preference Is for the long knife in the spine

Anything that divides is his pathetic triumph For he wants to keep us in solitary cells, In the desert, to be fed on stones

He cannot make a single love or joy Or any lovely thing And his dwelling is a sterile wasteland

But that which loves and praises strains him And that which rejoices with another soul Withers his already shrunken skull


39


REFUGEES

Think of a wartime evacuation Rabaul is taken, Tulagi comes then, But the Japanese navy will not arrive, This is the war of the dead and alive

Down from above the bright Christ-child To a world in pain, disgraced and defiled, Come to My vessel, the enemy Advances and you will be refugees

Into the hold of the ship of My grace, For all of My people a safeguarded place, Now the great battle is set to begin, Blood will gush freely before it runs thin

He gathers them up and leads them inside Of the hull He prepares where the people can hide But some are confused and remain where they stand, At the battle of Hell and the Son of Man

Some by the blood of the devils are burned And some by the lure of the devils are turned And some in the middle rush here and go there While the blood of the devils pours down from the air


40


NOW IT IS TOO LATE

They say that when Tsar John prepared to die He stood before the mural of the Judgment Confessed his many sins before the Lord Cruelty and malice, stealth and murder

At least he did in Eisenstein’s great film But then when Stalin saw the final print He ordered that the reels should be withdrawn, Never shown again, but then he died

When he died he also faced the Lord, Iosef, take a seat, said Christ, I know Everything within you have to say, But tell me then, how does your garden grow?

Many souls you planted in the frost I see before me now, you stand beside The harvest of the deeds you did below And now it is too late for suicide

Maybe when the stroke had struck him down He mumbled what the actor had, contrite Confession, but so little time remained And dying meant he might not have all night


41


OLD COOTS

A cover of coots in a freezing cold lake Six of a dozen and none is a drake, Coots aren’t ducks, neither mallard nor teal Take algae from marshes as most of a meal

Perhaps a few spiders, a beetle, an ant To pick on for nibbles when algae they can’t, Tough as an emu when roasted or fried To rubber erasers, shoe leather allied

Crusty old codgers and grumpy graybeards Grumbling, complaining and frequently feared Are likened to coots in their tough attitude Would maybe be softened if potted and stewed


American CootsPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

42


THE GREAT WHITE BRILLIANT SOUTHERN WALL

Remember the time at Soldier’s Home When they wheeled out the double amputee? They let him bathe in the winter sun Beneath a great bright wall of glass

The brilliant wall that faced the south In the dry crisp winter afternoon, What did he dream as he napped in the light That came from the other side of the wall?

Did he dream that he had both of his legs And that he could walk as well as we? This is our race, we fallen ones, We are the double amputees

This morning at Mass I thought of him Years gone by and still recall The man on the gurney without two legs And the great white brilliant southern wall


43


THE RIDER AND THE RIDDEN

The Good Lord was about to make all things He looked down on great Chaos, still a yearling Restraining it with reins of love’s compulsion

Tumultuous black steed, it rose and whinnied Bolted to escape all-reaching power Held firmly with the harnesses of reason

A jealous angel saw it from a distance, Master, may I take the reins a while Tame this Chaos firmly then return?

Vaulted onto Chaos and he gripped The smoking flanks with two sharp spurs of malice—Off they went, careering through the worlds

Until he saw a white and azure planet Two tender fools, a garden made to keep them Away from harm, looked down, and saw his chance

He gripped great Chaos tightly by the withers Pulled great handfuls from it, fist by fist Cast the flesh of Chaos on the couple

The Lord looked down and said, you will go forward In darkness and confusion, grief and violence Groping in the dimness of corruption

And then He held the rider and the ridden So miniscule they almost disappeared And placed them in the confines of His thoughts

The confines of His thoughts that hold all things For who can penetrate His deepest vision Surrounded by the fires of creation?


44


INTO THE STORM

A division comes to Uzbekistan A colonel in black wears the papakha Rides the lift in the Hotel Tashkent

You’ve come a hard road, the colonel says—A long way to come indeed, polkovnik But we’ve got a much longer way to go

Soon this country will cease to exist Who will be there to see it fall And what can we see from this low place?

The present is always a depression in time And the future rises on every side Into a distance obscured by complexity

We live inside of an asteroid The vista swooping upwards, away As the black rock spins in a sun-wise orbit

We who live inside this globe Know not what happens outside the world Of the blind and helpless present time

Dominions will fall and others perhaps Struggle to reassemble again As the small world spins and pulls on the sun

Beware of all smooth confidence That the future will always resemble the past For the past will never come again

He wears the officers’ high black hat Of the Cossack colonel, leader of men Into the storm of a frightful war


45


THERE COULD BE ANYTHING OUT THERE

I saw them starting out with their long guns In camouflage and orange hats and vests So that they would not shoot at one another When taking posts behind concealing cover

I did not see the ending of their hunt, The bush was thick, the dog was young and puzzled Finding scent but no substantial prey Confused, untrained he traveled far astray

I knew a man who put his rifle down And subsequently as a corpse was found, But no one knew the reason for his error Except he wore a countenance of terror

Be careful in your hunting you may find A brute that hides in thickets of the mind Which in broad daylight might have seemed a joke Amalgamated from reflecting smoke


46


THOSE MEN

Those men let slip a blueprint for An implement whose frightful charge Plutonium, uranium Was wrapped in cobalt fifty nine

If that charge should detonate Neutrons change the cobalt shell To ionizing cobalt 60 Spread abroad by wind and blast

Suppose a chain of bombs so made Were placed in rock or shallow seas To spread a fatal seething dust Or vapor over half the world

Suppose some few of great dimension With hulls composed of many tons Of static cobalt fifty nine Transformable by neutron flux

These weapons, made of any size, Need not be moved once set in place But if imbedded would remain Concealed until their detonation

Only theory until now Extrapolate what was implied, A way to concentrate the mind, A possible world suicide

Yet perhaps the grasp will slip And then release what was believed To be the theoretical, Enact the end that was conceived


47


COME AND CATCH ME IF YOU CAN

A hundred thousand years and more The only way to learn the chase Was to inspect a trail for spoor To follow game, to wait in place

A father shows the son to see—To learn there is no other way—The scrapings on the bark of trees The printings of the different prey

But there is One may not be caught By any arrow, bullet, pit, Nor can the catch of Him be taught By lesson or by native wit

I am the game that shows and fades, At midnight hides, who burrows deep, A quick perception in the shade Of brilliant sunlight and in sleep

Come and catch Me if you can Track My passage if you dare, I am the risen Son of Man, Give up your weapon or beware


TeachingPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

48


ZOMBIES

Where dwell the living dead The living are not wanted, They have no taste for bread, The living are resented

Those who are alive May only wander through Where life will never thrive, No life is ever new

Tell us why the zombie Becomes the emblem of The hunger of a country Which has forsaken love?

Those who wish to leave it Are free to emigrate By yearning for the exit Before it is too late

Some may rise and heal But others there will cavil, Renounce the life they feel At the prompting of the Devil


49


MANY ROADS For Andrew Milhurst

We come by many ways to this one gate But on the road there is a gang of thieves Who orchestrate an ambush in this way: Pretend to mug one member, then they leave

But he is armed and they wait on one side To pounce on some Samaritan who passes— First there drives a teacher by the way But he’s in haste to come on time for classes

Too busy and indifferent travels on, But then another traveler appears, A priest is on his way to hear confession He has a set of earphones on his ears

Listening to sermons on compassion—The scene beside the road attracts his eye But cheerless is the night and he is loathe To stop a while and so he travels by

A third drives up, a true Samaritan, A medic and a veteran of war Who rescued all the wounded that he could And would have if he could have many more

While stopping there’s a whisper in his mind, Conveys a falseness in the dark tableau, Something wrong the medic can’t define—An angel telling what a man can’t know

His guardian who tells him to pass on, The incident is certainly a snare, A dreadful apprehension grips his heart—Listen, there is danger here, beware

He pulls away, a shiver stirs his spirit, Abandonment, a culpable mistake, The robbers at the roadside curse their fortune, The medic feels his honest heart may break


50


THEN TO WHERE?

Three birds in a vitrine at the elders’ home Weightless as the shuttlecocks in badminton They flit inside their little glass confinement

Flimsy as the soul in that old verse, Anima, vagula, blandula, my body’s guest, Going where when you depart from me?

Does the mind suppose as did the emperor That souls uncaged will flutter into darkness, Trembling onward, downward to a lightless dream

Little soul that perches in my crystal heart Transparent are the walls to One who can perceive Weightless as the morning light the soul must leave

Then to where uncaged, so fragile, small? There is a woodland where the smallest birds may nest Little soul of mine that was my body’s guest


51


NOT A PERSON

One is lost . . . the others go their way The one who was a child becomes a waster Homeless in his soul, a spent drug-taker

Everything he touches falls and breaks When he looks his face within the mirror Becomes confused, equivocal and thinner

Spending time apart from us, alone His image in our minds begins to dwindle The finding of his pleasures theft and swindle

Often we have offered him relief Therapy, a course in school, a job But every satisfaction must be robbed

We knew him when he functioned and had friends Now I see that smiling childish face We knew before this fugitive disgrace

As if it had been flattened on a wall A face in two-dimensions not of three A poster not a person who can see


52


THE MEEK WILL JUDGE

Many could not read in rural England One double-crossed for marriage with an X, The surname that they named him with was “Money.” A mockery burlesque of Pauper Penniless

Some will say the name was for the rich But parody was never far behind them, For as the fool is king for saturnalia The pauper shares a name with the illustrious

How easily the first stone comes to hand, Ridicule anoints with spit the crucifix, Nothing is too brutal for the coward class Which shaken like a rat assaults the mouse

And yet I think the meek will have inheritance For they alone distinguish proper deference, Having been the butt of joking arrogance They will keep in perspective lowly penitence


53


THE END OF THE END

Perhaps a few thousands, not many more Will stem our defeat in the cosmic war When evil hangs over the world like a breaker Of stone in the sky, the race’s death-maker

Who may they be? Their faces and names Are hidden behind the impassible flames Of fire surrounding the future’s outcome, The brightness is blinding excepting for some

They are the patient, the silent steadfast Who watch for the future and sentry the past, No one will find them except for the few Who have passed through the flames to be tempered clear through

They know one another if sometimes they meet But may not give signs for they must be discreet, The enemy looms over victim and friend And the triumph must wait till the end of the end


54


THE TROPHY IS MOUNTED

The hunters have taken the most of the ground Until there is little to walk in apart From the trail to the look-out above the old kilns And the bridge to the lake where the hunting can start

Except on a Sunday and then there is none But the hunters have pressed for the seventh full day So all of the week can be theirs for their own, To scout through the woods for permissible prey

Sunday the morning when Jesus arose Who also was hunted until He was caught, Hung up to bleed for the sake of our woes, That by it salvation from downfall was bought

We have forgotten if we ever knew How the cost of the conquest of evil was counted, Then like to the heads that we hang on our walls The corpus of Jesus the trophy is mounted


55


THE SERPENT FIRES

No one knows how it begins—The Lord has told us, like a thief He will return in dead of night Though none confess to that belief

The dead midnight of all our souls In which the sighted too are blind, The fire banked above the coals Through which the serpent fires wind

Then at once the flames burst out The deepest night transformed to day, The hills above the valleys shout: The Risen Lord has come, make way!

Light from light, a flash of fire, Oceans seething with their heat, Though all the fiends of Hell conspire Every love with Love will meet


56


UNENDING REVELATION

When I am near drowned in apprehension I do not have sufficient faith, my God That is my confession, hear me, listen

How many fearful times I have forgotten When to my help You gathered all your angels Who praise you thrice around Your throne in heaven

Holy, holy, holy, angels summon Trisagion in Greek the triple praises Most glorious their angel adoration

What must I do to think of Your compassion? Remember then the service of the altar The marvelous and humble Elevation

The flesh and blood displayed of My donation Behind which is the wonder and refulgence Of light forever lasting, My dominion

If you can recall this consolation In spirit kneel, adore as you have done My Heart is yours, unending revelation


57


INSIDE THE GREAT MACHINE

Imagine our great gyroscope of sins Impelled by wickedness the whirl begins, The armature is law, we are within

The rotor, stressed and massive, starts to shake Oscillations cause the law to break Miscalculations amplify mistakes

The wobble of the gyroscope increases The outer rigor of the law decreases The rubbing of the gimbals never ceases

Wickedness has made the wheel rotate But now we near the last chaotic state War and desolation is our fate

Who can steer momentum at this level? The details of the crisis are the Devil, Inside the great machine we are in peril

Impart another spin and we inside May whirl away to space, nowhere to hide Caught between the law and suicide


58


BELSHAZZAR’S FEAST

Spirits look down on a bleak dark world A gloom of greed, ambition, murder Oppression, brutal satisfaction

They see the great town Babylon Walls and prisons, lavish spoils The feasting of the King of Kings

Slay my captives, shouts Belshazzar, Red wine runs from his foaming lips As if his prisoners’ streaming blood

The wine he drinks is the blood of slaves The blood of soldiers killed in battle The blood of children slain in vengeance

The trophy cup from which he drinks Was taken from Jerusalem The furnishing of God’s refulgence

The cup of holy offering With sacred wine that Jesus made In the water vessels filled at Cana

Belshazzar drinks from the gleaming service The cup of triumph over God Intoxicating wine of grief

Now the spirit hand descends From the court of saints that serve the Light Inscribes a verdict on the wall

These are the words that will be said By the martyrs of the Holy Spirit When they stand before condemning kings:

Pretender to the sacred Throne: Though a king of grief with blood anointed Your realm is given to another

King to be thrown against the ground By the enemies you could not see Your brittle strength is potter’s rubble

59


The wine you drink is martyrs’ blood The blood of God, and the blood of slaves Drunk to your curse and condemnation


60


I HAD FORGOTTEN

Now that every growing leaf has fallen Outlooks open up that were not plain So will be the rising slopes of heaven

First an autumn must arrive, then winter, Death-like be the groves that once were Eden Desolation, emptiness forever

But we will see beyond what we have seen Leaves of innocence though not a trick, The hills were always there, I had forgotten


61


A KIND OF SPORT

We move above a once great city—I know it well but will not name it—As from a great height, slowly

Below I see a dull gray ruin White smoke flowing, curling Craters few but more than one

Jagged towers ripped apart By some great wind and force Here and there small fires start

As we move there is no sound Nothing lives that we can see An emptiness and death profound

Then as slowly move away All below opposed to life There is no cause to stay

That is all I can report But as for what has caused this thing It is for Hell a kind of sport


62


WHO COULD HAVE SUPPOSED?

He gave me a gift A hawk on the hill, For a moment the heart Of the daylight was still

From the edge of the forest She launched from the crest, The heart of the hawk Bore down in her breast

A spark of the sunlight Burned in her eye, She soared to the south As the wind came by

Who could have supposed So handsome a gift, A hawk from above And a wind for her lift?


Hawk above HillPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

63


THE CANDLES OF EASTER

The heavenly court of the bright seraphim Gather and give a petition to Him: Tell us, they say, why you keep them extant, Glory and Power, expunge them, they chant

So murderous, brutal and wasteful of peace, Ticks in the undergrowth, lice in the fleece, Try as You will they will never amend, Their madness goes on and no sign of the end

Now they appear to be edging towards war Such has never been seen on that planet before, A world to be darkened and all without reason, To You and Your patience an odious treason

But the flame of His glory, the sign of His power Unwavering and unobtainable flower Bows to the creatures and offers a spark To the candles of Easter to light up the dark


64


AT THE BREAK OF DAY

Down from the arctic the snow geese rest On the smooth black shield of the autumn lake, Far from the entering creek and the shore The drowsy cold fish their ripples make Echoing gunfire rolls through the hills, Ripples of thunder, the echoes thin, Deep in the valleys they calibrate Their rifles to shoot when the week begins

Hunting forbidden, Sunday a truce, Hunters are waiting and so are the prey, But the geese will rise up and take to their wings In the cold of the morning, the break of day


65


BEFORE THE END

I saw four horses entering a paddock, Those He keeps for riding on a day When all prepared, the sky becomes electric

Those four riders, Pestilence and Famine Death and War were standing by their horses The groom who fed them had the name of Mammon

The black, the pale, the white one and the red Shook their flanks to drive away the flies That come from Hell, the country of the dead

I said, where are the saddles, where the tack With which they will be furnished on that day The pale, the white, the red one and the black?

And one who stood beside them said to me The time is coming when the ride begins Before the end, when no one else is free


66


WHICH WAY?

You gave me these two eyes with which to see, The living eyes of John, the eyes of James Those fishermen, the sons of Zebedee

For as the Flesh and Blood of Christ is shown I see it as the fishermen saw Him Know Him as the living Christ was known

As when uncertain Thomas saw the gashes The whip had made, so I can see the wounds They gave to Christ rebuked by many lashes

And as he saw the punctures of the nails So I can see the stabs where they were made Running still with blood that will not fail

When that Flesh and Blood is held up high You gave me these two eyes with which to see And as the women saw Him so can I

Behold the Christ some worship or betray Then choose to follow after to the Cross Or want my own abandonment, which way?

Pavel December 1, 2015

67


EYE TO SEE

Rendezvous, the flock and I Eye to see and they to fly, Infinities of facts there were Coincidence if you prefer

Before we met at that one spot In time and space but elsewhere not; Improbable the world’s device That only could be once, not twice

But there to meet me as they flew As from a distance formed and grew They passed as all of time must go An everlasting precious flow

Never will I come to see Mere accidents for what must be, In all of time and all of space It was, is now, and will take place


Wild GeesePhoto by Pavel Chichikov

68


BUT SEE

I saw the sky at dusk explode with fire A scarlet blossom rising from the left That made the street and autos seem like tinder To be ignited by the heat of it

Passed with fuller dusk the stream subsided That for a moment flooded all with flame, A prescience of what will rise aloft Beyond these hills, amorphous, not the same

See, an image of an atmospheric Projection on a fear’s internal screen, Apparition of the non-existent That makes the blossom fulminate and lean

But see how pale and fragile seems the street When hill and sky and conflagration meet


Sky on FirePhoto by Pavel Chichikov

69


REMEMBRANCE OF BERT For Bert Keys

He told me that his heart had stopped, he fell Down dead but they revived him and he lived More than once, Bert Keys, for whom I prayed This morning at the Mass, may God forgive

Us all for many trespasses and faults If only we will pray for one another, It is what we can give to Christ, our prayer, Not so much for us as for our brother

Bert who was so generous and brave Who carried that encumbering great load Of wood relieving Jesus of His cross A few steps on the penitential road

Thinking now of Bert, may we recall We rise again forever when we fall


70


AS IF SOMEONE HAD PULLED A STRING…

As if someone had pulled a string A reel of geese comes floating by, Up and down against the hills Up and down against the sky

They come and look at me askance: You are not lost, be reassured, To exile you are not condemned Released from what you have endured

You will like us be on your way Along the road you see us on To where the ending does not stay But turns a corner then is gone

Would you like to follow us? You will at last but not just yet, We are symbol and a sign And as we pass a silhouette


Geese PassingPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

71


FOR ANYONE

I saw outside the rectory In early Advent, fall of night, The crèche of Jesus’ infancy Electric candles burning bright

Two ceramic sheep, an ox A mother, father gaze, devout, A single wall therefore no locks To keep the kings and shepherds out

All may come, there is no bar No document or test of worth, Above the roof a splendid star And angels singing to the Earth

The crèche was set there by the priest For anyone to see, adore, For man and woman, even beast To see what babe a Virgin bore


Priest’s CrèchePhoto by Pavel Chichikov

72


TIME TILL THEN

Help is coming, wait and pray— But Lord how long will You delay? Help will come as did the Christ, In harmony the time sufficed So that each shepherd and his sheep Angel, king My time would keep

On that morning at sunrise Love shall live and death shall die; Trust, the love I have prepared Comes when it should, no favor spared, Deceit, oppression, death and sorrow Undying love supplants tomorrow

Nothing in My world is late Time till then is Advent, wait


73


THE SIXTEEN-POINT BUCK

After the concert he told me this, so listen Billy, his son, tracked down and shot a whitetail Great neck and rack it measured sixteen points

But the wound not mortal yet, the quarry ran Evening coming on they looked in vain So they went back in the morning, there it was

The coyotes and the hungry fishers quarried Into the belly and ribs and left their mark Spilled intestines, gore of a scavenger feast

The hunters hauled the carcass out to the butcher, Gearhart, who told them, dispose of the ruined body Infected with who knows what by the midnight feeders

But they took the head to be mounted as a trophy Big in the neck with a spread of sixteen points A rack to be fondly remembered from that day

Listen then, the godless have been at us Burrowing into the guts of our life and love Faith is the whitetail buck with sixteen points


74


DINNER IN THE DEMENTIA WARD

The portals locked, they open with a code, Four digits to remember when you enter, Four digits to recall when you retreat From tables with a silence at its center

The people eat their dinner two and three But almost never speak to one another, Tablecloths and decent tableware On tables with a silence at the center

Were they not demented you would hear Speech, but here no whispers, never laughter, Servers softly stepping are attentive, Hover round the silence at the center

If they bend or nibble at their food What vision shyly dancing can they conjure, And who can hear the singing that they hear Because there is a silence at the center?

Leaning from the table they might strain To hear the incantation and remember, So far away and yet so close at hand Because there is a silence at the center


75


WHAT OFFSPRING MAY THERE BE?

It starts to look the way it looked before In history, a mustering for war, Powers have assembled and they wait To carry out the violence of the state

What will be the trigger, accident That no one can foresee and never meant? The gathering of dread opposing fleets That never learned a doctrine of retreat

High performance aircraft standing by Designed to sting their quarry or to die, Wasps that never hatched, that have no legs With Armageddon-fires in their eggs

And when they lay what offspring may there be To split the shells around them and break free?


76


YOU WILL NOT KNOW

Again today the fog creeps up the hill This morning as it has for many days, A warm December, moist and somewhat chill

Through the valleys, round the mountain flanks The white mist serpents exercise their coils And drip their cold secretions, long and lank

Now across the world a fog amasses, Into the mists the nations peer and step Not knowing what there is or if it passes

And for each person too the fog surrounds Through which the people shuffle, good as blind, And make their way by echoes of strange sounds

Be careful then, what lives within the mist A serpent of confusion or a fiend You will not know until you hear it hiss


77


THE GINGERBREAD MAN

The gingerbread man was put in to bake But the bakers committed a dreadful mistake, They left out his sugar and left out his salt, When he came out it was nobody’s fault

They’d put in too much of the fiery root, Three raisins pressed in for his buttons and suit, So he ran from the shop to Confectioners’ Street Where a gang of confectioners happened to meet They saw him and swathed him with sugary glaze, The ginger man shivered, he stood there amazed, For he felt on the outside a coldness, within Was none of the sugar, the layer was thin

He ached with a dryness of blandness and woe From his gingerbread head to his gingerbread toe, And the salt that they sprinkled was also outside Like the sting of resentment, the sharpness of pride

All I need now are two raisins for eyes, Then I can see and assume my disguise Said the gingerbread man as he trotted away To take up a home in a window display


78


TO THE MENTAL WARD

Down the long void corridor we go To the mental ward, a duct of yellow lights, Shadow less from everywhere they glow

Patients amble slowly or they chat Surface calm and peaceful, medicated Although it makes their affect somewhat flat

There is the sense of something caught in here Calmed and put to rest and sleep a while Which elsewhere, on the other side, is fear

The world is bleeding madness tending toward Destruction but coagulates the scab Where under sluggish light it is ignored

The light is like a sewer flowing in A river ending in a peaceful lake Of yellow paint so deep but with a skin


79


BELOW THE FAR ASCENDING ROAD

Two lay down in open view Atop the tool shed near the graves And did what many couples do, Then one who sees us stands and waves

We who only passed them by While on our long accustomed climb That overlooks the shed deny We see his sign, refuse his mime

He must have felt embarrassed then To think that other eyes were there, He seems to think he must pretend By waving wildly in the air

That nothing happened on that shed For which embarrassment is owed Above the garden of the dead Below the far ascending road


80


IN THAT HYPNOGOGIC MOOD

In that hypnogogic mood We all attain before we dream I saw the end of solitude A vast assembly in a stream

En masse along an avenue In paler color and their clothes Were part archaic yet were new, Green and yellow, blue and rose

Some goal before them as they went But which I could not understand, A mission on which they were bent Without a sign of high command

The sun was bright and shadowless, The figures in some way were flat As if not fully real, unless The world we think we know is that

On their way I know not where And then they faded and I slept, Between a dream and waking there A slow and steady pace they kept


81


THAT WAS WORSE

She lost her way and thus she lost her nerve, A teacher told the woman: “Do not serve,” She set out from her town to find the place Where in distraction she had left her face

Her memory of where she lived was gone So then her walking slippers she put on, Day and night she went from town to town: “My face is lost, somewhere I put it down”

“If I could only find my town again I’d search through every corner or pretend That I had found my face and knew my name, Since to pretend and be is much the same

“Why serve?” the woman pondered as she passed, Expected she would find her face at last, We held a mirror out, she waved a curse, She would not serve or be served, that was worse


82


LOST AND NEVER FOUND

No boundary to enter or to exit What we thought a residence had vanished The sense of being lost compulsive habit A house without a room need not be furnished

Nothing wrong so nothing to complain of Loneliness irrational delusion No one has proscribed the need for love The symptom of a craving for attention

A vast and empty wilderness we make Of those who have been lost and never traced Their anguish is a logical mistake They never disappeared, they were misplaced


83


SO WHEN THE EYES GO DARTING

They said we will release her from the mental ward As in a birthing medically we cut the cord, Returning her as out-patient to meet a group, An artificial family and Girl Scout troop

But in the room with visitors a patient sat, Her eyes were darting here and there at this and that As if to gauge a threat of violence, sudden move, A person young and pretty who would not improve

Because in her experience she could not trust The motives or the purposes beneath the crust Of every personality, or so she thought, She only knew of people who were sold and bought

So when the eyes go darting in a certain way It is a glance at whom and what will soon betray, There is no medication or group therapy Which will allow the damaged spirit to go free

Come and let the damned souls go as once in Hell, They hint at in the Creed, when death to You befell You found them and released them, only You the Christ Can free the miserable slaves, please do it twice


84


IF DEATH WERE NOT A CURTAINED MYSTERY

If death were not a curtained mystery Then how would Christ have sacrificed on Golgotha Nor would the holy martyrs have been holy

Nor would the generations of the blessed Succeed to one another in their ranks, Confessors of the Faith of Christ confessed?

Nor in the tomb be shadows of our dread That seep into the daylight and our dreams Nor hauntings in our legends of the dead

Nor fear consume the living who must flee The very thought of their annihilation If death were not a curtained mystery

Nor could the living sacrifice for love Their own existence and their love of light—What desperate risk, what dreadful forfeit of?

A perfect darkness stretching up to heaven And deep within the earth unless we die, Offering the password, Christ is risen


85


ONCE SHE TOLD ME

Once she told me to be careful In mentioning the cosmic war Conducted between good and evil: “They’ll think you’re crazy and a bore”

Then the husband whom she’d cherished Left her, played her for a fool, All her faith in love had perished—She’d also put him through law school

He was much younger and he took her Craftily for all her love—Fantasy if you prefer But coin is what we’re speaking of

Love becomes a travesty When evil wins another clash, All of true love’s majesty Becomes a farce exchanged for cash

Evil is the alien The idol sitting on the hill That burns our offerings and then Indifferently presents the bill

Payment for a life is taken Life is what it really needs, Later on the slaves awaken, Evil in its temple breeds


86


HIS IVORY COMB

Klaudios the freedman of Tiberius Told the Emperor about his dream, How in a backwater of southern Syria A child is born of minimal esteem

Whose father is a foreman carpenter, A craftsman of some local reputation Who comes to be a cult’s progenitor, A sect comprising many nations

Not now, my August one, but in some centuries, Meanwhile his brat will grow to be Of course the merest speck and one of Pilate’s miseries, He will be crucified without decree

That’s confused, replied the Emperor, No telling what a dream will show—He looked down from the Palatine To see what might be happening below

There he saw the Circus Maximus The Forum of the Romans and the courts, The power of the Julian imperium, People from all over, of all sorts

But it was such a vivid dream, my general, My great commander and my chief, My leader and my god imperial—He was commended by a thief

Before his death was certified— Tiberius looked bored and said: Oh well, if true, it doesn’t matter anyhow For you and he will long be dead

But that’s the point, he didn’t die At least for long for then he came Alive and hale as anyone, But strike me if I heard his name

87


Tiberius picked up his ivory comb With which to comb his thinning hair Then looked down at eternal Rome—Dreams disperse, he said, but that won’t vanish into air


88


IT CAN’T GO ON THIS WAY

Before the righteous souls in Hell are freed He must be born, the Holy Spirit’s seed, Before the demon-haunted ones are cured He must be born, an emptiness endured, Before the dead are raised, the blind can see He must accomplish His nativity, Before the crippled walk, the mute can speak He must become an infant, small and weak

Advent is the month when we remain Between a land of light, a time profane, A twilight and a border land, frontier Between the dark and when He will appear, And so in waiting all of us must pray Come quickly Lord, it can’t go on this way


89


BILL TEMPLETON PLAYED ON THE MUSICAL SAW

Bill Templeton played on the musical saw He also transplanted two giant blue spruce, One he called Molly, the other was Bill But they were cut down, so what was the use?

While they were living they stood side by side Roared in the wind and waved to each other, The gale was their chorus, their height was their pride The sister was Molly and Bill was the brother

The man would take out his old saw and his bow Serenade the two trees while they listened and swayed, Winter and summer he watched the trees grow While tall and attentive they heard what he played

Now they are gone and forgotten, all three Except for the children who knew of the trio, Molly and Bill the respectful old trees And a musical saw that was played with such brio


90


WHO WAS THERE?

The peasantry of long ago The marching of Galician pipes, Pipes and drums, the snowy fields To celebrate the birth of Christ

They carried Mary, virginal, Her image spare, of poplar wood, I saw them stop to breathe a while The melted snowfall where they stood

The carven child, the painted child The baby cold but would not shiver, Who was there when Christ was born Who was there when she delivered?

Drum and pipe and pipe and drum The pipers pressed the bags and blew The fingerings, their fingers numb, And who was there the players knew


91


TURN IT UP OR TURN IT DOWN

Yeshiva students said he had gone mad, Ezekiel the prophet had drawn him Into the burning vision of the wheels, The eyes he contemplated on the rim

Everywhere he looked they would condemn Above, below, around the Western Wall, Those who study in Jerusalem May see the eyes that saw the Temple fall

Eyes that gazed from underneath the wings Of sentinels who watch the holy Seat, The lidless and unblinking seraphim, Burning ones of light but not of heat

He suffered from their presence and was split As if the scroll of God were torn in two, They say that those who see have lost their wits But others see a spirit born anew

There is a vision of a splendid light, Another of the darkness that surrounds An idol of immensity of fright, Unspeakable cacophony of sounds

It is as if the Torah had two sides A benediction or a wicked spell, Turn it up or turn it down, decide The way to understand Ezekiel


92


THEY THROW A RAINBOW BACK

They bait their hooks with hominy, The pond half frozen with a skin Conceals in shadow rainbow trout, Hides the scales, the amber fin

The hook and bait is jiggled, jerked, They slide the line until it sinks, It should be swallowed to the gut To hold the fish before it thinks

It bumps and nibbles, then it strikes - “Pull it, pull it out!” they scream, Then it windmills, spins and thrashes, Flies across the slushy stream

Once they have it safe on shore The line is bitten through, they throw A rainbow back, unless it’s caught It shines beneath where nothing knows


Rainbow Trout 2Photo by Pavel Chichikov

93


COLD TO COLD AND WARM TO WARM

The world’s frontier where autumn ends The pond half-thawed, a brittle lens, The angle of the sun comes low Across the ice, a glancing blow

Slides away, a lustrous road That rising warmth will soon corrode Until the dusk, and then reform Cold to cold and warm to warm

Beneath the thinness of the cap Of fragile ice, the melting trap, The trout are breathing in the chill And unlit water, viscid, still

Watch and then compare with me How often light from dark goes free And then returns to day’s respite, The still and tranquil, peaceful night


Frost Last NightPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

94


I WENT OUT TO A WILDERNESS

I went out to a wilderness And saw my country’s narrowness Confined by hills and mountains where A sentry forest held her there

No one in the valley knew Around them all a winter grew, A power of deceptive strength, Sterility, a leafless length

A godless, green-less, sunless range Forever cold, remote and strange And yet within the boundary They knew not the periphery

But on a hill an idol stood Fires fed but not with wood And what they used I will not tell, To say such things would not be well

But if the shepherds and the wise Had come to see us in disguise And knew what we had done to those They would not have our Christ disclosed


The Country in the ValleyPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

95


UNSOLD

If they gave a token to bring in the truth So as to aggregate it and abolish it, Some who kept it hidden would refuse to sell Because a rarity becomes more valuable

The price would multiply but still a few would keep Their fraction of the truth because the purest bit Is just as potent as a large amount would be, Increasing more in value, for its scarcity

If decades would elapse, and then a century Collectors would not part with its embodiment, Truth behind the panels, underneath the floor Would gain in price and then again would gain still more

Until a rumor of the truth would sell the same As truth before, or any jewel that you could name, The rarest and most gleaming gem, attested gold, Invisible, much cherished love and long unsold


96


JUST THAT MOMENT

Saints are just like you and me but more Alive, awake, attentive and aware Silent is the night when they are there

Silent is the night when they arrive To find the infant Jesus in the shed The saintly shepherds bow, they are well-bred

Well-bred although their hands are calloused rough Their manners are impeccable and mild As they behold the face of God the child

Impeccable the gentleness of these Rough characters who kneel and give their praise To know their goodness you would be amazed

When they kneel and smile the night is still For just that moment then begins again The clucking of the chickens in the pen


97


WHERE THE FOXES SAY GOODNIGHT

Where the foxes say good night There is no sign of settlement, Where nothing human comes in sight Where marmots have their parliament

Beyond the world we all expect Where lamb and lion make a truce, Sun-and-moonlight intersect, The wolf dines with, not on the goose

The cat befriends the timid mouse The weasel soothes the nesting bird, The eagle and the hare carouse The honest serpent keeps his word

Far away, beyond and far Where nothing human lives or lies, Beyond the setting morning star Or where the lights of evening rise


98


THE DAY YOU KNOW A MAN IS DOOMED

The day you know a man is doomed Is when he says he needs no friends, Imagine sheep cut from the herd With which their fleece no longer blends

The scent of fear attracts the wolf A whiff of lost and maddened sheep, But in the case of friendless men A stink of nightmare in their sleep

That which feeds on loneliness And battens on the taste of dread, The starving angel Lucifer, The light-deprived, eats him instead

The Devil draws his light from him And leaves a darkness in a shell, Darkness fills the shape of him, The gross necessity of Hell

He may have servants, agents, or Some other figures to provide An artificial love and yet There is no light at all inside

Or some that lingers like a spark, An unextinguished feeble flame That wavers in the winds of night And begs: Do not put out my name


99


WHEN I CAME TO BE CONTRITE

Leave them all behind, the errors False by day, by night, night terrors Prophetic of the shapes of sin That would be worn, embodied in

Renounce, repair such falsity The deficits of charity Like serpent skin that will be shed, Put on the flesh of grace instead

The needful word, the act of grace Repairs the guilty, shameful face—By night I saw when I awakened The figure that my sin had taken

Gross and sluggish, heavy limbed, A clumsy gait, perceptions dimmed, But when I came to be contrite My glance was clear, my step was light


100


ALTHOUGH WE THINK THAT ALL GOES WELL After Bertolt Brecht

Although we think that all goes well Complacent in accustomed ease, All suspect the evil spell The debt, the hex, the dread disease

All is well, we feel replete, Our horses win and so do we, But why the struggle with conceit? A worm is eating secretly

What we have is undeserved, The Firebird has taken flight, The missile to the moon has curved, The boots of seven leagues are tight

Two rewards the world desires Two rewards and nothing more: Everything and not to suffer, And that is what we suffer for


101


PEDRO THE WISE

Conceit destroyed the royal brain He thought he’d teach the sky to rain The great King Pedro, King of Spain

He stepped out on his balcony To see what weather he could see The southern sky, the whole country

He stared up at the clouds and spoke: As falcons fly and ravens croak As Chaos to the Lord awoke

Hear instruction and obey Listen sky to what I say I the king, without delay

If you won’t or can’t send down A storm to freshen Seville town More than freshen, let it drown

First collect the moistened clouds Let them come in solemn crowds Let a thunder roar out loud

Let some drops of rain collect Warm and cold air intersect My royal instruction is correct

Now the wind must come and rise Whirl and batter at the skies The forests and the fields surprise

Now release the rain at last Let the rain come thick and fast More than ever in the past

So he had his orders given By royal madness he was driven Beneath the unconcern of heaven

102


A sky transparent and serene Above a green and tranquil scene By sun and southern air washed clean


103


THE FUTURE HISTORY BOOK

Let’s not betray our precious secrets Said the demon who studies futures past In a book he props on his bony knees Where he sits by himself in a gelid mist

Like some of us he reads from the back, Enthralled he sighs and rubs his chin, If you’re lucky you’ll find him sitting there On those few days when the vapor thins

I asked him to look for 2016 Which he did at once without demur, But this is strange, the demon said, 1941 comes before

Where are the years that intervene? There must be a sort of resonance That overwhelms the years between And that could never be by chance

Let’s see, a war had just begun But had not spread so far that it Enfolded all with bomb and gun Nor would the whole world yet commit

The demon shrugged and raised aloft The book by its covers, then he shook The pages to see if the leaves were glued Together in the future history book


104


THERE SHE WAS TO MEET THE SHIP

The dove of peace spread out her wings To buffet at the golden finch, She only gurgles, never sings She never gives the wrens an inch

Noah launched her from the Ark Because she dirtied all the masts But on a mountain peak she parked - Such remonstrations never last

He called the dove the bird of peace Because she wasn’t there at all, Her soft complaints were sure to cease But then at last they made landfall

There she was to meet the ship Her silly waddle and her eyes As red as some unhealthy pip Inside a bogus fruit of spies


105


SOMETHING SPLITS US IN THE SOUL Her legs half-folded at the perchShe braces hard to feed on seeds,This is the altar of her churchThe sacrament she needs to breed Her eyes are also hard and stareWith perfect fury and possession,Hers is hers and hers is fairNo court or parliament in session This is what our flesh inheritsDominance, the need to liveDemands a judgment on its merits:Take the most and never give But I have heard another needTo give is better than to take,And of a sacred heart that bleeds,That for another life forsakes Something splits us in the soulThe fierce possessive of the heart,Nor will we ever be so wholeAs when from wholeness we depart Pavel December 31, 2015

They’re Mine!Photo by Pavel Chichikov

106


I TOLD THE DRINKER TO DRINK UP

I told the drinker to drink up The joker to be humorous The inexpressive to discuss

Witlessness forever mine The breakables I always drop Whatever is cannot be stopped

No foolishness can bring about Another kind of time and fate Not ever soon, not ever late

They were there in Bethlehem The ox and donkey in the stall Their silhouettes across the wall

Mine the mooing and the bray That made the Baby Jesus smile Forget the grief of life a while

Pavel January 1, 2016

107


AN EAGLE SEES THE CRATERS ON THE MOON

An eagle sees the craters on the moon But does not hunt the moon and so it may Not see the silver moving shape as prey

Those who never look for God will not Perceive the living God by day or find The evidence imprinted in the mind

But sometimes in the night before they sleep Or in a dream or sometimes when they wake A shadow moves recalled as a mistake

A presence neither of the light nor dark Perceptual and yet peripheral Unusual, not feverish or ill

Above the eagle slides the silver one Irrelevant and yet it comprehends It travels through an arc and then descends

Descends beneath the west and then returns Dwindles in a darkness then it grows, Untouchable and shining, that it knows


108


SO WE

Rich and ample, white and black Fur, a stripe runs down its back, A late and cold December day, A sick suspicious alley stray

Skunks are creatures of a dusk Wherein they spray their acrid musk But will not easily be seen, Then wonder what this sighting means

It stumbles, wobbles as if blind Perhaps a virus in the mind Lames what should be sure of foot, White as ivory, black as soot

Distemper, rabies virus or Poison on a tool shed floor, Uphill struggles through a thread Of tangled branches, nearly dead

Sniffs the moistened, softened ground Though nothing visible is found, Perhaps a faint familiar scent Of worm and beetle excrement

Soon to die and yet it knows Nothing of how illness goes Inevitably to an end, So we from fear of death defend


109


THE LITURGY OF THE HOURS

Up the sun at Morning Prayer Freezing crystals in the air, Winds come chanting from the east Spruce a tall and solemn priest

Shadows humble, lengthen out Silent, circumspect, devout, Psalming hills around give praise Dressed for Sabbath in blue haze

So the moon at break of day Rises from the east to pray, Crosses her meridian Terce and sext and none begun

Later still the sun declines Lights a candle for compline, All the priestly creatures rest Until the time again to vest


110


GENERATIONS

Long before this age began There lived the forebears of the clan, Bard-remembered names and deeds, We the offspring, they the seeds

In those lost communities Were told our genealogies, Time and fable interlaced, The mysteries of time were traced

But lineages will not end, What generations will descend Until the farthest future, say Who then will call their time “today?”

Contemplate the sisters weird In Shakespeare which the Scotsman feared, What stew of horrors could they mix To work their prophesying tricks?

The witches tell who will be king Or what the coming winter brings, But teach me how to work the sums Of one or two millenniums?

Presently we stir the pot Of what we are and we are not, Witches round the cauldron of A gruel of slain dismembered love


111


NOT I

A tower stood bare in a wilderness A wild forest naked and imminent But the men of the tower were ignorant

They thought that a city stood all around them Streets and suburbs and outer bastions But the tower had windows that showed them illusions

With every strong gust of the northern gales The trees came closer, the roots reached in To the deep foundations, wind upon wind

Some who stood watch on the parapets Called down to the people who stayed below But the men of the tower refused to know

“Nothing can happen to us in here” Said the dupes of illusion as those before Who ignored the oncoming trees of war

But when the great forest surrounds the tower And stifles the paths that would lead them away “Who has betrayed us?” those men will say

If someone should ask them before they die: “Who has built such a tower with windows that lie?” Each of them say with a will: “Not I!”


112


THE REST EXALT

If I am silent then no one should speak If I am feeble then should all be weak If I am troubled then should all be sick If I am burning then should they be wick

If I am drowning then I will pull down The one who saves me, then we both should drown If I am hunted then should all be caught If I sell off my soul, let all be bought

This is one idea of unity That all should fail instead of only me As Lucifer who fell preferred and those Who followed downward, this is what they chose

But if I say save first the ones I love I will rejoice to see them rise above Where I have fallen, then I find no fault If I am low, let God the rest exalt


113


TELL ME WHERE WE GO TO

Bird, you have been fed, now fly away Launch yourself in air without a clue To what will be your nesting place today, Just as others launched themselves and flew

Fourteen centimeters from the end Of tail along the body to the beak, In Pennsylvania called the mocking wren Because you learn like other birds to speak

If the winter’s mild you travel far Northward searching for Ontario, But if the winter’s cold, stay where you are In Carolina seldom seeing snow

Tell me where we go to when we die We ask the pilgrim leaning from her perch—“To nowhere or to heaven when you die So now you must go swiftly to your search”


Wren 2Photo by Pavel Chichikov

114


FLIGHT

If anyone could stop a bird in flight, Perception slowed enough to separate The quanta that make up the full delight And then each moment to another mate

And see receptive mandibles apart That fill the bird with air enough to burn Increase the tempo of the beating heart To pump the blood and bank into a turn

They would see much, that great foretelling bliss Which those who leave the gripping Earth can sing, As near to light as light is near to this Explosion of the pleasures of the wing

The joy is all round us but the slow Who take no joy in seeing will not know


In FlightPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

115


THE WING

This too is what He made, and light shines through it A wing that bears the flight of His creation, See this alone if you have eyes to see - The light He has created stopped in motion

This wing is what we see at Mass when those High witnesses approach and frame the altar And consecration nears us from the East And Life assumes our perfect life forever

It is the bearing wing of urgent praise That comes to love and gives itself to Light And when it must lose buoyancy and fall Grave-risen Christ gives morning to the night


WingPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

116


THE CREST OF US ERECT

Crest erect like some Homeric warrior’s The cock defends advantage at the feeder He’s called a cardinal in the vernacular

What’s yours is mine what’s mine is mine he means Turning on the finches and the sparrows With eyes like flashing stones he lunges, leans

Yours is mine the same in persons and in nations Especially in those who see some other realms As just so many rivals’ feeding stations

We often live that way, instinctual With overlays of politics and guile But still within and underneath the cardinal

Although we humans boast of intellect Like bristled boar our rockets will emerge And that will be the crest of us erect


The CrestPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

117


PERPLEXING INTERLUDES

Walk along the quiet back street Watch the south begin to change, Desperate wind, a black sky meet, Collective sense becoming strange

Roaring trees like horses whipped Shake their necks and snap erect, Something fastened starts to slip, Other senses intersect

Then at once the chaos ends A gentle whirl of barren snow, That which was distorted bends Assumes again the shapes we know

One is greater than the other And to find it may not please, Littleness is to discover In the roaring of the trees

Listen then, consensus fails The urgent rushing wind intrudes Until the commonplace prevails Between perplexing interludes


118


BUT THIS IS WHAT I SHOW THEM

Man, do not propose to me the order of the will For when the house has settled down to sleep it will be still And all who live within will dream and I will be their guide In Me alone their consciences and visions will confide

Nothing will compel them to be alone in sleep For I will lead them to the road that my dream-keepers sweep And they will travel on with Me though footprints leave behind But where they stepped will be removed and nothing they will find

Nothing will they find except when I return again And that will be when I have chosen if I will and when But never will they charge to Me such visions to provide For I am sole dream-carrier, and I alone the guide

But this is what I show them, the future and the past My road is long and arduous, my countryside is vast And when I give and when I lead and when I choose to show The grazing of My flock of dreams, is Mine alone to know


119


NO INTELLECT

Cold ahead And snow, it said

“But birds can’t speak Their minds are weak”

The life the same Without the names

There is just snow And flakes that blow

And what they need And so they feed

From perch and tree They look and see

No veil across No meaning lost

Motion, color Why need other?

But so direct No intellect

To come between The bird, the seen


120


Snow FallingPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

Snow Falling2Photo by Pavel Chichikov

121


SILENT, STUPID WOOD

A squall of snow with heavy gusts Drives the sideways colorless Veils of snow as dry as dust, Sifted powder, merciless

All that lives evades and cowers If it moves but trees must stay, Withstand the great unmindful powers, Anchored by the roots in clay

Be as obdurate and strong To stand against the great onslaught Of that which levels and lives long—That teaches but was never taught

But if you must retire from The rage that cannot be withstood, Remember that the trees are dumb And made from silent, stupid wood


BuckeyePhoto by Pavel Chichikov

122


TITMOUSE

As fine as this could you then fly? If you were streamlined, had this eye? Could you glide and skim and float Be beautiful and still not gloat?

Rise and fall and not betray Be prayer itself but never pray, Sleek as this be sheathed in light In brightness go to sing in flight

What has God made when He made us? A clever thing though perilous, That with one eye stares at the sun And with the other aims a gun


Tufted TitmousePhoto by Pavel Chichikov

Tufted TitmousePhoto by Pavel Chichikov+

123


SPRUCE TREE

These interlopers come and go A backyard shed, a plot to grow Domesticated garden greens But underneath my roots have seen

The wrenching of the frost and thaw The wild before the tame I saw And when they cleared the trees for grass I saw it all and this shall pass

But nothing more shall build or graze Before the ending of these days No dairy cattle, nibbling horse No forage for them, dry and coarse

We the spruce, the oak the pine The creatures of the old design Will come once more if we have seed If there is rain we still can breed

Will cover all these elder hills If you are gone by good God’s will For yes we know Him and have known What in these valleys He has grown


Backyard SprucePhoto by Pavel Chichikov

124


THEIR NAMES

Bow profoundly to our god Said the king, our god is golden—They refused to make their bows Those obstinate three Hebrew children

Some may think this only legend But to this day the furnaces Are burning underneath the rooms Of many secret services

Now the statue is encoded Gold is merely notional, The scribes computer engineers, The bow may now be virtual

But fire really burns and melts Hebrew children must obey, The ruling forces still insist, Prayer is useless, do not pray

But if they won’t step forward then The guards will throw them in the flames, Afterward delete their files And totally destroy their names


125


THE FARTHER SHORE

I know the sweet voice of the Holy Spirit That carries me over like Christopher Who bore the young Christ across a river

Christopher, lift me, said the voice For I am a wanderer far from old And the river of death is deep and cold

Christopher cradled this Child in his arms Lifted him, carried him stride by stride Through a cold death to the other side

The voice of the Christ that carries far From here in life to the farther shore That welcomes His servants evermore


126


THE FLOURISHES OF GABRIEL

Somewhere I have heard the people say That when the snow comes down each one a note Becomes a melody that runs all day As if from some celestial silver throat

Or when the rain comes down it makes a psalm In separate stanzas of celestial hymns Immense in joy, magnificent in calm As all the sleeping spirits stretch their limbs

If you think it whimsy to say this Hear among the snowflakes many graces, Scales of mercy and the tones of bliss, The joy of being woken on their faces

If you hear the sound of falling rain Perceive between the drop and interval How long and many notes will be sustained When God commands the flourishes of Gabriel


127


DOES HE REMEMBER THIS?

All afternoon this mix of sun and snow Brilliant beams across the freezing earth And then a curtain drawn, above, below

No pattern can be plotted, randomness Or patterns too complex to calculate Of whirling snow, not even as a guess

But if there is control and nothing slides Away from God can all of this be His, Although behind the busyness He hides?

When we ask of God, remember me, Holds He then completely in His mind Immortal spirits, what they come to be?

Preserves He then their memories and keeps Their presence fully with Him in the life And soul of them while in the grave they sleep?

Does He recall an oven on a barrow A winter day and cobbles in the street, Freezing wind that pinched me to the marrow?

Does He remember this if all is whole— Sweet potatoes roasting on a fire Orange flesh that savored of charcoal?


128


THIS THE DYING SAW

The altarpiece of Beaune by Rogier van der Weyden, Painted consolation of the suffering plague ridden Depicts the Lord’s last judgment of the living and the dead, The dying could observe the panels from their hospice beds

Standing in the foreground is Saint Michael with a scale—The balance of the Christ with which Christ Jesus will prevail, - The martyrs and the holy saints revering Christ enthroned Not looking at the judged at all, most gaze at Christ alone

Notice on the right side of triumphant living Christ Devoted Virgin Mary, only Jesus in her sight, Nor is she distracted by the fate of those who go Into their bitter exile in the prison cells below

Nor does the Virgin contemplate the blessed ones who rise By Jesus’ grace and clemency, in her is no surprise, It is the Light from Light we love and from the Light we draw The strength of Christ’s immortal love and this the dying saw


129


LOVE GODDESS WITHOUT ANY LOVE

The moon is gibbous, nearly full Snow comes down like sparks of wool But in between the shifting clouds The moon rolls forth, throws off her shrouds

Shows us brightly how it might Be on a sterile satellite: Harsh with shadows, no surprises Sunlight hard and sterilizes

Eras, eons come and go, With nothing living there it glows, A mindless, loveless ball of stone Not Venus-Aphrodite’s throne

A stately eminence above, Love goddess without any love Because she moves across the sky Noiseless, nerveless, massive, dry


Waxing Gibbous MoonPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

130


THE SOUND OF THEIR WINGS

When they moved from the East to settle Nebraska In the days when the dead ones remembered were living They carved a snug house from the bulk of the hillside With sod on three sides and the wide fields beyond them At the edge of the door were a spade and a rifle One for the garden and one for the natives

On a day she went out to work in the garden With the baby beside her laid on a blanket But when she looked up she saw in the east A bluish cloud rising that came to be black Closer and higher approaching it reached To the top of the sky, and then it was on them

She picked up the baby and ran for the house But when she got in there, looked down at the baby She saw that the sweater she’d knitted of wool Had vanished, the locusts had gobbled it up The swarm that had seemed to be only the weather Was a plague from the Bible, mosaic and fearsome

What did the locusts foretell to them then? When you look to the east can you see the air rising Black as a thundercloud reaching the zenith It isn’t a storm spitting rain and white hail But a storm of the locusts, voracious and desperate The sound of their wings is the sound of the wind


131


NOT SO MUCH

We are waiting for snow to cover our sins But the winter is dry so far and cold, The hills are not white as they should be now Tired and raddled, haggard and old

Like the open expressions of withered disgust On the faces of those who have wiped away Their clouded and courteous featureless crust At the end of a tiring useless day

Come gentle snow and cover us now Higher and higher and cold to the touch You will give the impression of pureness somehow Like the robes of the blessed, but not so much


132


MARTIANS

Out into the fulminating ultraviolet blackness Seething vacuum energy and barren airlessness Of space we soon may go, by nature curious

May also launch our spacecraft to save the human race, Expel its germ of foolishness to seed another place Or else by some catastrophe die off without a trace

If and when they come to scuff the ginger Martian sand There will be some contingencies the clever had not planned—Perhaps the ship had better been un-womaned and unmanned

There is no evading loss no matter where, how far, That which brought you to this place is part of what you are In cities or beneath the sea, around another star

Quarreling and jealousy, ambition and deceit, Within the confines of the soul a man and monster meet, Nothing that was planned before is ever made complete

Why name the ruddy planet for the Roman god of war? Across the sea of emptiness there is another shore, The castaway no lonelier than castaways before


133


A SIGN TO ALL

I wished a hawk, a hawk was sent A sign to me of God’s intent, It will be young, He said, and shy And out of focus to the eye

Imperfect as your wish is so, You do not know where wishes go, And yet I showed you I am there That you may know Me and prepare

I am there in every sign To show you that the world is Mine, That every thing and living soul Is Mine, I have them in control

But when at last you have full need The hawk will come again with speed, Then full grown and with its beak And wings will teach you what to speak

The hawk will clasp you by the arm And nothing there will do you harm, With spreading wings it will present A sign to all of My intent


Young HawkPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

134


AFTER HE HAS LET US FEED AT WILL

After He has let us feed at will On light and shadow then we will be still A moment while the invitation lasts To contemplate the present and the past

Then we will abandon what we knew Fly aloft as other spirits flew To perch somewhere delightful and unknown Where others gone ahead of us have flown

How much higher can we fly, how far Ahead and even higher than we are? See that branch that grows out from a tree? It is the place where you will rest and be


At the Feeder 5Photo by Pavel Chichikov

135


O HEART, LOOK UP

O heart, look up, there is a red-tailed hawk Sliding on the deep and dense cold blue Of a winter forenoon, strong and light, Wing strut slightly quivering in flight

Drifting now in silence toward the track, The wood beside the flowing Juniata Where timid cottontails come out to gnaw The buds of sapling spruce trees on one paw

Now I know it, bashful shy young hawk That perched a day ago not far from here, It slipped just now behind the screen of spruce, I tried to see it there—it was no use

Has it made a kill and will it rest All through the freezing January night? Now in latter daylight comes the sun To shine against the snow, run rabbit run


136


HIS SIGN IS FIRE

When there is a thaw by afternoon The ice with sharp explosions drops and shatters From the roofs and cornices of houses

Ultraviolet, mauve against the snow, Burns and glares beneath the hemisphere That curves from hill to hill like sea-blue sapphire

This frost is doomed and only temporary But energy restrained will burst apart The cold that locks the Earth, the frozen heart

But see how menacing, those frozen stabbers—The smith who forges ice in flames of frost, His sign is fire by the sun embossed


IciclesPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

137


GOD HAS GRAZED THEM HERE

When you contemplate these snowy hills Think of how the rocks themselves can bend, Stand like waves when continents collide But how at last the continents can mend

When you see the town between the crests Suddenly, so quickly to be gone Think of generations who live there As shepherds who encamp and then move on

Compare them with the hills, or with the snow That grows a mound and melts again by noon, Hills and souls the same will come and go Like shadows on the bright side of the moon

Hills like these are more than soil and rock God has grazed them here, they are His flock


138


SLEEPING AT GETHSEMANE

All are frozen, locked and trapped in ice Peter in half-stride transfixed and visible Between, below, within the white hexagonals

Not compressed as water when it freezes Ice becomes a shield above the lake Nothing but the sun can make it break

Peter gazes frozen in mid-stride Sees the life below him sleeping deep In snowy winter’s torpid thrifty sleep

Sun rise higher, free us from duress Walking on the water as Christ said We fell asleep and sank beneath instead


139


IF I CAN HEAR

On Emmaus Road the Risen told The story of King David and Uriah, Of how the king deceived, betrayed and killed The faithful man, the loyal Hittite soldier

By foul guile the trustful one was slain, The murderous King David’s sign of favor Sent for base concealment of a lust From poor Uriah, David’s loyal retainer

Yet despite these crimes I gave him mercy To die in his own bed before the end Of Zion’s throne and all that he had won—Filthy crimes My Light will not defend

Richly gifts My children cannot bear: Power over others, haughtiness, But I will grant respite if I can hear Humility, the lowness to confess


140


THE REAL CANCER

The real cancer in him was his malice, An eating tumor made him ridicule Belief in a Creator, mocking fool

He drove his words like piercing white stilettos Because he thought that faith was in the brain But when he struck it pricked an outer vein

Like all aggressive cancers it took over Sections of his living soul, replaced Two quadrants of his other, human face

Something of him yet remained and fought The baleful and aggressive pinch of Hell Though one side of his spirit died and swelled

What radiation treatment might affect The fatal spread of malice inward grown? Some seeds of light within him that were sown


141


UNTIL THE WORLD’S DOWNFALL Only twelve before us and maybe at the endTwelve will be how many holy martyrs He will send,Beginning with a dozen twelve are what we need,It only wanted Christ in faith five thousand men to feed The Holy Spirit guiding, His strength will multiplyThough Faith decay to only twelve and all the rest deny,Christ will find the faithful and they will know His signThe transubstantiation of the wafer and the wine If a priest should split the Flesh until it is a crumbDraw the droplets of the Blood so many more have some,There will be Blood and Body enough to feed us allEnduring in fidelity until the world’s downfall Pavel January 31, 2016

142


PROSE POEM

Many years ago I had a dream that I was standing on a low sandy bluff above the ocean. It was very cold, just before dawn, and the sand itself was freezing. Along the bluff was a row of makeshift hovels built of driftwood and odds and ends from scrap yards, all tumble-down and blackened with the smoke of burning insulation, old rubber etc. A childhood friend of mine, an atheist, was crouched in front of one of the hovels. He was hunched with the cold, huddling near a smoky fire of burning rubber or insulation, and his person was also smirched and poor.

I went down to the water's edge, where a low regular surf was rolling in. Each gentle, foamless wave broke on the sand, and I knew that they were the waves of infinity, rolling in from infinity, from the beginning of time.

I heard a voice from where a rosy band of color was intensifying just before dawn, above the sea, where the sun was about to rise, and a great voice said: Bow down to the Emperor.

God the Creator was manifesting there in the sky just before dawn, in the band of light, and I bowed down to Him in great fervor and love and awe.

But I did not know it was God until I began to worship.

Pavel February 1, 2016

143


FARMERS

The farmer said I have a field of flourishing tall corn Ten thousand acres in Nebraska, that’s where I was born, Another farmer said I have a field of durum wheat The buyers come from Italy, it’s fit for the elite, I have fifty thousand hogs, said a farmer from Missouri I’ve won blue ribbons at the fair, my neighbors were the jury

I have got a larger farm, the Lord God Jesus said Six billion souls alive this day, and many more thought dead, I raised them from the vacuum, good light was what I used To fertilize their spirits, of them I then will choose Those who yearn to follow Me, though some may still refuse

Light I made from chaos, it was the incubator, Love is what I prize the most, I will not take a hater, I set them in My farmyard and watch them interact To see if love is in the stock, or love is what they lack, I will not harbor livestock, but only of the lover Will I accept in Paradise, and those will live forever


144


THEY CALLED HER FORTUNA

In the classical world they called her Fortuna But now she is never a female persona, They call her Statistics, no he nor a she A eunuch, a neuter Statistics must be

At least in those days she rewarded virtus Character, fortitude, being of use, A queen with a warmth in her womanly blood Wayward and fickle in her womanhood

A throw of the dice, a throw of the bones Has more of the life and less monotone, The flight of the birds from the left to the right Had the promptness of vision, directness of sight

You will come to the end of your life and your death Heart come to rest in a spasm of breath, But the soul like a sparrow flies up and goes out So then you will know what your life was about


145


MAYBE AFTER

The grass still growing green beneath the snow Uncovered by a chill revealing rain Disclosing that the autumn grass will grow

The plum tree given ground a year ago Projects a tendril branch above its head Disclosing that an autumn tree will grow

My hair is white, I find much more to know About myself and other people too Disclosing that an aging soul can grow

Can we complete our growing time or no? Not in this life I think but maybe after The time for snow but not the time for laughter


146


AS MARY VIRGIN DID

As Mary Virgin did so does this mother, A shawl of wool supports her precious child, She is the next Madonna and another Confidently gentle, deep and mild

I know the street she lives on near the town Not Nazareth but also on a height, Her Joseph might be working in construction Her Jesus is her infant and delight

Many crucifixions to an age God save Him from the cross that is to be, The jealousy of emptiness is savage, May his mother’s love be like the sea

Returning and returning, ever youthful Crowned with lace of ivory and with blue, Ancient in replenishment and primal Moving, ever moving, ever new


Allegheny MadonnaPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

147


WINTER WRENS

Like fireflies the snowflakes flit Buds on trees like candles lit, What has mixed the seasons so That now is sunshine, now is snow?

A house of birds is emptiest When there is promise of a nest, But not so far in February The residence is cold, unready

Crows on branches cry aloud Now is sunshine, now is cloud, Winter wrens have trusted, stayed, They know that Spring is not delayed


Spring to ComePhoto by Pavel Chichikov

148


THAT GREAT LIGHT For Dorothy Sayers

She tells us that heaven is the presence of God If so we have all been to Heaven’s long outskirts So near, so far from the glorious gates

But when a priest raises the Lord’s body heavenwards And I offer my homage by pressing my hand To my heart and lifting it upwards and outwards

I am closer to God than ever than otherwise That moment before God’s heaven consumed So little becomes, of indefinite size

So that we behold a great glorious city Of light beyond light beyond what we see And yet that great Light can inhabit me


149


WHO KNOWS WHEN

Two went out to fish above the lake A biting north wind catching at the face, They took their fishing rods but by mistake They left the ice drill in another place

The floor was firm and how to break below? A stamping foot was all they had to use, One jumped and landed on the other’s toe Between them there was not a brain to choose

This is what we call modernity, It sits and freezes while the life within Goes on and is impossible to see And who knows when the melting will begin?


Ice Fishing 1Photo by Pavel Chichikov

150


SCALES

Ananias visited St. Paul Who blinded by the light of risen Christ Sat helpless there and could not see at all

But when he had received the words of hope Coverings like scales fell from his eyes, He saw new light and did not have to grope

I show to you what scales these were and why These coverings congealed and made him blind: Tears unwept that had sealed up his eyes

The world has stifled tears it needs to weep For sufferings imposed and pain received—A corpse that weeps awakes from stony sleep


151


IN THE DARKNESS WHERE YOU STAND

There is a fund of courage Sealed up in a vault, A trust in time exhausted Although by no one’s fault

Then the soul goes naked Will shiver in the frost In regions long forsaken, The wastelands of the lost

Somehow it may summon Assistance in its need As angels came to Jesus His emptiness to feed

You will need more courage Till angels come at last, Let there be loved ones near you From the present and the past

But if there be no people In the darkness where you stand, The lights that came to Jesus Will lead you from that land


152


DELETED OR NOT

I deleted some photos Four kids on a lake, Much to my sorrow Expunged by mistake

Let the world be a program As someone has said, Is that how I am When I’ve joined with the dead?

Deleted and gone From the cosmic hard drive, Do we only go on When we are alive?

Or is there a way That the image is saved To keep us in play Instead of the grave?

Is all information Forever maintained, The soul’s evolution Forever sustained?

I think we will find We are more than the brain, We are made by a Mind In a Mind we remain


153


A STRANGE PHENOMENON

In the cavern of the Nibelungen Dwarfs are hammering the gold Of high and great Burgundians Who serve the Huns in days of old

Hammering the golden rings Of power over storms at sea, Light and darkness in all things, Those golden magic annuli

So they believe, that noble clan, The dwarves their slaves who must produce Three dozen of that specimen By midnight or go to the noose

With those rings they will compel The Huns to gather in one field And by the power of the spell The rings project the Huns must yield

But something in their scheming lacked For as the first round ring was made A dwarf destroyed the mold of wax And so their strategy betrayed

That when invited to a feast Where Huns and Germans drank and fed The Germans’ courage much decreased Re-introduced them to their dread

Attila drank his goblet up Belched and smiled and made this speech: Listen, do not interrupt Judgment measures each to each

As your dwarves by animus And for ill-treatment interfered With what you planned, so as with us You are the slaves Attila feared

We also are the slaves to such A power that we could resent, A being in another’s clutch And so on to the firmament

154


It is a mystery to where The scale of power can ascend, But we must meet and so prepare To feel that power at the end

Then Attila took his bow And pierced a shadow which moved on, “See where every shot must go,” He said, “a strange phenomenon.”


155


A LUNCH NEAR MOSFELL

In Iceland a couple was living near Mosfell He was called Sigurthur, she was Shvanhulda They lived on a hill near a cold running trout stream

Shvanhulda recounted a story of death That day long ago when I was a guest That when she was small she dove in a pool

That somehow she sank like a rock to the bottom There she lay dying, and as she departed She said to herself, this isn’t so bad

In fact I must say I’ve never felt better As a warmth and a languor spread through her body Peace and a sense that all was quite well

More than all well, that dying is going That death is a doorway inviting us through To the end of all suffering, light everlasting

Then she was saved by someone who saw her Plunged into death and brought her to life At the edge of the swimming pool where she was dying

She said she’d resented the act of the saving Because it was wonderful crossing that threshold Feeling the warmth and the peace of the light

She’d wanted to stay where she was in the pool To go on and onward to where she was going Not to come back to our ignorant world

As she told this their son went down to the trout stream And brought back two fish, a trout and a salmon Which he drew from a pool with a rod and a hook


156


ICE CRYSTALS IN THE AIR

Ice crystals in the air The falling sun is huge Refracted through the ice

After many eons When the failing sun expands It seems this large from Earth

The sun is bright and pale A russet-fire opal Overpowering the sky

Here’s how God presents The future to the past At sunset in the winter

When the Earth is old The sun will spread upon it And overwhelm the sea

The mountains will be melted As Scripture has foretold When souls are safe in heaven

And what is heaven then But the presence of the Lord Here and now and ever-when


157


FULFILLING ORDERS

His Dad worked at the steel plant in Aliquippa Five miles long it stretched from end to end, When he drove to work and parked his car He walked an hour to his station at the hearth

Listen now, those jobs and plants are gone And with them went the spirit of this country—A loss producing spiritual dread So do not ask me why the rage and desperation

Damn these cubicles and waiters’ aprons These cashiers’ stations at the checkout counters, These warehouse journeys where the aisles are long Filling orders for what others make abroad

We are born and made to help ourselves To pour that steel is better than to rust


158


SAFE WITHIN AN INNER ROOM

Flowers on the window sill, Glass transmitting winter light But not the outer winter chill—Warmth within but cold by sight

Flowers shine from every leaf Emit the fragrance of the sun, But those professing disbelief Know not where shining has begun

Safe within an inner room They think the world is what we make, Safely summer they assume Though soon the window pane may break


Winter GardenPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

159


DARKNESS IS THE WING OF WAR We scattered seeds and down there cameAll the birds that we could name,Sparrows, starlings, doves and wrensAll were separate, had no friends Then descended one black crowStrutting on the recent snow,Black and even blacker thanObsidian, volcanic sand Black as our depressive moods,The birds would not go near their food,Scattered to the chestnut treesWhere they were hidden but could see Folded wings and watched the crow,Fled as it began to growBigger in the gloom of itSwelling in the size of it Opened wings and spread them wide,From the eyes on either sideDarkness flowing as it gazedDarkness on the fences glazed Deeper blackness dropped and spread,Till the snow was black insteadSeeping darkness to the airThrough the garden then elsewhere Till the houses and the roadsWere heaped with darkness in its loads,Built a black unclean snowfallClosing round us like a wall Then the crow began to springUpwards till it took to wing,Trailing darkness as it roseNothing greater could oppose

160


Darkness is the wing of warBlindness that we knew beforeThat will return again, againWhen we are separate, have no friends Pavel February 15, 2016

161


FROM ROOT TO BRANCH

The plum tree sapling sleeved in ice Will never grow in Paradise, But in this world and in this age The exile of our parentage

We the living frozen in The clothing of our natal sin So that we stand inflexibly Locked as this hibernal tree

Let the world of winter thaw According to eternal law That what has frozen lives again From root to branch to branch’s end


Plum Tree SaplingPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

162


MOST STRANGE

The owl sits her soft deep brooding Day and night, night and day Two eagles leave their nest of branches One is not prepared to lay

The eagles fly above the valley Soar above the frozen lake, Footprints lead from side to side As legends of the prey to take

There beside the winter shore Crows are stepping two by two, They peck the leavings of the kill The bowels that the eagles drew

In and out of time they live In and out and in and out, Owing nothing to forgive, Free of sorrow and of doubt

When I was a little child I wanted to be just like these, Free of all that is defiled To soar in rapture as I please

Now I know that I have grown That to be human is most strange, That we are not for self alone That wings for spirits we exchange


163


Most StrangePhoto by Pavel Chichikov

164


WHAT SPIRITS SEEM TO BE

I see their shadows slide along the snow But they are out of sight to those below; Who are they we speak of but deny? Silent as a silhouette they fly

I hear the muffled whisper of their wings News of something marvelous it brings, Only flesh and bone unless unseen And then they are the spirits that I mean

Do not compare the little with the great Do not compare the early with the late, But they are shy and seldom manifest Except when they are sacramental guests

Sunless they are difficult to see Shadows are what spirits seem to be


165


A DEEP RED DAWN

A deep red dawn by which they say Sailors to take warning may And surely wind and cold arose, Puddles on the paving froze

Perhaps the heart and soul froze too As redness in the dawn sky grew, Intense it spread but soon to fade It made a passing masquerade

Trees which hid the dawning face Their limbs before it interlaced, Interposed their separate screen, Has it sense or nothing mean?

There is a meaning in the mind And in the soul another kind, To marry these together would Improve the chance of common good

But we forget the way to read—Split between the stalk and seed—The omen and the ominous The promise and the perilous


Dawn LightPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

166


IF A FISH CAN SING

If this is what comes from the bed of the lake What from the bottom of the mind and the soul, This stiff-eyed blame, this cold mistake

Never a native fish nor another It rose to the surface during a thaw From beneath a pane of silver luster

What will it take to unfreeze the heart And if it should melt what will arise From the stiff un-giving, living part?

A dead cold fish is a curious bird—What is beneath the ice in us? If a fish can sing can a song can be heard?


Mystery FishPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

167


THE HONOR

The nail that pierced the flesh of Christ Was never lost or forged again But hidden in the secret place It pierces you and me unseen

The nail of hate, the nail of haste The sharpness of the piercing wound Of love abandoned, pity lost Trust misplaced and never found

It wounded me when unaware I stretched my hand out to receive A gift unearned, the nail was there The same that caused the Christ to grieve

A crown of thorns is every crown That takes the high officious place, Take off the circlet, put it down It is the honor of disgrace

Pavel February

168


A FARTHING FOR A SPARROW

A farthing for a sparrow? That was long ago—How much for a human soul? A price that God will know

He reckoned out his flesh and blood As payment on a cross, A recompense uncredited Though dreadful was the loss

We see the value every day Above the holy Mass, It is before us constantly—Forgive us our trespass

That even as a sparrow is So wonderful a thing, With clever eyes and marvelous And nimble on the wing

We disregard the heavy price For souls so much of worth That payment of the sacrifice Was forfeited at birth


SparrowPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

169


COME AND BATHE

This is the well of truth and life Where birds of light come down to rest To drink their fill beside the blessed

But in this world they turn to bronze Their patina the crust of sin The life in them must yet begin

They dip their brazen beaks to drink But nothing flows to life corrupt And they can draw no moisture up

But there are circles angels stir As in the pool that Jesus knew Where rings of healing seraphs drew

There it stands, the circles spread Come and bathe, you will be healed The life within you be revealed

The birds will bend their heads and sip Because you have the faith to wade Into the sunlight from the shade


The WellPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

170


THOUGHT AND MEMORY

Three flew over, spruce to spruce Through the flurry of late winter Hid themselves from their tormentor

Wind that penetrates the skin Even through the densest feathers As a killing tempest gathers

But they can wait through any storm Because they find a sheltered limb To perch and shift and caw within

Are they truly so immortal? Who has ever seen a crow Dead, decaying on the snow?

Their cousins are the northern ravens—They say they are the wisest birds Whose calls amount to simple words

In myth they sat on Odin’s shoulders Bringing word of all that passed But even these have died at last

They perished by the faith of ChristHuginn, Muninn were their names Before Valhalla fell in flames

Thought and Memory they were Which you and I can still project Beyond the bounds of intellect

As the wind begins to swell Our thoughts take wing and go abroad And who can know what they go toward?

Thought can see what eye cannot Memory directs the flight Sees without the need for light


171


THE WHITE ROSE

Before he died he posted this The card said this: “See you in Heaven” He’d had two heart attacks before

He never wore a white-cloud hat He died and then had been revived Hit the floor and then got up

A sort of doctor’s resurrection That should preclude a blissed-out mood In anyone who’s had illusions

I came across the card today As a bitter wind blew through the yard Making the limber spruce tree sway

I think if he and I should meet I’d be so glad to see him there At the white and mystic Rose of Light

Where rising on each petal-stair Saints adore the flame above Praise and glorify Christ’s love


172


NO WONDER

By dusk it is discovered It swells with golden light, Then while bearing upward It sails into the night

But then it is familiar A fond geometry In orbit locked together It shines inhumanly

Although it is a person More than we can know With some divine intention Revealed to those below

No wonder to the ancients She was a very goddess With meteoric pendants And Venus in her bodice


Burning MoonPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

173


FROM ARLINGTON CEMETERY

See the great vista across the Potomac The White House and Capitol and the green Mall, Twenty-four decades exactly in all—May the Republic last twenty-four more? Presumption has always been mankind’s downfall

Many are severed from God and the land A nation now fragile had always been strong, Uncertain to which of the two they belong: To be for themselves or each for the other, Private advantage or right against wrong

Either we stand together as one Or fail as we are no matter how clever, Nations have souls and the soul is forever, Steady in virtue or we are undone


174


WAITING AT THE AIRPORT FOR A FLIGHT

Not more an earthly Paradise but less And less and less this anxious, troubled world—I saw the passengers arrive, depart

Arrive, depart, but none conceived their goal Until they had arrived and then surprised Beheld the bleakness that they had created

The barrenness that had created them—They are the dry reciprocals of Hell Unless they love and still unless they love

Anxiously they seek the new arrivals A friend to meet them at the gates of Hell Somewhere to arrive and not depart

Pavel March 1, 2016

175


WHEN I BECAME NOTHING BUT A QUESTION

When I became nothing but a question I received an answer

Saint Therese quotes the Imitation Sometimes God appears in great light Sometimes veiled in signs and figures

Now foolish one, will you have no Faith For I am the One who dwells In unapproachable light

Around me turn the souls of the blessed Who know that my way is the way of joy And here I am in my column of light

Around me turn the souls of the blessed Drawn to my joy as bees to their hive Who are my signs and figures

I am a dwelling, a pillar, a sign of contentment There is no death at all For I am life

Pavel March 2, 2016

176


SHE SAW THE DARK PLANES

She saw the dark planes flying overhead In a bright, sunlit sky So she ran towards the houses on the hilltop Shouting: Blackout! Blackout! Although in daylight there could be none

Save them, save them, she thought But it was her heart that the war planes covered With their deep black shadows—Then may they pass over and leave her sky To the brilliant light of day

Pavel March 5, 2016

Air & SpacePhoto by Pavel Chichikov

177


FREEDOM’S MIGHTY FORTRESS

Shakedown at the airport, Guilt is the presumption, Therefore at one upset The common law’s uncommon

The docile stand exposed By fear’s docility, Fumble through their clothes Against their liberty

How clever of our rivals To find the weakest spot, The purpose of survival Becomes a civil rot

O that Swift were with us To spell the paradox: Freedom’s mighty fortress Has no walls or locks

Pavel March 6, 2016

178


MICHELLE

Two hundred million years of hills Michelle lived not twelve and yet No one ever mourned like this For rock and scree and parapet

Rain fell down but never wept, Snow was not a shroud for them, Ancient but unfeeling hills Which could not cry or chant a hymn

Which could not cry aloud for her Nor had remembrance of the sweet And childish voice that found a tune, Who laid it at their stony feet

Pavel March 7, 2016

MichellePhoto by Pavel Chichikov

179


TRUMPETERS

Why stop here in Pennsylvania East of your known common range, Then to fly to far Alaska, Resting here would seem most strange

The second week of March you break Your flight to gather tubers fromThe bottom of this shallow lake—From what wintering do you come?

Now you stretch your neck and call, Great Trumpeter what do you say, Swan of winter, summer, fall: Rest before we fly away?

Swans have few but mighty words And these have power few can know Who have not listened to the birds, And these departed long ago

Pavel March 8, 2016

SwansPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

180


WHO COUNTS HOW COSTLY ARE THE GRAINS

A hornet walks my window screen, The second week in March is warm, The first of those that I have seen The first of summer’s burning swarm

Ebony her abdomen, legs of thrilling orange gold And though she moves beyond my sight I have seen her manifold, Her wings translucent horn and bright

The Jeweler of the universe Has fashioned eyes to be again Picked with lines of precious dust—Who counts how costly are the grains ?

Why do we say she’s beautiful As well as trimly closely made? God the Master artisan Presents the creatures of His trade

Pavel March 9, 2016

181


THEY BEAT THE AIR

Three mallards swift from risen sunrise Wing-beats fresh from crimson blessings Drive straight onwards into day

Are they born within the sun? No but yet the star engenders All that lives and so it does

Hatch them from its golden furnace So now with fire in their breasts They beat the air with flames of joy

Pavel March 10, 2016

182


MY SACRIFICE

Two mallards resting in the creek Reed-clutched, stagnant since the fall, The current being shallow, weak, The winter ice was like a wall

They perceive me though surprised, Disturbed they fling themselves aloft With labored wing-beats then arise Into a sunshine warm and soft

Perhaps they would have nested here But I distressed the mating pair, God defend them from all fear Let them build a nest elsewhere

My sacrifice to God because So careless I was camera-less , By which according to His laws The ducks are His in thankfulness


183


ON THEIR WAY TO THE NORTH

On their way to the north they stop here to dabble Drakes and their ducks they quack and they gabble, Away from the shore they float and they feed—Raccoons and foxes may lurk in the reeds

Weeds and their tubers their fodder provides Where bluegills are lurking and snap turtles hide, Then to the air and on to the nest Winged by desire that burns in the breast

We who are floating above a dark deep In wakefulness sleeping but often asleep Rummage the depths of the lake of desire To feed on the leaf of the plant which is fire

Then take a leap through the heaven of night Behind which is darkness and then a great light, Rummage the depths of a heavenly lake For the treasure of love that can make the heart break


DabblingPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

184


STUBBORNLY WAITING

Stubbornly waiting by her mother’s bedside But the ashen old woman composes for night Yes, like a fire burnt out is she is white

The young one is waiting for nothing she knows But the old woman knows what passage draws near And has nothing to say that her daughter can hear

Listen, we too will be waiting some day But no one who sits there will understand why We are silent and see nothing worse than to cry

The young one is grim-faced and as silent as death Stares at the wall with expressionless grief But the old one is tired and waits for relief

She is white as a heap of ashen dead coals But a fire within stays stubbornly lit To be passed to the daughter who doggedly sits


185


HOW EVEN NOW

The gliding gulls are in from sea, Scavengers and yet they bear Scent of ocean on their wings—Remark their flight and then prepare

Because the storm that drives them in Will fling the wind and driving rain To smash the wooden houses flat—What property can still remain?

Brothers, sisters, come with us, The line across the land is thin So when we wheel above and cross We are the allies of the wind

How calm it seems to those below The overcast is gray and thick But we who come from ocean know How even now the rollers lick


186


WE LEARN TO LOVE BY LOVING

We learn to love by loving The well of love runs deep, Through many dries it never fails Through granite it can seep

Wanderers will find it When almost dead of thirst, Then they draw the water up Let dying do its worst

Many tales have told it, Rebecca at the well, Jesus at the well of one Whose story He could tell

We search the world around us To see who we can find Who has the well within her In spirit, soul and mind

When we have slaked the dryness Our eyes can see the green That grows forever on the hills That others have not seen


187


I DREAMED…

I dreamed that she was dead and then Her death a dream and life goes on— See, your grievous dream of death Can show My Resurrection’s truth

You wake to light to see her live Which then becomes the gift I give: To rise from death and bring to life The child, the parent and the wife

I am the Light who loving-made The light and its apparent shade, The dream dispersed the wakeful say That death the shadow flows away


188


EVEN NOW

Even now we eat and drink As the clouds move overhead As we work and as we rest As we rise and go to bed

The saved are moving towards the light The fringes of the flowing robe Which mantles God in mystery As they vanish from our sight

Dressed in light beyond all seeing And they who see Him laugh and yearn Like children reaching for the sun Who then can touch and not be burned


189


THE FIRST TRANSFIGURATION

They laid their robes on dusty cobbles And the dainty hooves of the foal passed over, Sunlight and powder, folds of the cloth Beneath the world’s disguised commander

The Jews’ expensive capes of honor Threads of gold, a Persian sunrise Laid for the Master’s beast to scuff Garments flushed with Persian dyes

As He who will cloak in crimson robes When He rises up to bring His grace Threw down his glorious golden light To live with us and show His face


190


THE RAIN AND THE BOW

In early spring sunshine the wind from the north Sped through the hills with a menacing breath, I come for the life of the savior called Christ To the spear and the cross, the crown and the dice

To the hill of the skull, the pillar, the whip That makes the tormented one shiver and skip, And I will be there to freeze on the wounds Chill so they pain Him, and fever Him soon

But the wind from the south that comes from the sun Flowed through the desert for life had begun, Lifted the clouds that come from the west Mist from the sea was lifted and blessed

Mist was released and covered the hills, Spring of the flowering came and fulfilled The promise of God, the rain and the bow And how it will end only Jesus will know


191


THIS FRIDAY OR ANOTHER

Easy to be His when love goes well Preaching, healing, miracles and signs But not beneath the cross-beams on the hill

For then the awful vigor of the State Moves and pulverizes what it will Relentless in its purpose and its weight

He knew that they were weaker than that power Thrice the affirmation of their faintness That in a hidden room His friends would cower

Now then, to His testing will you follow? There will be a sign that you will hear This Friday or another it will crow


192


THE SMALL IMITATION OF CHRIST

With a master’s precision the wound doctor works Debriding dead skin on the leg and the heel, The scab and the skin on the mending leg Head bent close to the careful removal

Spectacles fixed near the top of his nose Like a jeweler who slices the facets of diamonds Or an artist who fixes the tiles of mosaics And in truth it is work of a fine artisan

Straight to his work with his gloves on his hands No hesitation is how it should be He places the scalpel and scissors just so No tremor or trembling, perfectly steady

This is the small imitation of Christ Whenever an artist has mastered his art With great self-assurance and nothing of waste In motion, decision, he looks and he starts


193


MAGNOLIA

They came to be before the bees These ancient plants so that they were A favorite of God when He Strolled the aisles of Paradise

Their carpels tough that could repel Beetles who would pollinate In place of Apis in those days Before a calendar or date

To serve the bees these stunning flowers Dinosaurs would love to eat, Watch a sauropod devour Tons of these to serve as meat

Though dinosaurs have passed away Despite their craving’s fierce display The tree held on to see our spring A perch to let the robin sing

And while a sauropod might blow It surely could not peep a song Beneath the petals white as snow And pink as sunrise one week long


First FloweringPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

194


BELOVED

The chief priest had a plum tree brought From the Lebanon and kept it close In his private garden, it was caught

A slim exotic soul that cowered But when on Sabbath eve the Christ Was crucified the plum tree flowered

Though stiff winds from the mountains blew Inside the Temple, safe, it showed But those who saw it so were few

As priests and elders stood and watched Small blossoms led along the boughs Which no one had the heart to snatch

The priest thought this: a sign that grows—He gave the gardener a plan And loved the blossoms, pink, and white as snow


Young PlumPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

195


PSALM FOR GOOD FRIDAY

In spring a cold wind runs along the ridge line It comes from Hermon and from farther north Even from the Taurus and the Caucasus Swelling fist-sized cherries in the braziers

Hissing through the dry fronds of palm trees In such a dawn is Jesus crucified White sand driven toward the black felt tents Or Jericho, the mouthless dark Dead Sea

This is the setting though it is not theater The sun pours golden sinless light against The sinless Corpus on the bitter cross Light indifferent, beautiful and old

There are two worlds and each deserves a place, Creation only Christ could have conceived And then the world of pity and of love But these two worlds the souls of us must weave


196


ALL THE CLEVER

One more spring but will there be Another season? Who can see? Even with the strongest lens Beyond tonight the future ends

Becomes a speculation in The odds which make the planets spin Around the brilliance of a star—The future runs, who knows how far?

But we have faith because we know Forever backward it was so But never forward yet suppose In March the plum tree flowers, grows

Someday there will be surprise Astonishment for simple eyes, The Lord will come to bring much more Than all the clever bargained for


197


WHEN SHE HAS DRESSED

Look, said the rabbi, who opened a window You say that a human rose up from the dead So whether He rose or whether not so— The same as before, confusion and dread

Resurrection should matter, but nothing has changed The weak and the poor still suffer and weep, If He has risen the outcome is strange— Satan has kingdoms to rule and to keep

On the first day of Easter I saw something other A plum tree with blossoms and also a pear, Either Creation must dress all together Or lady-like moan she has nothing to wear

But when she is given her new dress of clothes Joy and the grace of her infinite light, There will be dancing she dances in those And when she has dressed she will dance with delight


198


YOU HAVE BEEN BANNED BY THE CATHOLIC HERALD

The other night, the moon had set On the wall, a silhouette Loomed in menace then intoned In something like a muffled moan:

Your handle with us is imperiled Barred by the London Catholic Herald, The only one in the UK And we have banned you just today

You cannot comment any more But why? We never tell what for—Perhaps your rotten posted verse But anyway, you have our curse

We will not answer your e-mail Our silent wall will never fail We are the staff imperial Our manners editorial

But if you are an atheist Or put the Church on your black-list Hate the Faith, the Christ eschew The Herald always welcomes you

It made the wall so clammy cold That down the wall the droplets rolled Followed by a mass of mold And that is what the specter told


199


SO MUCH LIKE A SHIP OF STONE

The Allegheny Front, a bluff and massive prow, Bursts beneath the Erie fetch, a wind from the west A following sea of air that lifts cold mist above the hills So much like a ship of stone gone underway, unmoored

Walk up and down the deck, the skin is chilled, recoils But as you take the steeper slopes the body heals from cold And the soul forgets anxiety by moving, climbing—We are made to move because all else in God must move

He alone, eternal, watches from above, a good commander He is the Skipper and the Engineer, the night watch and the navigator Even that which stands unmoving moves, it is the law But few have ever seen Him in His cabin, at his table


200


BUT AFTERWARD Be still a moment western windHeartbeat in this hemisphere:No, I have a chill to bringMy western sky is blue and clear But just a while I will relentIn honor of the Magdalen,Warm sunshine is her elementThat fell in stripes across the garden They dazzled her astonished eyesSo that she could not see His faceUntil He spoke, then her surpriseMade her breathing, heartbeat race Then I stopped, the air was stillI let her grasp His holy feet,But afterward beneath the hillI tossed the heads of growing wheat Pavel March 29, 2016

201


ROBERT

I asked him: are you really pagan All those ladies of the moon, The soul inside the Irish salmon The satyr’s sleepy afternoon?

He said: It was the war that made me Search for wholeness in the tales Framed by spreading rowan trees, Sun and shade that never fails

But here they keep it in a park Or even in a handsome jar, The song of some ascending lark Is large enough, she won’t go far

But there’s another music here I know or my name isn’t Graves Out of which I climbed last year, Purgatory makes you brave

How wonderful it is, how rare A true and brilliant poet-song, But there’s enough here to compare, The sun can listen all day long


202


WHAT THE PRAYERS OF MAIDENS LOOK LIKE

In the lake beneath the Novodevichy Two ivory swans went swimming towards us Stopped and gazed as we stood on the bridge The water was green and black beneath them

Really they are true ivory swans Their eyes are yellow opals set In their sleek and ivory swept-back heads And their paddles too are yellow leather

I remember the dark red brick of the walls And think of the maidens’ prayers that drifted Over the water for generations, Surely not all of them can be lost


203


THE SWEET ENCHANTMENT

As I walked to Mass today Two mallards passed me shoulder height Rowing strongly as if sent By hills that kindled in the light

In urgent flight they rose behind me Aiming for the eastward dawn And as they went I turned and saw Across the sky a veil was drawn

Hastened to their own royal mass Which every soul that hears has heard Sung for One who dwells in light, The celebration of the birds

The adoration of the dawn Which all assemble for and bring The sweet enchantment of their praise, The choir of the throat and wing


204


FLOWER SLOWLY AND BE WISE

The Earth still breathes, the pear tree shows How much the Cultivator knows, The secret craft of giving much Without the open need to touch

Now tell me, if design were free Could you invent a young pear tree, A world around it, light and atom Craftsmanship exalting heaven?

Construct the stamen, pistil, petal All as one, conformable—Knowing how it must be so Then like the pear tree you would grow

Like a stem your soul would rise Flower slowly and be wise Until you knew where each should be: The Earth, the sky, the young pear tree

Pavel April 1, 2016

Pear Tree BlossomingPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

205


HAPPY ARE THOSE WHO ENDURE FOR THE KINGDOM

Happy are those who endure for the Kingdom Who share in the pain of the agonized One On the bleakness of hills in the blaze of the sun

If the priest with the blade has chosen the lamb As the Lord chose the son of Abraham Happy are those who endure for the Kingdom

If the rule of the prince of the world has begun And the time of his shroud of concealment is done Happy are those who endure for the Kingdom

If everyone else is subdued and struck dumb Sunrise and sunset like strokes of a drum Happy are those who endure for the Kingdom

Even if no one can know it but them They have followed the angels to Bethlehem Happy are those who endure for the Kingdom

Pavel April 2, 2016

206


THERE IS A TUNNELED PLACE

There is a tunneled place within the human soul Where from within I saw a landscape green and light And there took refuge with me and I saw in flight

A being, whether angel guardian or some other kind, Invincible to evil come to guard me in that sanctuary—It flew in every mode as lightly as a honey bee

A sort of guardian or elvish good companion And it could fly or hover at its will completely free—Sipped happiness as nectar then spread harmony A frozen screen like foam half-grew across the portal Because the evil force abroad had stricken with a frost The countryside beyond where harmony was lost

And that happy creature, guardian or other, who stayed with me Was by a strength malign unable to move forward As if its mode of movement and its spirit had been severed

Strong-mindedly I crossed the screen and went beyond But when I glanced behind I saw the spirit stand, depart—It could not be kept prisoner in the chambers of a heart

But when it left that haven the sprite no longer flew But followed on determined foot to where I had appeared The slow dominions of the dense, their provinces of fear

Pavel April 3, 2016

207


FIVE BIRCHES

Nearly home, five birch trees wait Silver souls with black bark girds Whose presence is the sun and rain, The decades are their silver words

As we pass we place our hands Around their girths and rest a while, They are the living beauties here Who can submit to every trial

If the country is burnt out The birch will come and fill the land With shining silver columns till They are a temple as they stand

They are the tree of Tir na nÓg The Celtic heaven of the dead But we are Christian so we love Their noble countenance instead

Their hearts are slow to beat but strong And as we take them in embrace The rhythm that we feel is long And fixes longing to this place

Pavel April 3, 2016

Five BirchesPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

208


A TALE OF TWO NESTS

In a nest two Great Horned Owls, Tigers of the Air Hatching white eggs into terrors, bearing year by year

In another Bald Eagles sit over two unborn chicks Unhatched in their eggs on a nest of dirty twisted sticks

Which nest is the City of God, fertile, good and wild? Which is the City of Man, sterile, confined and defiled?

In the night the new owls will glide, noiseless, vital and swift But the eagles will fail to pass over their own life’s light gift

On the hunt the owls will follow the rat in faint starlight But no eagles will hunt for the salmon by keenest eagle sight

The City of God has no edges, it will flourish forever and spread The City of Man is corrupted, the gray Nest of the Dead

Pavel April 4, 2016

209


TWO AMBULANCES

Two ambulances ran in absolute darkness They carried you in the one ahead I drove in the car between the two

Nothing but headlights and running lights The darkness around them after midnight As I steered, as it turned, for the one ahead

He knew the way to the hospital Decisively turned as I followed his lights As I did not, my faith in him

Every few moments I looked in the mirror At the following one, it came behind Faithful to follow, the other to lead

Nothing ahead but an open question: What is to be when we arrive? There were no sirens but we moved quickly

We drive through the darkness until we stop Not knowing what is to be at the end Keeping the road by fidelity

Not knowing the darkness to either side In the darkness perpetual turn by turn The future ahead and the past behind

Pavel April 5, 2016

210


WATCH OUT! With thanks to Henry Beston

Watch out! It lives here. It is the color of the wall It does not want to see you, meet you. It belongs to another nation and entry is denied. Dogs will be ripped from belly to stern. Your hand will be gashed from palm to heel. You could shave with its teeth, and a close one too. It is neither friendly nor unfriendly. Those are your categories and not applicable. You might as well be from another dimension. Stay there.

Sometimes the groundskeepers trap it and Down into a barrel of water it goes, trap and all Bubbles come up and then there is nothing Hostility is mutual

And yet on a warm spring morning another came out for a sniff. Amiable, curious, drowsy it let down its guard. You see what happened? It was a dog that slid alongside. With a canine smile it clamped the hairy neck and choked And clamped some more and shook and so It does not want to see you, meet you It belongs to another nation and entry is denied

Pavel April 5, 2016

The LairPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

211


THE MIGHTY SPACES OF THE AIR

No one sees me, if they do They all discount my point of view, I am small, invisible The sky is great and wonderful

And yet I see from here to there The mighty spaces of the air, No matter that I am so small Size is nothing, light is all

God has given me the sky Lightness, boldness and an eye And what I see is everything At which I blink, and look and sing

Pavel April 6, 2016

Vantage PointPhoto by Pavel Chichikov

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