Autumn Harvest: Selected Poems [1 ed.] 9780773581906, 9780773526488

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A u t u m n

Harvest

The Fontanus Monograph Series and the journal Fontanus published by the McGill University Libraries are devoted to the exploration and presentation of the collections of the McGill University Libraries museums and archives. Director of McGill University Libraries and Margery Trenholme Chair: Frances Groen For Monograph and Journal listings see pp. 319-20

Autumn Selected Poems

Harvest

STANLEY

BRICE

FROST

Fontanus Monographs Editor: Hans Moller Vol. XIV Autumn Harvest Selected Poems Stanley Brice Frost This book was designed by David Leblanc and typeset in 11/15 Sabon Printing: AGMV Marquis Paper: (acid free) offset Mohawk Vellum ©Stanley Brice Frost zooz All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the permission of the author. I S B N 0-7717-0603-0 Published by The McGill University Libraries, 3459 McTavish Street, Montreal PQ, Canada H3A lYi Distributed by McGill-Queens University Press 3430 McTavish Street, Montreal PQ, Canada H3A 1X9

CONTENTS

Foreword: Peter McNally vii Preface ix

Something for My Friends i Days of Grace and Favour 4 9 Drawn at a Venture 101 Memoranda 139 A Tale of Two Books 197 Millennial Melange 243 Gold, Frankincense and Myrhh 291 Index 317

F O R E W O R D

M A K I N G L E A P S OF F A I T H look easy is a particular gift of Stanley Frost. And the leaps of faith have been many. In the 19508 he accepted an invitation to leave Britain to teach at McGill. Throughout a distinguished career, he has successfully undertaken a range of positions: Old Testament scholar, Dean of Divinity, Dean of Graduate Studies and Research, Vice-Principal, and University Historian. Steady streams of books, monographs and journal articles have emerged at every stage of his career. As an ordained minister he has dealt with a variety of congregations, and faced the constant challenge of reconciling belief and the demands of the world. And so it is with his poetry, which he also manages to make seem easy, as if any public man can reveal his private side to the world without cost. Until he began publishing his poetry some ten years ago, many of his friends would have assumed that Stanley would be typical of most people in only dealing with the human condition - value, meaning, fulfilment, happiness - in a private and interior manner. Indeed, in 1984, when Margaret Gillett and Kay Sibbald's A Fair Shake: Autobiographical Essays by McGill Women was published, Stanley speculated in appreciation that such public revelations came more easily to women than to men. Today, however, after the publication of seven little books of poetry, now collected in this volume, it is clear that he also has chosen to

provide a public profile of his inner life and concerns. He obviously believes like the women that sharing can be helping. What then can we say about this body of poetry? To begin with, there is a deceptive ease to the poems in terms of technique, subject matter and attitude, which are generally optimistic, accessible and life-affirming, but are also accompanied by distinct values and beliefs. The care, consideration and craftmanship that characterize Stanley's other accomplishments are equally at work in his poetry. The range of styles, including rhyme, metre and free verse, employed in the volume are impressive. Nursery pieces, songs, and haiku epigrams intermingle with longer narrative poems which often end with a sting in the tail. That the volume is autobiographical will go without saying to those who know our author. For those who do not know him, the poems can be grouped under a number of broad topics: people, family, vacations, nature, public events, faith, reason and religion, the interior life and the passage of time. The seasons and events of the years since 1989 are particularly prominent. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the massacre of women students at 1'universite de Montreal strike resonant notes. Some poems are biographical sketches of famous figures like Napoleon. Others deal with philosophical or historical themes. Yet others are humorous. As one might expect, religion plays a prominent role in Stanley's poetry. But it is the religion of optimism and hope, not fatalism or despair. He finds faith and salvation in nature and everyday life as well as in scripture and theology. In short, Stanley Frost emerges as his own Boswell, living by his own Credo: "I believe in God, the Church and the University." The public and the private man are reconciled. PETER MCNALLY November, 2.002.

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PREFACE

IT WOULD APPEAR FITTING that an explanation, if not an apology, should be offered that an author who has published in two very different areas should, after retirement from those endeavours, then presume to appear before his friends and colleagues in yet a third. But that is the situation in which the present writer finds himself: by education a biblical scholar and theologian, by fortunate chance a University historian and biographer, and now by wilful choice author of this collection of poetry. A short autobiographical sketch will I hope go some way towards explaining how this anomalous state of affairs originated, and particularly how it has unfolded during the past decade. But in order to attempt some degree of objectivity, I ask your indulgence that I write in the third person rather than the first. Stanley Frost was born into a warm-hearted Methodist family in Lambeth, London England, within sound of Big Ben if not of Bow bells, eighteen months before the beginning of World War One. His father was a lay missioner, trained and employed by the London City Mission, but seconded to work for the Methodist Church in the poverty-stricken dock areas of Rotherhithe and Bermondsey; his mother, a deaconess before marriage, continued to fulfil her vocation as her husband's partner in all his endeavours. Stanley was the youngest of four sons and had two sisters, so he began life with the immense benefit of growing up in a large,

happily convivial family. He had the further good fortune at age eleven to win a scholarship to a grammar school; his brothers had all left school at the then customary age of fourteen, tho it is worth remarking that two continued evening studies and later achieved college educations. Stanley benefitted immensely from the excellent educational opportunities offered to him, and in due course won a place in London University, where he studied for the four-year combined arts and theology degree. After graduation he gained a Dr. Williams Foundation scholarship to Marburg University, Germany, where he was awarded the Dr. Phil, degree for a thesis in the area of philosophy of religion. Following the family tradition he then offered for the Methodist ministry and was ordained just prior to the out-break of World War Two. He served during the war years in London and the Midlands, both in Civil Defence and parish duties, and privately continued his academic studies, completing the M. Th. degree. His interests were early centred in biblical studies, especially in the Hebrew Scriptures. His contributions to journals led to a teaching appointment in Didsbury (now Wesley) College Bristol, and in the Religious Knowledge courses of Bristol University as Special Lecturer in Hebrew. Further writings attracted international notice, and in 1956 he was called to McGill University to the chair of Old Testament Languages and Literature. He was also received as a Minister of the United Church of Canada, so that in conjunction with his teaching duties he was often preaching in the Montreal area and especially in his home congregation of Wesley Church, Notre Dame de Grace. As a young boy, Stanley had been early fascinated by the sounds and images of poetry, and was quick to learn childhood verses. At his elementary school, the principal remarked to his parents: 'Poke him in the tummy and poetry comes out of his mouth.' In school and university, along with his biblical and

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theological studies, he continued reading the great poets of the English tradition, and naturally as a youth he often tried his prentice hand at their craft. But he was too much in awe of their achievements to place any value on his own productions and made no attempts to circulate or even to preserve them. By his middle twenties, teaching, preaching and writing was absorbing all his creative energies, and while he continued to read and delight in the work of poets of many kinds, he no longer attempted to emulate their insights and skills. In his middle years at McGill an unexpected turn in his career path led him into university administration. First as Dean of Divinity, then Dean of Graduate Studies and finally as Vice-Principal (Administration), his many responsibilities began to limit and later precluded teaching assignments, and as a result, while still preaching as occasion offered, he found his opportunities for verbal and literary activities much diminished. In this situation his love of poetry began to stir in new experiments, and he responded more often to emotional and seasonal stimulations, such as those of Christmas and the advent of Spring, with renewed attempts at poems of his own. But he kept those efforts very private. Viewed as a conservative administrator, but in fact increasingly a closet poet, he relished the irony that the rebellious youth of the 19608, of whom he was supposed not to approve, did not share his reverential respect for the arcane craft, but were making free and effective use of its power to communicate. They vigorously promoted the uninhibited productions of Tom, Dick and Harriet. Poetry was encouraged as 'the voice of the proletariat, not the preserve of pompous profs.' At first reluctantly, he began to sympathize with, and then to embrace the view that poetry was not only for acclaimed geniuses, but also for the minor fry, including even amateurs like himself. (The novels of Amanda Cross, with their revelations of the domestic life of English Literature departments, were also not without some influence!)

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He began to preserve his modest efforts, and then to gather them into a small collection, but he still kept his work hidden. At the same time he was drawn into a whole new field of academic interest, university history and biography, and this absorbed his best endeavours for many years. Poetry had to remain purely a relaxation. On the sixth of December, 1989, a psychopath shot down fourteen women engineering students at Tuniversite de Montreal. The McGill Reporter invited expressions of grief and anger as a condemnation of the atrocity, and as a tribute to the murdered young women. Moved very deeply by the horror of this event so close to home, Stanley Frost had already composed a short poem. Wanting to support the protest and thinking that his own small tribute would pass unnoticed in the crowd of other responses he submitted the poem to the editor. To his embarrassment, it was the only such piece printed, because as he learned later it was the only one submitted. But the rubicon had been crossed. He had appeared in print as a moon-lighting poet. And since many colleagues and acquaintances commented appreciatively, he was encouraged, at Christmas and other appropriate seasons, to begin sending some of his pieces to family members and other close friends. Retirement from formal university responsibilities, and fewer opportunities for preaching, released his creative energies to seek more frequently an outlet in poetical compositions. To give his productions variety he began to experiment more boldly, using metre and rhyme or free verse as seemed appropriate. He also began venturing into longer pieces, including narrative poems. But it was not until he saw his eightieth birthday looming on the calendar that he decided to mark that milestone by circulating to his wider family, both in Canada and in England, and also among his friends in the Church and in the University, a small collection of poems titled: Something for My Friends. It was an indication as to how far his thinking had changed that he also gave it a subtitle:

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Poems Testament I. He obviously had in mind that other volumes might follow. Poetry was becoming a major occupation. The little book was kindly received, but some of the old sensitivities revived when one colleague whose judgment he greatly valued expressed warm appreciation, and then added: 'Of course, once you have undressed in public, you don't notice going nudist.' Stanley had indeed bared his soul, but he believed in a good cause. His life-long vocation as teacher and preacher had found another podium and pulpit. The many, to him surprising, responses from unexpected sources further encouraged him to continue the series. Over the following decade Testaments II thru VI, privately circulated, followed steadily, if at irregular intervals. Now, another approaching anniversary milestone has prompted a volume of selected poems, seeking more formal publication. If further justification is called for, it is by happy coincidence supplied by the opening and closing poems of this collection, Indian Summer and Gentle Reminder. Stanley Frost has given much thought to the form of his poems. For eight centuries the hallmark of English poetry has been regular metre, with or without rhyme, but he himself began to read poetry seriously at the time when contemporary poets were beginning to release themselves from bondage to strict rules, and to experiment with freer forms of verse. For much of his work, he has been glad to avail himself of the new liberty, but he has remained a firm disciple of Wordsworth and Coleridge in that he believes poetry should be readily understandable by the common reader. He disavows and deplores the obscurity of much contemporary poetical composition. He himself writes for the simple and wayfaring. And as will be seen, where patterned metrical forms and rhyme are appropriate and desirable, for example in greetings and seasonal celebrations, he gladly accepts the challenge. As to the arrangement of the poems, there has been a certain grouping by subject,

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but mainly the chronological sequence has been presented so that the collection as a whole broadly presents the reflective diary of a decade. Only the Christmas poems have been gathered into separate appendix. Reverting to my own person, I wish to say that I am not concerned that many will hear me only as an outmoded voice from the past. On the contrary, I hope and believe I am the voice of a future. I do not subscribe to the currently fashionable pessimism and cynicism, and certainly not to the 'realism' which dismisses beauty, goodness and transcendence as yesterday's values. My optimism is frankly rooted in the Christian faith, and I hope and believe that in this twenty-first century, poetry and culture generally will return to the ideals of truth and beauty which mankind has cherished for millennia. I need hardly add that I consider religion to be a subject worthy of open and frank discussion among intelligent persons. I have found great profit in the study of faiths other than my own. In my poems, I have exposed freely my own religious beliefs and observances, trusting that sincere persons of my own or other persuasions will read my words with understanding and empathy, and in this I have not been disappointed. The more we are able to share each other's thinking, the more nearly shall we succeed in loving our neighbour as ourselves. And cohabiting this planet cooperatively and productively as true neighbours is assuredly mankind's only hope. It is also, I believe, coherent with the divine purpose of the universe, and that is why we name that vision the Kingdom of God. I greatly appreciate the generosity of Frances Groen, Director and Margery Trenholme Chair of the McGill University Libraries, in accepting this collection of poems for publication in the Fontanus Monograph Series. This series and the Fontanus Journal have enhanced the University's reputation, and I am privileged to make

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this further contribution. I am much indebted to the editorial knowledge of Dr. Hans Moller, former Acting Director of Libraries and General Editor of the Monograph Series. In retirement he has provided the practical guidance without which the publication of this volume would not have been possible. The design of this book, its appearance and art-work, are the accomplishment of David LeBlanc and I was most fortunate in securing his professional assistance. I am also deeply grateful to many good friends and colleagues: especially so to Professor Peter McNally, in that he has agreed to write an introduction to this volume. By up-bringing and personal conviction a Catholic, he has enabled me, a liberal Protestant, to recognize that in matters of religion bifocalism is as enriching as bilingualism. For this, as in so much else, I owe him more than I can easily express. I also gladly record my immense debt to Susan Button, former secretary and for many years greatlyvalued friend. From her editorial skills, advice and generous assistance I have benefitted to a degree known only to myself. Tom Thompson is the epitome of the McGill executive who quietly ensures that things happen. His unflagging encouragement and ready participation in so many ventures over so many years has afforded sustaining strength and proved invaluable. And to all my other many friends, among whom I am privileged to include the members of my family, my church and the James McGill Society, I express sincere thanks. You have received my poems with kindly and generous appreciation; artists are re-energized by their audience, and you have been very faithful. I am truly grateful.

STANLEY FROST October, zooz

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1993

Something for My Friends

Contents 3 4 6 8 10 13 14 15 16 18 20 2-4 2,9 30 31 3 2, 34

Indian Summer Loqui Humanum Est To Some Contemporary Poets Writing a Piece of Prose Canadian Quartet Hampstead Garden Partners Ontario July Brother Sun and Sister Moon Winter Journey El Camino Real Inheritance Alfred Napoleon Grinzing Suddenly Last Summer Petertalk 1990

37 38 39 40 42 43

Sixth December 1989 Going to the Zoo Pilgrimage Credo Amazing Grace The Inn of Emmaus

Indian Summer Slowly they lengthen, these later years of life, made blessed-rich by unimpaired good health and joys of work, conceived and planned and carried thru to satisfying end. Surely I live in Keats' autumnal hours, which flow on warm and sunshine-filled until my ranging, treasure-finding thoughts, like to his nectar-bearing bees, are lulled into the fool's conceit that these maturing days will never cease. One only wisdom lies within my choice: to glean the orchards and the vines while fruits still ripen in the sun. In latest fall each apple plucked, each cluster of wine-ready grapes, is one more stolen from that dearth which winter's cold must finally enforce. As long then as this Indian summer lasts, I'll harvest gladly all its serendips and lay them up, have some small store whereof to offer to my passing friends, who may drop in, and care to hear what I have been about.

April, 1990

3

Loqui humanum est to speak is human Words, thank God for words. Words short, words simple, words elaborated, words much-compounded, profound, imponderable, improbable, impeccable. Words clumsy, pompous, pretentious; darkening understanding with concatenated fog! Words well-chosen, well-shaped, workmanlike, efficient, fitly-conjoined for the task. Words communicative, conveying, thought, emotion, will; by some magic, more than is said, yet leaving still more to be said.

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Words that are alive, evocative, provocative, stirring the blood, lifting the mind; thought beyond thought, celestial, ethereal, ineffable ... Words - mankind's earliest and best and most wonderful invention. Thank God, thank God, for words.

June, 1987

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To some Contemporary Poets darkness FLASHes vegetable subconscious obscurity blast...

marrow bone unconscious EnLIGHTenment

I must apologise. I cannot keep it up. I am too rooted in more ancient ways and must confess: yours I do not understand, my celebrated and so cerebral confreres. For me your words seem lacking in coherence, the images uncertain, and the thought obscure; also, I've always kept clue-games for idle, cross-word hours. Adhering to the older fashion, I must clearly be the one at fault: to your bright visions, colour-blind, to your exotic tunes, tone-deaf. And yet we both acknowledge, you and I, with profit and a deep delight the masters of our common past: Beowulf, Caedmon, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cowper, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Browning well, most of him - Longfellow, Whitman, Masefield, now Robert Frost and F.R. Scott ... Poets of an earlier day - or so at least it seems to me wrote to be understood, and trod a path wherein wayfaring men tho simple need not err. That road's the one that I must humbly follow,

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while you continue in your enigmatic ways to reach arcane delights beyond the common ken. We write because we must, both you and I, and hope we may give pleasure to our friends, provoke to thought, even perhaps at times touch to the quick ... And, I suspect, in common nurse another hope, secret and presumptuous: that in a distant future, maybe another planet, some peer posterity of poets may chance to stumble on our lines, and thru them journey back to us to recognize, salute and share in our humanity.

September, 1990

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Writing a Piece of Prose Circumstance and season set the task; an editor, the discipline of brevity; and unforgiving time itself that earlier promises be kept. I had the morning free for writing, my matter was of no great substance, a pleasant challenge to memory and skill. The planned attack had formed itself, and words were marshalling their ranks, and calling me to leap into the fray. I began lightheartedly, but as I worked the picture I had conjured up began to glow, take on vitality, and beckon thoughts to more exciting paths. I responded readily, not with earnestness - that would have been too heavy but with a whimsicality, an open fondness, a touch of humour, a shameless soup f on of nostalgia; wrote and rewrote with growing concentration, changing a word, replacing a phrase, gaining a cadence where before was none, until I read my small piece back, and knew that it was finished, and was good. Then was I taken truly unawares by sudden, elemental glee, which sent aloft a shooting star that burst, and flooded me with happiness and deep content ...

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I marvel that a merely human heart could hold Will Shakespeare's fierce, explosive joy the day he wrote the final exeunt to Hamlet or King Lear.

January, 1989

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Canadian Quartet I It is deep happiness this first mild April night to lie awake in the dark and thru the opened window after the long silence of snow hear the little sounds of rain trickling from house eaves into the stirring earth. The happiness is suddenly pierced by a thrill of joy at the gabbling of geese northing thru the dark far above my head. My heart leaps up and wings skeining with them towards the long light days of Spring. II These glorious, golden days of Summer induce a dreamlike sense of time transcended; long, uncluttered, slow-paced afternoons, filled with sunshine and suffusing warmth. The scents of grass and newly-watered earth, of evening-primrose, phlox and mint, renew the memories of timelessness in former years, when surely clocks stood still and hours dissolved unnoticed. The simple garden tasks are done

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half in the present and half in children's summers lived again, until one is bemused, remembering old rememberings of remembering .. These are the endless, timeless days of summer which every year slip far too swiftly by. Ill The sun is shrouded in autumnal mists, the few remaining hedge-birds chirrup softly and the winds are still. The silver-birch and maple leaves in palest golds and russet browns fall silently; the roses and perennials withdraw their life into their roots. Now is the time of quietness and all the world prepares for sleep. I shall walk slowly in the woods today, and let the brooding stillness of the trees calm me into sharing quietude. I shall withdraw into myself and seek renewal in the sources of my being. IV These clear, cold Winter days the house is charged with brightness. The level sun slides broadly through wide, uncurtained windows and spreads itself upon the further walls; radiance reflects from newly-fallen snow

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and splashes ceilings with elongated squares. Outside, beneath the unclouded blue, the light is even more intense, and keen air catches at our breath. As we move across the virgin field, snow scrunches firm beneath our skis until we join the track, and glide noiselessly, effortlessly down the sinuous slope. From every bush and ice-betinselled tree winter scintillates, invigorates, exhilarates this is the very champagne of being alive! The sun goes down in massing glory; as night darkens, the cold intensifies and speedily becomes aggressive. Winter drops off his smiling mask and stands revealed as man's old enemy. We must play tag and touch with him, and make pretence we think he's harmless; but watch him close; allow no liberties; that way, with wariness, we'll last the long, cold months, and live to welcome the return of Spring.

April 1987 thru February 1990

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Hampstead Garden I swear: this longest day of June a slender, maiden moon hung crescent in clear sky; her consort star glowed bright above the sun's last light, the homing gulls flew high; a drifting evening breeze half-whispered to the trees, the hedges swarmed fire-fly; this shortest night of June, twilight and crescent moon, a calling bird near by Beauty so perfect in my own backyard I stood in awe.

July, 1982.

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Partners He makes the grass to grow and greens the hedge. He leafs the trees and paints the golden iris, the graceful lupin and double, purple peony. My job's to mow and trim, and weed and water; but when day's done, and I drink in the quiet beauty of our plot, I have to say it: we are great gardeners - He and I.

July, 1990

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Ontario July The evening sun slanted into the little bay. On the other shore, the light reflected up on the underside of leaves. The tree shimmered green and gold dappled with motion in the unmoving air: an oriental dancing girl rippling sinuously static in her stance. A bird supplied insistently the sitar rhythm. I shall play this back in Montreal's November.

July, 1982.

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Brother Sun and Sister Moon The sun is such a dependable fellow! Always looking you full in the face, rising betimes when summer is with us, working away as long as light lasts, adapting his angles, just as goodnaturedly, to shortening days of the cold winter months. You know in the spring where he'll be rising, and where in the fall to gaze on his setting. Blow away clouds, and there you will find him just where you're expecting ... He is so regular, you really could set your watch by him! But the moon! Oh, la la! Her comings and goings bamboozled Sir Isaac! Now a slip of a girl, all maiden innocence, now as inscrutable as Mona Lisa, now confronting you boldly, full-faced and open, but then just as soon half-turning demurely and never an idea what she is hiding behind her back ... Rising early when the fit takes her, or very late, or perhaps not at all; queening it royally the whole night long, or, just as likely, palely floating like a ghost above the clouds in plain noon day. When and where she will appear, and if she does, which she will come, is of her whim, and of her timing.

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The poet who would sing her charms must wait her coming, con thru his repertoire until she has revealed this night her chosen part;upon this cue, he'll tune his lute and his devoir. But one thing's constant: in her scenario, he will be the lovelorn, and she the unattainable, wooed vainly from afar. Die Sonne - c'est le soleil; der Mond - c'est a dire, la lune. The French, of course, have always had it right: the Moon is indubitably, mysteriously, bewitchingly, the quintessential She.

On the accasion of an elipse of the moon 16 August 1989 (In German the sun is feminine and the moon masculine)

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Winter Journey On the shortest day of the year we drove long miles across the northern land and came to a town - a placename on the map late-afternoon, the light already failing. In quest of shelter, warmth and food we toured the bland, unfriendly streets swept bare by icy wind. At a gas-pump (one must see to the horses first) a cabdriver, refilling his own tank, briefly gave us our direction and we came thankfully to an hotel. The clerk was young and welcoming: yes, they had a room, ready and comfortable, warm and lamp-lighted. After the weary hours of fields raped and left for dead, frozen stiff, but not yet prettified with snow, that room, as we brought in our bags, and took possession, truly became (how fitting the old phrases prove!) our place of refuge, our shelter from the storm. The hotel dining-room responded to our mood, softly astir with sounds of tableware, the low murmur of relaxed voices, and chords of gently-fingered strings; the tones mingled together in lights and shadows of festive hanging decorations; we breathed aromas of good food and wine.

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A table away, a family, the father, two small children, the mother and her babe-in-arms, chattered happily, expansive in the ambiance ... Thank God, that bitter winter's night, there was room for us all at the inn.

December, 1987

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El Camino Real from Carmel to San Simeon The road ran continually before us, twisting and writhing like some live thing, oppressive mountains to the left above, the angry sea to the right below, our way shelved into the cliff face. Great masses plunged straight to the deep or left scant room for a stony beach, inaccessible by land and treacherous by sea. The signs were minimal, naming points we'd never heard nor shown on our small map. Only the road ran on and turned, climbed a shoulder and turned, straddled a canyon mouth by bridge, pushed its way through a rocky cut, and turned and turned and turned again; slipping down into a gully, mounting again desperately to get above the waves, twisting and snaking but always continuing with never an end. Alongside us, the Pacific flinging itself in fury on the Americas, which heaved themselves up in embattled, defiant ranges Rockies to the north, Andes to the south,

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but here,where the giants confronted most closely, the Californian Sierras, Santa Lucia and the challenging Big Sur. Over our right shoulder (or where our right shoulder should have been!) the sun, tired of a strenuous day, was withdrawing in splendour; redness suffused the rearview mirror, but the sky ahead was dark, mountain and night and sea confused in heavy gloom. The beam of our headlights illumined only the road to the next curve, our car a little beatle with pathetic eyes, sidling past the strife of elemental forces, Charybdis and Scylla come horribly real. No forks in this road, no side turnings, no ways of escape, only the narrow chance of slipping on twixt rock and wave, before that murk enveloped us in blundering disaster. A turn in the road, a turn to the left, further left, further still, then back, back again, once more to the south, and to the sea, growling more loudly.

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Now up a gradient, and turn, down a slope, and turn, now round a bend only discernible as we approach it; another twist, another wrenching turn, mile after mile after mile without respite - when suddenly the pressing fates recede; the cliff draws back, the road runs straight, the sea becomes a more distant sound. We sense a wide and open space, under clear sky and stars above; and here, thank God, a motel, luxurious in the wilderness, with lights and rooms and friendly, smiling welcome. Its sign proclaims the Inn of Ragged Point. We can relax now and laugh, we can eat and drink and savour our relief. We have run the gauntlet, we have survived the clash of titans,

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we have driven the coast road from Carmel round the dread Big Sur, and have arrived, and are at rest, in the secure domain of bountiful San Simeon. Blessed be he, above all traveller's saints!

California, February, 1988

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Inheritance I have inherited the genes of ancestors known and unknown. Small wizened folk, living closely by their beasts, laying their dead in barrows long or round, according to their tribe, and rearing up great trilithons to stand stark and awesome on the Wiltshire plain. Did they produce the Lords of Wessex, priests of religion, masters of science, intelligentsia and rulers both in their wide-reaching Chalk Age world? Or were they conned into the task, literally enthralled to build this shrine by smooth-tongued wizards from afar? A thousand years the great stones stood, hallowed and secure, before the islanders must face the long-legged, red-haired Celts, who dared to cross unstable seas to attack the high and windswept hills. No doubt our men bribed when they could, fought when they dared, and died fiercely when they must. Their women were enslaved, raped, married, even loved the terms matter little but the genes were handed on.

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Soon the Celts were tall and red or small and dark, but Ancient Britons all for thirty generations. And then the legions landed, irresistible marching machines, thrusting east and west and north, building long straight roads and crowded cities, Britain's first London, Verulamium, Colchester, York and Aquae Sulis, each with fort-basilica, theatre and forum. South and west they tamed the countryside with fine estates and gracious villas, served by the slaves and savoured by the rich. Romans they called themselves, wore togas and talked Latin, but they came from all the Empire lands, Syrians, Spaniards, Greeks and Gauls, even the odd Italian or two. For three long centuries and more they took much and gave little, and then they marched away again. But they left their roads, and they also left their genes in mixed-blood aristocracy and many an unregarded serf.

2,5

Arthur and his lads - brave enough, but a sorry lot to fight a battle, to make a stand against incoming waves of sea-marauders soon turned immigrants: Saxons, Angles, Friesians, Danes, vikings by turns but farmers all by choice. The British Celts, too proud to share their lands, fled west along old Roman roads, west and west and north again, but left perforce some of their own captives enslaved or women-folk. The invaders were always short of women, and when they could they took, whether docile wench or wild-eyed termagant. Their broods hatched Saxon both by name and tongue, but inherited the genes of forebears long-forgotten. Their land they called the Engelond and taught by Alfred learned to love it well, Wessex, Mercia and the Danelaw free redhead and black and the northern blondes, and still that dogged, dark persistent strain of small men, keeping memories of great stones raised for mysteries beyond their ken. And then those Normans! ruthless to rule, insistent to possess, fighting for land and lordship, but ready to marry a Saxon girl if that were the easier route -

mariage des manoirs, mariage de convenance, mariage en famille, mariage d'amour or man-at-arms with woman-at-bay. What cocks they were! fighting in France, crusading in holy lands, building great castles in enduring stone, lofty cathedrals, abbeys, schools, for the glory of God and their Norman pride! They gave us half our history, half our language, and in good measure half their genes. And so the potent brew was mixed, ready for Richard and his joust with Saladin, ready for Wyclif and his Lollard leaveners (unlikely harbingers of riotous Spring!) ready for Chaucer's quirky tapestry of tales, for youthful Harry and his happy few at Agincourt, for hyperactive Henry and his defiance of the Pope all of them heralds of the great Elizabeth, our redhead Gloriana (there's that Celtic strain) who so becoz'd her courtier swarm they cocked a snook at France and singed the brittle beard of Spain ... Genes and language! Saxon, Celt and Norman! Spenser, Raleigh, Drake and Shakespeare! No wonder then that simmer came to boil and should outrageously o'erflow its bounds and so encarnadine the vast new maps that Britain's tongue was heard throughout the world:

Americas and India, New Zealand and Australia, in Asia and in Africa and in all the Islands of the Sea! Surely there stood in misty, first Stonehenge some priestly Milton or a half-crazed Blake to cry that those great standing stones, now reared and hallowed with thrice-potent rites, would in a far-off, destined day shoulder aside that baleful Babel tower, undo the ancient curse that sundered tribes, and richly give to all mankind a common speech in poet's dreams are great events foretold. Living now in royal daughter-land, in this as in all else I am rich heritor of an estate to which I must be true. In my late turn, I must bequeath it faithfully to pressing crowds of new-come fellow-heirs, hailing from many lands and every race. I ask of you, my new-found friends but one thing only: though you may scoff the genes I honour (that's fair enough; you have your own!) that you respect this glorious tongue which now you share with us; that you, as I have done, shall love it dearly, and for God's sake, who gave it to us, use it well.

Dedicated to my grandson, Alexander Brice Frost June, 1986

Alfred His people fought for freedom: he planned their victories. His people longed for order: he gave them laws they could respect. His people wanted peace: he built them towns they could defend. His people needed pride: in a barbaric age, he went with them to school and learned to read; he gave them books in their own tongue: the Psalter, Gregory, Boethius, Augustine's Soliloquies - leavened by his own and Bede's Historia; the works, he said, 'that all men need the most to know.' Where there is no vision the people perish, where there is sound learning the people flourish. He gave them back their culture and thus renewed their faith in future generations. Angul Saxonum Rex, he laid a firm foundation, which neither Dane nor Norman could destroy, but only build upon. Of all the royal lineage of England only King Alfred is acclaimed 'the Great.'

August, 1991

29

Napoleon Innovative soldier, daring hero, and tho unelected stepping forward to lay strong hand on the helm in panic storm of civil chaos; wise, energetic administrator; statesman restoring finances, encouraging commerce, devising fair laws to make firm the new order; establishing schools, revising curricula, building long highways to unify the country, remembering to line them with shade-giving trees; honest First Consul, sincerely seeking to safeguard the harvest of grim revolution, liberty, equality, justice for all how could so prudent, so sensible a leader be seduced by the fustian, time-raddled charms of that old harlot who calls herself La Gloire? Befuddled Icarus, the orb that lured you to disaster was but the lingering aureole du roi soleil, who also fondly dreamed he was La France.

Bicentennaire, 14 July, 1989

30

Grinzing This is the rural, village street where Beethoven lodged, and ambled forth to take the air and smell the woods of May. Humming, muttering, blowing, singing without note, tapping his fingers pianoforte on his thighs, all street long the glorious music thronged his head chords, melodies, structured harmonies, swelling crescendos, themes for octets, concertos, symphonies, entries for horns, woodwinds, cellos and soaring violins, all jostled in riotous, multitudinous confusion, which Ludwig would in all due time most magisterially sort out into their rightful hierarchies, graceful symmetries, statements of inevitable logic, magnificent excitements and wholly satisfying resolutions. All this music, minor or immense, delicate, numinous, ominous, imperial, all brought to indisputable progression, conjured into soul-transporting beauty by this one maestro mind: in travail man, but in creation god. Here in this street he saw that steeple, could see the great bells swing, the birds fly off, but heard no sound: here he knew he was condemned for ever to a silent world. He would compose beyond compare music he could never hear. Good God, was ever Prometheus so crucified?

May, 1989

Suddenly, last Summer Lenin, the man who dethroned God, and then was large enough to take His place for half the globe, giving whole nations the Word of Truth, demonstrating how Kingdom Come could without fail be enforced on earth Lenin, whose confident statues for all our lifetimes stared down the streets and squares of half of Europe and the East, just as he controlled the hopes and wills of half mankind Lenin, whose halls became the shrines of mystic cult, marble enhanced and hushed with reverence, where young love's vows were ardently exchanged, oaths of fealty solemnly consecrated, degrees and doctorates and national awards impressively conferred This same Lenin, last summer went out of fashion, became obsolete, irrelevant.

32-

No one argued the point. They just went out and pulled the statues down; then went to market, and many, back to church. It all happened, quite suddenly, last summer.

November, 1990

33

Petertalk 1990 So, Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov, the would-be prophet, my people, as I expected, have found you out: soviet colossus with feet decidedly of clay! Your mistake was to try to emulate divinity, to attempt to create a body immortal, a politically-correct elite, for ever self-renewing. You should have taken the English lord seriously: all power corrupts, absolute power absolutely; your ruling class, like all others, was doomed to self-destruct. We Czars were learning our lesson the hard way, I and Catherine, Alexander and poor Nicholas, we'd have found our road if you hadn't interfered. Oh yes, you'll go down in history with the rest of us, I don't grudge you that - but as a prophet discredited, a bumbling creator of tyrannies, a god dethroned. But I, I must remind you, I was successful, I recognized our need and grandly provided, I hewed out our vital Window on the West.

34

So now, before you go, Ulyanov, give me back my city! My city, not yours; I won the land from our enemies, I banked the mudflats, created the islands. I stonebuilt the quays, and dredged out the channels, I established the markets, and attracted the merchants; my city grew rich on their trade. I walled the fortress and gilded its cathedral spire, I led the way for Catherine, Alexander and their artists – Admiralty, Hermitage and opulent St Isaac's. Yes, you defended my city from barbarian invasion, you and your comrades, thru nine hundred unthinkable days, but remember, we fought with you, Catherine, Alexander and I! Leningrad - Burocratsville! Not a name but an insult for the lovely city of my dreams, my Venice of the North, its shining domes, tree-shaded canals and softly-flowing Neva. My name is Peter, yes, and rightly called the Great; my saint is Peter, first of the Apostles and Keeper of the Keys. My city was and always shall be Peter's.

35

Petrograd, St. Petersburg, call it as you will; but, Ulyanov, my city, mine, by right of inspiration; so now - give it back to me!

February, 1990 Leningrad was renamed St. Petersburg in 1991

36

Sixth December 1989 the day in Montreal of the engineering students' massacre Fourteen young women in a men's world. Fourteen lives of courage in a male environment, of maths and physics and intellectual challenge. Fourteen maturing professional persons, creative hopes, potential motherhoods all suddenly, meaninglessly destroyed by a crazy fool with a killer gun. Fourteen women in a men's world; yet on that crisis day no man was man enough. None said, 'I am staying with the women. If I cannot protect them, I can at least die with them.' If I had been there, in that situation, would I have said that? God forgive me, I have searched my heart and I do not know the answer. I share the guilt, as all men must.

December, 1989

37

Going to the Zoo The bus rumbles quietly past the holding pens. The passengers listen attentively to the driver as he names the animals, their habitats and country, and speculates upon their chances of extinction. Later we walk back alone past the compounds: antelope, bison, rhinoceros, giraffe, zebra, elephant, African and Asiatic, the varieties of cats in all their many families and sizes. We look at the animals; if they look briefly at us it is with eyes inscrutably alien. Only the gorillas fully return our gaze, a holy family of father, mother, child; the father's eyes are filled with infinite sadness. To soothe our conscience we visit the sea-lion show; with uncanny intelligence and absurd humanity the great beasts clown and buffoon, soaking up the applause When those super-existences from far-distant galaxies colonise our planet and near-annihilate our species; when they herd a remnant, carefully selected, into a conservation park, for breeding and research; God, visiting our sins upon us, grant us this last mercy: sea-lion wit, to flatter and deceive our masters, or utter mindlessness - anything to save us from the endless pacing to and fro of the untamed tiger, trapped in his enclosure.

February, 1990

38

Pilgrimage If one had known when starting out the growing need to look back, the deepening need to trace, if that were possible, the strange and torturous way whereby one had arrived in this ambiguous present, with these rewards, these memories and shames, these persistent questions and these wistful hopes but then one had not understood it was to be a pilgrimage, much less a quest; not just a simple travelling from youth to age, but, if unintentional, yet steady progress from childhood certainties to gambling faith, at, one must confess, pretty doubtful odds ... Now indeed we see thru a glass darkly, tho as a child we saw all clearly. All our life's journeying has been from stage-flood sunshine into real-world mists. Yet are those mists shot thru and thru with tantalizing, short-lived gleams that give a sense of limitless immensities, more large than children ever dreamed to know. One has thru many pilgrim years to unlearn 'God.' Then only can one sense that there must be, in this amazing universe, as in man's mind, Divine Infinity.

October, 1989

39

Credo I believe in God the Father Almighty the words have stuck not in my throat but in my conscience. In an evolutionary universe, in a space of galaxies and genes, and a planet of universal suffering for beast and humankind, I find little room for God Almighty. But love is another matter. Love is what I choose to engender towards my fellows. Love you do not have to accept on faith. Love you can try for yourself; it is as real as men and women, each one with feelings, hopes and dreams, and pains and agonies, and joys and beauties for which also there is no room in a space of galaxies and genes. Yet love is alive, incontestably alive, in a thousand saints of a hundred creeds, and none; and weakly, fitfully, but undeniably, alive even in me.

40

I don't have to believe in love, but only to practice it. Love is more than me or my neighbour, more than all success or failure. Love is the fifth dimension of what it means to be human. Love transcends all galaxies and genes; Love, if you will give it freedom, transforms all human suffering into a sacrament of person to person, even of person to Person. Love is Good Lord! I humbly see John said it long ago: God is Love. Love is God.

Christmas, 1983

4i

Amazing Grace My God, My God, why hast Thou not forsaken me? I have suspected and accused you, I have doubted and despaired of you, I have been forgetful and uncaring, rude, importunate and demanding, yet you have not forsaken me. Your servant Moses, that great soul, asked that he might behold your glory. Not, I now know, presumptuously, that he might have unique delight, be privileged beyond all mortal seeing, or wise beyond all human knowing, but humbly, that he might have more fearful awe, more reverence, more amaze, that Life Itself should stoop to him as Face to face, as Friend to friend. Heaven knows I am no Moses, but you my God become as Humankind each time that I commune with you, and I, each time, am something more of God. We Pilgrims of the Way have each our own humbling experience: amazing grace.

October, 1988

42,

The Inn of Emmaus Mary and Cleopas were newly-married; their friends said fondly they were very young; their families said sourly they were very foolish. But they had heard the Master, and had left all and followed him. Being young they did not expect entrance to the inner circle; when the Master was preaching they stood together in the crowd holding hands, in love with him, in love with God, in love with life, and very much in love with one another. In the evenings, when the crowds were gone, they hovered on the fringe of the disciple group. Mary helped the women fetch water from the well, Cleopas often tagged along with John and James into the villages to ask alms of bread and fish; at the evening meal they observed the segregation, Mary with the women, Cleopas with the men, and listened spellbound to the Master's conversations. Afterwards they slipped off together into the dusk, and night after night that wonderful springtime they lay together under the stars, and talked life, and talked love, and God and the Master and life and love were all very good.

43

When the Master set his face toward Jerusalem, many of the followers returned to their villages; Mary and Cleopas were among those who continued. In the smaller company they were more evident; Cleopas was called to a place nearer the bivouac fire, Mary was bossed and mothered by the older women; one evening the Master himself crossed their path, smiled and gave them by name a night-time blessing, as they withdrew into the friendly dark. Jerusalem itself was a heady experience. The joyous entry into the city became a festival, a jumble of heat and dust, of tambourines and zithers, of waving palm branches and rhythmic chants. Peter was cheer-leading: Hosanna bar-David! Cleopas was responding with the men: Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna! Mary was shrilling with the women; they too were chorusing: Blessed is he who comes in Adonai's name! After the Temple excitements, the Master's outright attack on money-minded merchants and their desecrations of the shrine, Mary had real difficulty getting Cleopas to return to earth, and think of lodging for the night.

44

Finally, he remembered a distant relative living nearby in the city. This man gave them a corner of his rooftop and the wonderful nights continued unbroken as the Passover moon grew royally full. By day Mary helped in the kitchen; Cleopas joined the men in the disciple group gathered around the Master in the outer Temple court. In the evening he returned to tell their host, and the listening women, Mary avid among them, what the Master had said and done that day the questions answered, the traps evaded, the challenges thrown down to priests and lawyers alike. On Thursday, Cleopas, at the supper-table, went further than ever before; he made the declaration: In very truth, the Master is Messiah! he is the King we've long awaited! Anyday now, Adonai will establish him in his kingdom! Friday was utter disaster. Knowing nothing of the night events they did not credit the morning rumours. When they found Golgotha they could not believe what they were seeing. Cleopas stood wide-eyed, dumb, unmoving; then flung himself off into the hills to disappear for three whole days. Mary kept vigil with the women,

45

incessantly wailing, beating their breasts, shrieking their agony thru the interminable day. Only when the centurion confirmed his prisoner dead, did sheer exhaustion send them weeping to their homes to find relief in household tasks: water to be fetched, children to be fed, corn to be ground, bread to be baked; Mary unaware if it were day or night, dumbly did whatever she was bid. On the third day, in the afternoon, Cleopas returned. Stone-faced he told Mary to tie up their bundle and follow him back home. They could reach Emmaus that night But on the road the dam burst: What a child he had been! What a besotted, callow fool! The Master was one more false prophet, one more dreamer, and he had paid dearly for his dream. From now on Cleopas would live by the rules, pay his synagogue dues, and not step from the paths. Mary could not give up so easily; new life was stirring within her, their child could not be born of disillusion, their love had been real, was still alive, the Master's dream had been true vision, an understanding of life as Adonai would have it then where, woman, was Adonai when the dream was shattered?

46

As if he had heard all that had gone before, the stranger overtaking them on the road joined naturally and easily into their discussions. Perhaps for one such as the Master discredit was not destruction, death was not defeat were there not hints from older voices, God-inspired prophets, singers of ancient wisdoms: 'He that loses his life for his dream shall find it, he will enter by life laid down into life enriched'? But look, we are at the Inn of Emmaus; a night-time blessing upon you, Cleopas and Mary! Sir, come in with us, the day is far spent and, Sir, we need to hear more! After the burning heat of the day, their alcove in the caravansarai was cool. Mary produced their provender of cheese and bread, she fetched and poured their modest jar of wine. Cleopas failed in turmoil of new thought to observe even the roles of host and guest. It was the stranger took the bread, and blessed and broke and gave to each of them. It was the guest who took the cup, and blessed and gave to each of them to drink. In that moment of blessing, faith rose from the dead and in their hearts they knew him: He was the life enriched thru life laid down, and He their Lord for ever more.

47

Because they had reached God's Emmaus, they must now return to man's Jerusalem; because they had known Him in the breaking of bread, they must now proclaim Him in the living of life: c He is not dead but risen!' Mary and Cleopas were old, very old, but they could still tell their story to any who would listen. Luke the Physician, the collector of stories, had learned how to listen.

Easter, 1990 Adonai - a reverential Jewish name for God.

48

1994

Days of Grace and Favour

Contents 51

Dies Ex Gratia

52,

Hampstead Calendar

56

Coach Journey

57

Awaking at Night in a Country Inn

59

Earthbound in Florida

60

Migration

61

Rocks

62,

Gladiators

64

Contagion

66

Scholars

69

Dr. Foljambe

73

Rembrandt

76

Amor Vincit Omnia

81

Dies Favoris

83

Makers

85

Dives My Name

87

Living Planet

89

Holy Ground

91

God is a Music

92

Good Friday

93

Easter Day

96

Contingency

98

Rationale

Dies Ex Gratia When I was a small boy, the layer of rich marzipan, icing the sumptuous Christmas cake, was always left till the last, to be enjoyed as the best of the feast. When I reached maturer years, the last glass of the wine, foretelling the end of the talk, was savoured with more care, allowed to linger awhile on the palate. Now that I am supernumerus, these days of grace allowed to me, are received one by one with gratitude, and used with careful good intent and much enjoyment in the living. So now's the time to ponder ancient prayers: 'So teach us, O Lord, to number our days' but that's a lesson requires no learning! 'that we may get us an heart of wisdom'; ah, that's a goal that's still a long ways off.

January, 1991

5i

Hampstead Calendar November The north wind blows fiercely; the last leaves of autumn run skelter down the road as if trying to flee south, like the robins and the geese. With no place else to go, the local family of crows, clinging to bare, black branches, croak out defiant blasphemies, and brace themselves for winter. Underneath the creaking trees, I shout aloud into the wind, adding my voice to their angry chorus. I want to let them know, up there, we're of one case and of one mind, those winter-cursing crows and I. February The snow is drifting lazily down, lying freshly white, eiderdown soft, on roofs and gardens and the branches of trees. The world is clean again ... but oh, I'm homesick, homesick, for the green of grass, the scent of blossom, the chatter of birds, and all the friendly warmth of summer.

52

March The snow lies trampled and muddied, pools of water gather on roads, sidewalks are treacherous, icicles drip from every roof; but the sun is warm, the airs are mild, the sparrows are beginning to chatter, and my heart is lifting ... what know they of Spring who only Summer know? April I rose in the night, resenting the necessity; at the head of the stairs, from the rooms below, rose up the scent of hyacinth. In one breath, I remembered all the Springs I'd ever known, and returned to sleep, suffused with happiness. May There is no green as green as grass is green, this early hour when golden sunlight falls aslant a fresh-grown lawn, and all of life is newly-sprung as if the Lord had just now, for the first time, new-invented Spring, bird song and leafing buds, this pristine, vernal morning.

Today, the whole creation's young again, and, filled with wonder, so am I. August Summer evenings are for suburbs, and a leisurely perambulation; and our neighbours dining on the porch it's not the heat, it's the humidity. A golden dusk, purple shadows, a blessed cooling; cream stucco cottages, grey stone mansions, tidy lawns, great leafy trees, and many-colouredflowerbeds- modest, rather showy, outrageously opulent. The roads are quiet, the houses are empty, the families up north; and our neighbours dining on the porch it's not the heat, it's the humidity. Splendidly the girl runs past us, long, lissom, sun-browned limbs, rejoicing in her youth and her well-being; after a while, a man on roller blades, gliding silently, arrogantly, with powerful, sweeping thrusts; now an elderly couple like ourselves, strolling gently; and our neighbours dining on the porch it's not the heat, it's the humidity.

54

Down the road, the lone boy shooting baskets, his friends are all away at camp; rounding the corner, a family cycling, the parents slowly, the little ones working hard to keep pace; here is the woman with her two dogs, on their regular round, every evening, and she, they say, a widow since World War II; and our neighbours dining on the porch it's not the heat, it's the humidity. Summer evenings are for suburbs, and we enjoy them, jealously, while we may, and our neighbours dining on the porch it's not the heat, it's the serenity.

1991-1994

55

Coach Journey We travelled far across the northern map and in one memorable day saw two great wondrous sights. In the morning, we watched the sun rise royally, from hesitant flush of Ontario dawn, to massy bars of golden clouds, creating moments strangely numinous, which passed into my inner self and filled my mind with beauty ... In the evening, under a high, wide Ohio sky, we watched the setting sun burn thru low-lying western mists to flood the vast, clear blue with pastel shades beneath a huge St. Andrew's cross, scrawled by two planes with tenuous trails. The sheer immensity of artist vision, gathering all in daring affirmation, that this world is surpassing beautiful, gladdened and uplifted, overwhelmed and humbled ... To be quickened by the promise of Ontario dawn, and the same day be stilled by sunset in Ohio, that is rich travelling.

February, 1991

S6

Awaking at Night in a Country Inn ... lence silence a silent room beyond, a silent world blackness a blackness room a blackness everywhere? As sleep ebbs from my brain, a shadowy gloom becomes the far wall, faintly fluorescent. I must lie very still, not to awaken my wife silently sleeping in the other bed. My eyes see more: an elongated blur becomes the curtained window. Now I am fully awake. I cannot risk a light for reading I am imprisoned here, permitted only a blank, black page. What shall I think on it? the dark? the silence? but wait ... the air is not quite lifeless; it trembles slightly, a faint pulsation; the tremor strengthens, becomes perceptibly a sound, a low rumble, resolves itself into a distant train, which blows a warning, as far away as elfin horns, or Roland's in the pass. Slowly it draws nearer, hooting, trundling mysteriously thru the night, on what errand? from where to where? Now I can hear the diesel, can distinguish the cars, 57

rumbling, bumping, clanking, excited with their journey, chattering, tinkering among themselves a fairy music for their festive night ... Now they are fading, quite suddenly they are gone perhaps into a cutting, perhaps that Neverland where they belong ... The air is once again still and silent, a heavy, muffled, enveloping silence. What shall I think about? Not the tired old thoughts of yesterday, nor the demanding thoughts of tomorrow I'll embalm this moment in words, fix it in language, to be recalled, revisited at choice. In the morning those words may have vanished, but if they'll stay, they'll hold for ever the silence, the blackness, the insubstantial quality of distant freight-trains in the night ... I must stop thinking and sleep sleep in the dark sleep in the silence the silent world the silent room sleep in the sleep in slee ...

May, 1991

Earth bound in Florida Exploring my hotel room, I move eagerly to the balcony, seven high floors above the beach. Seven short yards beyond me, in ample air, flow strength and grace and beauty. The long pelican procession glides past in sovreign silence; great wings outspread, small round heads forward, long necks tucked in, thrusting beaks and bright sharp eyes (neither threat nor food, they ignore me utterly) lords of the up-draft currents, riding towards home the evening airs. Artistry, balletry, aerobatics, long-inherited secrets of technique, all joyously conjoin to give exquisite mastery. The great birds know that here they are supreme. By reason of this lofty tower, I share their world and know myself ridiculous. I cannot fly.

March, 1992.

59

Migration Ou sorit les neiges d'autant? 'Where are the snows of yester-year, of childhood and of youth?' More to the point, where are the snows of yesterday, its lowering skies, its biting winds, its treacherous sidewalks, heavy winter clothes, and even heavier depression of the spirit? Here a clear, blue sky; in the pool, warm water caresses me in limpid clarity; above, in the trees, a bird is liripiping; against the blue, a palm-frond, golden-green, waves in luxuriant sunshine ... No longer a burden to be humped around, my lightsome body, set free of all entanglements, is now my dear companion, revelling delights of water, air and light, and deep well-being. It is good to be alive. If flying south can work such magic change, what shall become, if, when, I shall fly up?

February, 1993

6o

Rocks Irregular, broken skylines, strange-sculpted mountain shapes, rocks layered, up-tilted, weathered, sun-baked, frost-cracked, water-herded, testimony incontrovertible to the countless aeons of Earth and the ridiculous brevity of man. Vita brevis, ars longa; but here Anasazi pictographs, Mochican portrait-pottery, the Mayan calendar, the Inca cities, Teotihuacan pyramids and shrines, along with Angelo, Shakespeare, Bach, are all alike reduced to faint ephemera, fast-fading vapour trails on desert skies. These Arizona canyons, rocks and mountain masses impose their permanence with brutal weight, and mock the passing dreams, the petty agonies, and all the little arts of humankind. Silence is dead until by sound enlivened; space is void until defined by form; existence has no meaning, until mind marks a beginning and points toward a goal. O mighty and enduring rocks, tempus ipsum vacuum, nisi ars aeterna est time itself is empty, if art is not eternal.

March, 1991

6l

Gladiators They come from the ends of the earth, young men and women, the best of their nations, trained relentlessly to single-minded combat, Americans, Orientals, Europeans, Antipodeans, forged in battles won, hardened in victories. In turn they face each other, man to man, woman to woman, singly in the vast arena. Only one can be victor here, only one can live to fight again. The multi-thousand seats are jammed; rapt, intent, vicarious contestants, willing, compelling their favourite's advancement. They roar encouragement, hold breathless silence, groan in their agony, roar for the kill, erupt in maddened, therapeutic applause. Adversaries leap and feint, fall back and swiftly forward, drive and parry, cut and block, beat down by a hairline the skilful pass, launch in return a deadly thrust. Scenting victory at finger tip, they fall victim to their confidence, sustain a stunning blow, let fall their weapon, abject in despair; then rally miraculously, to bedlam applause. The fever mounts, the betting grows intense, losers are weeded out, new battles joined, until two men, two women starkly survive. Now they must face each other, sans merci. Under the hot sun the hours creep by,

6z

the tides of victory ebb and flow. Muscles weaken, stamina fails, concentration fades ... remorseless, the victor moves in for the kill. Unmoved, inscrutable, the arbiter enthroned intones a final verdict: for men, for women, a single champion is crowned! The crowd sighs gustily, regains humanity; the U.S. Tennis Open has happened for another year.

September, 1992.

63

Contagion Untimely in December November clouds lie low on Montreal. The dank, encumbering fog muffles the city, drapes the streets, hides mountain slopes, and all above third floors. On Sherbrooke Street, where trucks and cars are stop and go, pedestrians in clumsy clothes trudge heavily thru muddy slush, curse the unseasonable warmth and long for honest cold. Gladly I reach the outer edge of campus, push on a door and enter another world: a wide hall, brilliantly lighted, noisily crowded; thronged with students, eager, lively, greeting their friends with exaggerated animation, smiting the ears like raucous birds in flock. Tall slim girls in tight, uncomfortable jeans, or stockier-built in short-short skirts; guys in bright red breakers, sporting long hair, or crazy Mohawk tufts, or law-and-order busicuts, to go with three-piece busisuits for would-be busimen ... Waiting for examination doors to open they out-face nervousness, laughing loudly at some in-class joke, sharing gleefully their latest crumbs of gossip, detailing optimistic plans

64

for New Year's in New York. I struggle unheeded to reach the elevators. How good it is for ancient characters like me to be battered by the decibels of youth, to jostle and be jostled by young bodies in a crowd. Just to push thru them bestows a mind-transfusion. Who cares now about the fog?

December, 1990

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Scholars The blessed Alcuin, our gentle English scholar-saint, was called away to Aachen and beyond, because the would-be Emperor Charles, that most great-minded of barbarians, intuited a timely truth: that naked power can clothe itself in royal robes* and breathe the aura of true majesty, most readily where learning and the garnered wisdom of the past are kindly nurtured and generously endowed. So Alcuin must leave his abbey school at York, and bear a lamp within the Prankish court to light an empire and inspire an age. He knew he served high purposes, and was content to serve; but in his heart, as in his letters back to York, a constant longing, a deep nostalgia. He hungered for the stillness of the body, the slow, deep-reaching quiet of the mind, the undisturbed serenity of soul, which fill the silence of the cloistered life. For in the cloister there is Rule, self-chosen and most honorably observed; and out of Rule is bred Community, and in Community grows Love of Learning not learning only, which begets unfailingly erudition, pride and pedantry, those killing foes of all creative thought, but Love of Learning, which generously shares 66

its harvest, insights, joys, with kindred spirits; and is rewarded most when gifted youth outrun their teachers and enhance their heritage. Lovers of Learning, when, wherever they may live, are fellows of that universitas, true daughter of the cloister, which has no time or place or outward form, but lives from age to age in ancient lore, in many-volumed libraries, and in congenial souls. Humbly I thank my angel-pedagog, who has led and guided all my days, that a young schoolboy, ignorant of all, I glimpsed that learned monasterium, and straightway longed to be initiate. For threescore years and more, in London, Marburg, Bristol, now in Montreal, I've served lay-brother to their vows, a would-be novice, perpetual postulant; but if God truly is in heaven, and all is well and kindly in his world, my call will come I'll be matriculatus in their school, join with my fellows in their academe, and be the least and latest in that bright brotherhood. There I shall greet the blessed Alcuin, live by his scholar's Rule, share deeply in his peace; in panelled, book-lined common-rooms, along tree-shaded, gravelled walks. 67

and on green lawns in college squares, I'll meet old friends and new; converse with Anselm and with Abelard, with John of Salisbury and Maimonides, or perchance take wine with Lady Margaret. In her companionable halls, I'll make a fourth with Colet, Erasmus and Sir Thomas, or listen silent to Francis Bacon and Montaigne. Often I'll sit at Helen's feet, ringed by her scholars, come to roost at last, and she will coax their vagrant songs, and make their music timeless as she sings; while in a room, truly her own but opened wide, Virginia Woolf will let her thoughts flow on for all the world to share, and Kenneth Clark sweetly distil the culture of millennia. So rich and varied company, so wide and ranging seminar, so satisfying talk will be for us full heaven, delight and school enough for all eternity. November 1992. Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII and scholar in her own right, founded two Cambridge colleges, Clare and Christ's Helen Waddell, The Wandering Scholars, 192.7; Mediaeval Latin Lyrics, 192.9

Dr. Foljambe's Hopes of Heaven Raised in the United Church of Canada, Dr. Cuthbert Foljambe (pronounced Fullum) is a recently-retired Professor Emeritus of Classics. A bachelor, rather conservative in his opinions but not narrow-minded, he has obviously used his newly-acquired leisure to read more widely, and with considerable profit.

I want it clearly understood. I am no crypto-feminist: I do not think that women can do all things well in my book, men are men, and women, thank God, are women. I simply want to say that when (Deo mercifully volente) I get to heaven, I'll make of course, the official calls, and pay respects to our establishment, to Paul, to Gospel-Luke and Augustine, Wyclif, Erasmus, and Charles Wesley (I know it should be brother John, but fear he might seek to co-opt me in some worthy enterprise), but then, proprieties observed, I'll feel me free to follow my own bent ... I'll hasten round to that eternal afternoon, forever Sunday, where as I am credibly informed, a group of ladies take supernal tea (with sherry for gentlemen who might drop in) and talk - amiably, sensibly, wittily among themselves, and (here is the cream)

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often illustrate their point, or seek support for some more venturesome opinion, by calling up their other selves; so that one can have the joy (I can without exaggeration say, the heavenly joy) of sitting by Jane Austen and find oneself conversing with lively Lizzie Bennet or well-intentioned Emma; of listening to the somewhat-scandalous George Elliot, and finding her transposed to earnest Dinah Morris; I'll begin a conversation with Miss Dorothy L. Sayers, and finish it with Harriet Vane - and, of course, the incomparable Lord Peter: (I'll need all my literary wits merely to stay silent and look intelligent.) I'll visit with Amanda Cross, and watch Kate Fansler being sensible with Herbert and frivolling with Archer; and I'll surely ask the erudite Miss Peters to give me leave to wander in the Abbey and converse awhile with Brother Cadfael, perhaps upon the virtue of obedience, or more probably the sin of curiosity. (I can talk happily with saints as long as they stay human.) But either Agatha or Miss Jane Marple will no doubt scrutinize me briefly, and let me know, with no words spoken, that they have penetrated my pretences but are prepared, for now, to let them stand ...

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I'm not, in truth, sufficiently well-schooled to be at ease in such discerning company, but if they'll let me stay, I doubt I'll soon move on; Conrad and Conan Doyle, C.RSnow and Graham Greene are splendid fellows, but when it comes to talk ... Those women ... those Sunday afternoons ... one begins to see what Abelard meant: 0 quanta qualia, sunt ilia sabbata, quae semper celebrat, superna curia: 'How timeless must those Sunday tea-times be!' where RD.James may all unconsciously dissolve into Dalgliesh, and let us hear for once that poetry of his, so taut of meaning, so parsimonious of words. And opportunity may well arise to say, while talking with Dame Ngaio Marsh: 'Ah, good afternoon, Sir Roderick! recently, 1 saw a striking portrait of your lady unsigned, I noticed, but might one ask, is it not a self-portrait? Would you present my compliments and tell Miss Troy, I thought it courageously revealing?' 0 quanta qualia, sunt ilia sabbata ... But I repeat, I am no feminist. 1 merely happen to have observed that women write the most intriguing tales, and in the telling

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create the most credible, the most engaging characters. After all, giving birth's as proper to a woman as preaching (vide Samuel Johnson) to a man but who wants to go to heaven to hear more sermons?

March, 1993

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Rembrandt Portfolio They tell me. Master Rembrandt, that you have left some fifty painstaking, honest, deeply revealing portraits of yourself: each of them individually a masterwork, even the sketches, a patient, ruthless probing of the face that you saw mirrored; but together, a record without parallel, a panorama of your pilgrimage from confident, eager twenty-ish, thru affluent, successful middle-age, to sixty-plus, over the hill, beginning to show the signs of wear. Only a selection have I seen but it's the latest holds my eye: still self-possessed, even defiantly regal, but poignantly King Lear, deserted by your wealth, robbed of your influence, already baited by old age and all conveyed with undiminished skills by that same frank, uncompromising judge of all that you have been, and all that you now are. You, yourself, a subject of endless fascination to yourself. But as I browse on further I marvel that a man so self-concerned,

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so self-absorbed, could still have time and eye and passion for all the busy, thriving, Netherlander world swirling so humanly around him. Here is a woman, happily enjoyed entering her bath, and here the austere, dignified merchants, encased in pride; here again, the gay young bucks, the Jewish bride and groom, (his thought on her, but her's lost in some future: she's surely newly pregnant), the haughty guilds, the banquets, the homely, carefully-detailed domestic scenes, the forgiveness that embraced the vagrant son, the lesson in anatomy, even the slaughtered ox oh yes, especially that slaughtered ox you saw and felt and painted all ... You teach me, Master Rembrandt, wisdom I'd gladly learn in my own old age, now newly sprung upon me. The supreme wonder any man may know is indeed himself: the living, experiencing, observing centre of his whole universe and this entranced you, lifetime long. And yet you demonstrate beyond refute that this same man can also be so sensitive, so ready with imagination,

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that he can enter into other centre-places, feel, assess and marvel at rich other-universes, suffer those other-pains, and with his brush expound them lovingly, as fully as his own. Now I begin I think to understand: only as one first truly loves one's self, and prizes, gives full value to, one's own person, has one the depth, the soul-capacity enough, to love his neighbour as ... Thank God, He enmeshed some souls in artist chains; they are the truest teachers of us all.

February - April, 1994

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Amor Vincit Omnia She was just seventeen, Heloise, niece to Canon Fulbert, convent-bred, educated, quite precocious, with her respectable store of Latin, an acquaintance with Greek, even it is said some Hebrew but knowing nothing of the world, nothing of the ways of men, and all unaware that she was ripe for love. He was Abelard, mature, self-proud, armed cap-a-pie with arguments, confounding all his challengers, the Achilles of the Schools. He was Abelard, the talk of the taverns where the students gathered to drink and sing the songs they'd learned with and from their Master. He was Abelard, confident, self-sufficient, ambitious, prizing his chastity, scorning women until at foolish Fulbert's importuning, he sat side by side in private tutoring with Heloise, and caught the scent of her, observed her complexion, fingered her hair, looked in her eyes,

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and drowned in her as she in him. Two well-schooled erudites, in love unlettered novices, surrendering without a thought to all its warmth and beauty and delight, newly finding life a wonder-world, waiting to be explored, waiting to be enjoyed. He made her songs, and sang them to her softly, that Fulbert might have no suspicion; but in his wine at night, drinking with his students, he had to sing them loudly, proudly, and the lads were quick to learn them, borrowed them, sang them, until all Paris echoed with her name Heloise, the altogether beautiful, Heloise, quick-witted as her eyes are bright, Heloise, the lovely girl of Abelard! He possessed her, and now must keep her. No other man should ever know her, he must secure her for himself, he would marry her and she said no. A wife would be impediment, encumbrance to his rising star. She must remain his mistress,

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the daring sin which would enhance him, make him the envy of all his fellows, the despair of those whom he had bested. The Church condones a concubine, but guards jealously the vows of priesthood. Abelard, the so very human sinner, might rise to Bishop and beyond; Abelard the virtuous husband could only languish in obscurity. She'd be more proud the whore of Abelard, than ever queen of king or emperor, or Abbess in a nunnery the fatal words invoked her destiny, but of such quality her love of him. But he was a man and she his woman. As he decided so must she do. They were married in secret, and on her wedding day she said, 'Now are we both destroyed, henceforth our sufferings shall be as great as was our joy.' When her deluded uncle learned what the rest of Paris had known, gossipped and laughed about so long, in frustration and blind hate he sent hired ruffians by night, who siezed on Abelard, bound and castrated him.

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In the ruin of his life, in the agony of his disgrace, in the physical destruction of his love, he could gasp out to her one message only: 'Get you to your nunnery!' For her there was indeed no other door. In cold despair she took the veil, and bound herself to agony for life. She had no vocation; her calling was indeed to love, but female love, hot-blooded, passionate and wild. Her days were passed in pieties, in empty rituals and observances; her nights in longings, remembrances, desires. She could not confess her sin and be absolved, for it was still her dreams and fantasies. For love of Abelard she had become what she had scorned - the Bride of Christ. Finally, so be it. What the heart could not offer, the will must give; at least she'd be for Him obedient as to her human lover; she bowed her spirit and took up her cross, with only death as her reprieve. As the fires of youth burned slowly down, she began to see beyond herself, and recognized her pains in other hearts, in other lives, in other tragedies.

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She offered terms to God: the One whose Son died on a cross must understand and salve her pain, pouring in oil and wine of saving grace, not requiring the denial of her earthly love, but transforming to a limitless compassion. Chosen to be Abbess, she comforted her sisters out of the wealth of her own sufferings, and tuned her prayers to intercede for all mankind. Humbly she learned the love of God is infinitely more profound, more all-embracing, than human hearts can ever comprehend. When she died she was laid in the tomb of Abelard, where he, long purged by his own store of woes, had patiently awaited her. Forgiving Fulbert, forgiving each other, forgiving mankind, forgiving God, they mounted up to Heaven hand in hand, to be sung by saints and angels as truly man and wife – but for each other eternally a lover and his mistress: Heloise, the altogether beautiful, Heloise, quick-witted as her eyes are bright, Heloise, the lovely, lovely girl of Abelard!

July, 1994

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Dies Favoris Lord, you know I can plead no acuity of intellect, no comeliness of mind or person, that you should wish to know me; no self-serving reason to suggest I should find favour above my fellows, or gain an entrance to your presence more often and more freely than do others; and yet ... There's always that 'and yet.' All I can fairly ask is this: that of sheer grace there may be times when I am given some phrase, some thought, some instant of clear-sighted apprehension, wherein I glimpse the inner mystery of life. Then shall I understand that I have been admitted to high, inseminating intercourse with your transcendent Mind, bending low to my small limitations and for that brief time of favour I shall give thanks, heartfelt and unalloyed. It is the most, it is the least, that I can hope. But then the work begins. Only bestow from time to time, as You see fit, those rare illuming days of favour, and on the other days I'll do the rest: I'll wrestle with the words I need, inflexible, intractable, recalcitrant; I'll pull and stretch them into supple shape, changing the order, the accent or nuance,

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until they fitly clothe the evanescent thought and so preserve it for remembering, Yours and mine; produce in fact the kind of piece I dare to call a poem and of it humbly make an offering, for You - and, if they will, my fellow-minded friends. It is the least, it is the most, that I can do.

August, 1991

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Makers Creator Spirit, Lord of Life, You are the power that animates our world. More than that we cannot know, but only wonder, speculate and admire. You make all things lyve, and never tire creating new: new forms, new species, new achievements of evolving change. And You made me: I am Your product, from every pore, to every impulse of the mind. Was it then in generous benediction, or in quirky sense of humour, that You endowed me, Lord God, with this itch to copy You, and want always to be making? This bringing forward something conceived, embodied, shaped, polished, completed a poor thing, perhaps, but dearly cherished, because from start to finish it is my own? And gave me moods, restless, irritable, until the thing in hand be realized ... Doubtless from Your Olympian height, Wagner, perspiring at Bayreuth, and Bottom, rehearsing his mechanic crew in Athens wood, look much the same or Stanley Frost? scribbling his little pieces, and dreaming that one or two perchance

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might have a whiff of poetry about them? You at least, if no one else, must take regard of us: Wagner, Shakespeare, Bottom, Frost, the towering giants and all the minor fry, writers, musicians, artists, makers all; for what we are, You made us, and it's in Your image that we stumble on. The reward? The dance performed, the picture painted, the song sung, the thought given substance in words ... But also, in our sweat, and in our toiling, an inkling of the price You pay; and in our joy, a clue why You 'so love the world' O ever-surprising, ever-delighting, supremely-artist, Maker Par Excellence!

April, 1992.

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Dives My Name We know, O Lord, both You and I, I cannot in good conscience pray for miracles of providence, to keep me safe from earthquake, flood or storm, disasters that blind annihilate great swatches of my fellows; nor can I reasonably ask continued boons of health and plenitude, wherein I am already privileged beyond all possible defence: my airy lebensraum in overcrowded space, my modest affluence in starving world, my thoughtful friends, the joy of books, of music, travel to much-storied lands all undreamed riches for majority mankind. You also know, O Lord, as I know all too well, I am far distant from the piety of Job: 'The Lord gave, the Lord takes, blessed be the Name of the Lord.' Dives indeed my name - and yet, in my poverty of grace, there is one prayer, learned from a Sufi saint, I long to mean with all my heart: 'If I have sought in hope of heaven, deny me heaven; if I have sought in fear of hell, cast me to hell;

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but if for You, for Your own sake, Most Merciful, Most Compassionate, withhold not Yourself from me!'

May, 1991 Dives the name traditionally given to the rich man in Jesus' parable of the beggar at his door. Sufi one of the forms of Islam.

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Living Planet No seed is smaller than a seed of mustard, yet it sends down roots, spreads sturdily from its stem, becomes a great bush, and the birds make their nests in its branches. Even smaller is the ovum of a woman when quickened by the sperm of a man, but it develops limbs, produces the ear and the eye, equips itself with a miracle-brain, and in nine short months is ready to become a person. All virgin is the mind in its beginnings, starting the process, even in the womb, of absorbing data, organizing programs, patterns of memory imprinting the cortex; and then, once launched into this noisy world, entering into experiments of learning what to hear, and what to see, how to speak, how to think and reason, and how to understand. So has it been the whole of life; from the one self-replicating cell to colonies, and then the early plants, the first free-moving creatures of the sea, emergence onto land, and adaptation to environments; climates as lush as Costa Rica's humid slopes, as arid hot as stony Arizona, as inhospitable and cold as arctic Tuktoyaktuk; and all still interwoven in one self-renewing, interdependent, ecosystem -

from one small cell, this total biosphere, which richly and abundantly enwraps our planet as in a royal robe. O Earth, Earth, Earth, most fortunate, most beautiful of all the solar planets! O Life, most magical, most numinous of mysteries! O God, the Mind and Soul of Life, who meets me in the experience of personhood, who is both myself and Wholly Other, who compels my awe, my worship, and something so much more than love! Hear now all peoples of the earth! The first commandment is: You shall love Life your God with all your heart and mind and soul. And the second is close kin: You shall love your neighbour as yourself, for in the ecosystem of this world he is yourself. And this the third and equally demanding: You shall love your planet as your home, unique, fragile, precious beyond all thought. Here is the whole Law of God, and all the wisdom of mankind. O Mother Earth, if I forget you ... but this I cannot do and still remain a human being.

June, 1991

Holy Ground When Moses stood before the burning bush, and nameless fears clutched at his heart, an inner voice directed him: 'Draw off your shoes; the ground whereon you stand is holy ground.5 Then Moses bowed his head and all his being worshipped God. Elijah cowered within the mountain cave, while lightning, storm and earthquake thundered above, around, beneath, and all the mountain heaved; but when there came great stillness then he stood forth, and bowed his head, and on that holy ground with all his being worshipped God. The Syrian general, commander of armies, Naaman the proud, but now a leper, discovered God on Jordan's bank in joy of being made anew. Two camels' load of Israel's earth he spread on alien soil, to have whereon each day to say his prayers: a man must stand on holy ground to bow his head and worship God.

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Amidst the many arguments, the to and fro of reasons in the mind, the ebb and surge of longings in the heart, there come in greater or in lesser lives, those moments strangely numinous, of Person meeting person, of mind receiving Mind. Small ground indeed, but holy: there we can stand, and bow our heads, with all our being worship God.

October, 1992,

QO

God is a Music God is a music, and he his own composer; and I, I am sounding in him perhaps as bridge-notes in a symphony, of which my fellow men and women, and all the other creatures of this Planet Earth together build the phrases, the expanding themes, the variations and the glorious cadenzas ... Some day I hope to understand that music as does the Composer - but if not, if for my moment I take the air, and then die fittingly away, what privilege ever to have sounded in such high artistry; what satisfaction to know he wrote me in, that he listened for me, and when I came on cue, smiled as he heard, and continued with the beat ...

July, 1993

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Good Friday A crowded, winding souk, cobbled rough to weary feet; on either side, small open-fronted stores, displaying fruits and vegetables, grains and spices, pottery, brasses and rich arabian rugs. Buyers and sellers pause in their haggling to watch the little procession pushing past: the stolid Roman soldiers, clearing the way, the fanatics intent on a killing, a taggle of the idle, welcoming excitement, a distraught group of wailing women ... In the midst of the soldiers, the battered, disoriented prisoner, stumbling under the weight of the wood, responding now only to the corporal's goad. At the end of the lane, beyond the city gate, a cruel, lingering, unthinkable death. He'd preached brotherly love and Kingdom Come, and his own people had betrayed him to this; he'd trusted his all to his God, and his God had not delivered: My God, my God, why have you deserted me? All you that pass by, was ever man plunged deeper into hell?

April, 1991

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Easter Day Who saw the stone rolled away? Who saw the Figure emerge from the tomb already clothed in garments of light, leaving behind discarded grave wrappings? Not Mary of Magdala. The others in the disciple band were well aware of her passionate nature. In her past, some thought, she had accepted lovers; Peter, that she'd played the self-destructive role of mistress, where she could not, or more obscurely would not, marry. John, that she had long drifted an erratic, wayward course, buffeted by genuine misfortunes and her own, poorly-understood emotions until the mistress met a Master who calmed her stormy passions into an ordered, disciplined devotion, which she could not as yet interpret, only gratefully accept and live. But she knew clearly enough what the Master had given her: a world of truth, to be enjoyed, a goal of hope, to be lived for, a faith in God, in which, for the first time, to be stable and secure. In their long weekend of deep disaster, bemused in a vacant stupor of despair,

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they took no notice she suffered unspeaking, gripped in a silent agony of pain. She could not accept the monstrous fact that shattered all truth, all hope, all God: the Master had been destroyed. It could not be, but it was. The morning after Sabbath, before indeed it was morning, her torment drove her out into the darkness, into the streets, into the garden where the body was laid. There perhaps she could weep, there perhaps her heart could break, there perhaps her world could end. But the stone was already moved; dawnlight revealed only an empty cave, denying even the outpouring of her grief. Blindly she groped away from the rock, and just as blindly grasped at a figure present in the shadows. 'Are you the gardener? Was it you turned him out? Where have you put him? I'll take him away. Just tell me where he is. I'll take him. I'll give you money. I've got some jewels left. Just tell me where he is. I'll - '

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He said to her, 'Mary.' In that one word she knew him, and cried out: 'Master!' He said, 'Do not cling to me, but go tell my disciples: I am alive for ever more.' Who saw the stone rolled away? Who saw the Figure emerging from the tomb already clothed in the garments of light? Not Mary of Magdala. Even she was too late: no human eye was permitted to see that primal act of resurrection. But she was the first to see him risen, the first to know the fact was not fact; that truth and hope and God were whole again, that Life always triumphs over death. Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Easter, 1991

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Contingency It is a sobering thought: if it had not been for Charles Martel, if he'd not won that crucial battle with Islam, a continent might well have lost its classic past, and many-nationed Christendom never come to flower. Even so, a Europe stumbling from the dark could still have missed its road, if beacons flaring from the former days had not been there to light a forward path: the great Augustine, who glimpsed celestial ramparts, while those of mighty Rome around him were crumbling into dust; and single-minded Benedict, who joined indissolubly prayer and work and study, and wrote a Rule that cloistered scholars could freely choose, and therein share an intellectual life - but Hippo's bishop could not have visioned supernal verities, nor would-be monk devise a patterned Way, if charismatic Paul had not ignited minds and set them eager on the heavenly quest: 'for we have learned to look, not on things that are seen, but on the things that are not seen' ... yet Saul of Tarsus never could have cometed across the firmament of his bright age if Jesus had not blinded him with light:

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'My Kingdom's not of this world's understanding.' But the dying Nazarene could not have gasped in triumph, 'It is finished! Father, receive my spirit!', if Isaiah had not ... if Moses had never ... if Abraham ... but Father Abraham himself would never have set foot from many-idoled Ur if strong, divine compulsion had not ... 0 my God! I do believe I've stumbled on your last and hidden Name you are the ultimate, the un-contingent If! Indeed so, my son ... but it has been more plainly said: my first Name is 1 AM.

February, 1993

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Rationale Premise One, an axiom: in this amazing universe miracles we accept with wonder and do not fear not to understand. Definition? an event with significant effects but no apparent cause: a happening fortuitous. Premise Two, a fact: in our beginnings there was the solar system. So then: First miracle: a planet poised just rightly from the sun not too hot, like Venus not too cold, like Jupiter not inhospitable, like Mars but temperate, dweller-friendly; we call it Planet Earth.

Second miracle: out of Earth's substance came forth Life. Self-defending, self-multiplying, self-evolving incredible, yet fact. Third miracle: a single species ourselves became self-knowing, self-planning, self-questioning -but sadly destroying its own kind, and yet still over-populating Earth. Fourth miracle is now: the emerging triumph of reason planning to outlaw war, planning to outlaw hunger, planning to limit our own numbers. (Is smiling, benedicting Pope John Paul endangered Life's worst enemy? is Henry Morgenthaler our wisest man? are Planet Conservationists our only hope? Only another miracle can save us!) That fifth miracle is painfully emerging: the Mind-God, known by a thousand names Father, Allah, the Buddha, Christ, Science, Law, Beauty, Truth moving into minds of humankind, in many prayers, in many dreams, in many churches, in many charities, in many theories, in many policies, in many musics, and innumerable poetries ...

The old name rings true: Immanu-El, God with us, God within us, God groping his way with growing confidence towards the dimly foreseen Miracle Six: the Kingdom of God, the fully-reasonable Earth. And then the incomparable Seventh, which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor ever yet the mind of man conceived, but will explain, fulfill and justify all that has gone before ... Conclusion: in this amazing universe we accept miracles with gratitude, and do not fear for the present not to understand but only in our brief day not to play our reasonable part.

October - November, 1993

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1996

Drawn at a Venture

Contents 103 105 10 6 108 no in iiz 114 115 117 119 12. i 12,3 125 127 12,8 130 132 133 135

A Bow at a Venture Yellow Morning Hour Muse Replies Artists Birthday Gift Klio's People Snowbird Montreal Mornings Early Summer Rain Meditation in the Mode of Tao Meditation in the Mode of Christ Summer of Ninety-five Quebec Referendum '95 Fur Traders Voyaging St. Paul's Counsell Confirmation Class Table Talk Psalm 83

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Job's Pilgrimage

A Bow at a Venture Poems are loosed from a bow drawn at a venture. None knows where, or when, or if, they will find a target. I drove home from the university along the mountain's lower slopes. Above me on the hillside, I glimpsed a runner, moving steadily across the mountain-face, choosing a path that mounted towards the summit. He had accepted a stiff challenge and was meeting it with courage. I stopped the car to watch him run, revelling in his stamina - I could feel the resilience of ankle, foot and calf, the strong thrust of the thighs, the steady, smooth response of heart and lungs, his head forward, his arms carefully controlling the rhythm of his run. I rooted for him, joyful in his vigour and well-being. Inevitably there came the phrase: 'The rising sun ... rejoicing as a strong man to run a race.' I knew then, five and twenty centuries ago, another man had watched, as I was watching now, and in a runner's zest had found the metaphor he needed. It was as if we stood there, cheering side by side.

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Out of that one moment, he had completed his psalm, I had found my poem. Across millennia we met in shared experience. Today, tomorrow, a hundred years from now, someone, somewhere, may read my lines and say: 'yes, that is true, for I have lived it also,' and we will be joined in one humanity. Poems are loosed from a bow drawn at a venture but impelled by hope.

May, 1995 I Kings 22:34 'And a certain man drew a bow at a venture, and smote the King of Israel between the joints of his breast-plate.'

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Yellow A dreary wet October day, the skies low and lowering, the morning rush-hour traffic snarled and snarling; rain falling heavily. Everyone, walking or driving, wishing they were somewhere else. Suddenly, on the sidewalk, a little pyramid of bright yellow: a shiny, pointy, yellow sou'wester, a gleaming yellow waterproof, sticking out like a little yellow tent, and two twinkling, trotting, yellow rubber boots. Beneath the peak, and brightest of them all, a tiny, beaming, golden, Chinese face. She reveled in her new winter outfit, she reveled in the streaming rain, she reveled in being warm and dry in so much wet. And happy in the handclasp, on a busy, noisy street, that told her she was safe in Mother's love. A little pyramid of happiness that traveled with me all day long, and made me happy too.

October, 1996

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Morning Hour Awake early, at ease in my bed, my morning tea beside me, notebook and pen in hand, a whole hour before I need to rise, my mind blank but receptive. The creative urge is strongly upon me I am in the mood, my dear, sweet Muse, come, visit me, in your most seductive, your most inseminating guise! What quickenings, what illuminations, what coruscations of images, have you in store for me? I feel like a child on a birthday morning, craning to see what intriguing parcels lie beside my plate ... my mind continues blank but receptive, receptive ... The idle moments pass pleasantly, but remain vacant, unproductive. Ah, now slowly, a mental picture forms: thru a dark, damp autumnal evening, I glimpse an old gas lamp, shedding a pool of misty light on a young girl - waiting, waiting, waiting in hope her lover will come ... I can share the cold on her face, the fluttering expectancy in her heart ... in her heart ... in her heart ... from the clock below, the hour chimes, the picture fades away ...

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He did not come - and nor did you, my fickle, capricious, inconstant inspiration! Lovers and muses, they're all alike ... I must rouse and face the graylong duties of the day.

November, 1994

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The Muse Replies I received your piece, and it is at least a sign that you are still alive. But let me tell you this: that girl, as like as not, only reads romances, never joins anything, never does anything, never thinks anything; but only hangs around, waiting for some Prince Charming to transform her life for her sensible young men steer clear that corner and its misty lamp as warily as Ulysses the Scylla! And while I'm being candid, let me also tell you this I find nothing so off-putting as a blank mind! One can as well interact with a blank television screen! Have you not been meeting people in all their infinite variety? have you not read stimulating books? have you not listened to great music? did you not observe, two clear nights ago, the very birth of an infant moon, and that on the first, pristine eve of a new and full-of-promise month? And yet your mind is blank?

I will spell it out for you once more: it still takes two to tango. You come up with good ideas, and I'll supply the fire, invent new words, conjure magical images, infuse an honest, fresh emotion. Give me something worthwhile to work with, and I'll turn even your clubfooted lines to rarest poetry, that soars and uplifts with it all who read that is, of course, if I am in the mood ... [It's as I said: 'fickle, inconstant, capricious'; but, confound her, indispensable!].

December, 1994

109

Artists All art-creation is in essence loving. He/she stands at life's street-corner, and cries aloud to passers-by, as Wisdom did of old: 'O brother man! O sister mine! I have created this identity, I have discovered this beauty, I have isolated this significance! I call you to share it! See, feel, hear, comprehend, this that I have achieved! To be an artist, I need your participation! And I believe you can, you will respond!' 'You shall deem your neighbour another like yourself all art-creation is in essence loving.

Proverbs nzoL July, 1996

110

Birthday Gift I had passed long days, and even longer nights, in lonely, arid lands, till I truly thought my desert springs were finally dried up, and I a nomad from my kind. Nothing to say. No one to say it to. Tonight, my anniversary, at happy hour, the blessed rains fell, gently, sweetly, and a verdant valley opened out before me, leading to the distant, mist-emerging city, the golden-domed, the cool-courtyarded, green tree-shaded, generously-fountained, kindly-peopled city the friends I want to talk to, the friends for whom I have something to say ... I can only breathe it again, breathe it most fervently: Laus Deo, O Laus Deo, Laus Deo indeed!

17 February, 1995

III

Klio's People The Lady Klio, the Muse of History, often dismissed as crabbed, stale, depressing, can in truth command her following as royally as her more seductive sisters. Her devotee spends all his days, and often most his nights, searching for facts half-buried in the dust of time, gathering up the scattered potsherds of the past. There are so many, he cannot take them all; he can only carry back into the present the meagre basketful he clutches to his chest. Then he must sift and sort his findings, endeavouring to reconstruct the pattern his mistress has revealed to him whether of ancient realms, or legendary loves, or simply yesterday's ephemera. Now he stands back, exhibits his work, 'There, that is what happened, and this is what it means for us!' History, it would appear, as much as beauty, is in the eye of the beholder and gives an equal satisfaction.

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Her sisters' crowds sing, dance, paint with ecstasy? We who know the stores of wisdom and compassion which lie in Klio's gift, are not to be seduced for lesser boons. We worship at an inner shrine, where truth and beauty dwell as one, and offer especial thanks our Lady has given significance to time. Time happens, but history has to be created. Dedicated to Peter McNally. August 1996

113

Snowbird Yesterday, in frozen Montreal, the biting cold, at fifteen below, was a relentless predator, waiting to pounce. Stormy winds, icy sidewalks, made every foray from home to car, from car to store, a perilous adventure. Today, we are in the Arizonan desert, but a desert carefully transformed: we sit by a man-made lake, in a man-made park. The sky is blue, the sunshine warm, the air is dry, the breeze is gentle, early summer flowers bloom precociously. In the trees, birds are singing, in the lake, ducks are diving, on the grass, children playing; boys in shirts sail past on bikes, girls in shorts glide fast on skates. Aladdin's lamp, or Sinbad's magic carpet, never worked miracle like this! And I? I swim in the pool, bask in the sunshine, and try to suppress my guilt I have flown south, and left my friends to cope.

February, 1996

114

Montreal Mornings a la mode Vivaldi First Movement: Morning in Mid-March. Allegretto Bright sunshine on fresh snow, blue sky beyond bare branches, wind from the south and mild; eave-icicles weeping, small birds cheeping, green shoots peeping the first faint hopes of Spring. Sing: Nun danket alle Gott! Chorus: 'Joyful, joyful we adore Thee.' Second Movement: Morning in Mid-April. Dolorosa Grey skies, and leaden, the ground bare, but barren, a cold wind and threat of flurries, the lone pedestrian homeward hurries all hope of Spring deferred ... Only one who had endured the April month in Montreal, could have perpended that most discerning proverb: 'A hope deferred maketh the heart sick.' Lord, Thou alone knowest how sick I am - of winter! How long, O Lord, how long? Chant: miserere! Pray: kyrie eleison H5

Third Movement: Morning in Mid-May. Allegretto con brio As the life-sap courses strifeless thru the gardens and the lanes, so the milk of human kindness flows unhindered thru my veins and Spring provides a glad surprise! I forgive the birds their noisy morning chatter, that has awakened me to catch the rising sun touching the swelling buds of May with Midas magic. Cottage roofs, and spreading branches, even the very telephone poles, are etched in purest golds. My heart lifts, and I revisit youth-time's romantic memories, envy all today's young lovers, and wish them very well. My heart softens towards all prideful mothers, and their smiling, gurgling babes-in-arms, and all my thoughts are songs - tra-la! 'A hope deferred maketh the heart sick, but when the long-desired cometh, it is a tree of life.' I am an old oak, alive again in Spring! Sing cuckoo - loud, loud cuckoo! And likewise Halle, Hallelujah!

Proverbs 13:12. Springtime, 1996

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Early Summer Rain The days of joyful sunshine were days of much activity, much planning, much busyness, and much accomplishment: garden beds turned over, weeds up-rooted, new flowers bedded, geraniums set out in their pots, clematis and their trellises erected. But now the rains have come; for today, tomorrow at least, they have come to stay. Steady, strong rains, spatting on the road, creating a corps de ballet choreographed by vagrant breezes, raindrops at play; but at the back, in the garden, steadily performing their appointed tasks, soaking the receptive earth, cleansing the soft warm air, leafing trees, flowering hedge, early summer blossoms, and the green, green grass. Now is the time to stop working, and to sit gazing with the cat out of the window to contemplate a small world being refreshed, petal by petal, leaf by leaf, root by root.

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Such pause gives also time for the Spirit to permeate the mind, draining away self-centredness, leaving one free to be aware once more of the inner, transcendental quality of the larger world's natural order and, with thanksgiving, one's own conforming role therein ... The preachers are wrong, and the poets are right: Earth and Heaven are never far apart.

June, 1995

118

Meditation in the Mode of Tao graceful maiden of the garden, fairest lily of the valley, each year modestly persistent in the same secluded corner you return and shape yourself to achieve perfection. strongly green protective leaves hiding slender pillar stems where-on swing the fairy bells sounding out a carillon; music not for mortal hearing but in kindly compensation breathing for our pure delight fragrances of heaven. flowers last a few days only, leaves a summer month or two, then you softly fall to sleeping till the cycle of the seasons calls you forth anew.

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without hurry or perturbing you play out your destined role, elegance in vernal living, acceptance in autumn dying, flow and ebb in nature's rhythm both rebuke and healing balm for my complexities. How shall I shape me to your beauty, graceful lily of the valley, fair exemplar of the Way ...

May, 1995

I2-O

Meditation in the Mode of Christ Consider the flowers of the field how they grow they toil not neither do they spin; yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. He who clothes and feeds the flowers will He not also care for you?

Slender poppies of the pathways, purple loosestrife of the hedgerow, modest clover of the pastures, dandelions of railroad bank, Queen Anne's lace and harebell blue, you are clothed in comeliness to adorn the land I love. If some Spring you failed returning, if some year your place were bare, summer-time would lose its pleasure, holidays their peaceful charm. Blossoms bravely by the roadside, flowers shyly by the stream, all essential to the healing that long days of sunshine bring. God it was who dreamed and made you, root and leaf and branching stem, He the one who chose your colours,

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gave you fragrance for the bees. He it was who made me human, gave me senses five and wit; He who clothes the flowers in beauty, will He not provide for me? If I'm content to be a flower-child, the answer probably is, Yes; but if I think to be a person, No. For that privilege, I must be prepared to pay the price.

June, 1995

12,2,

The Summer of Ninety-five This unforgettable summer must not pass unrecorded. It began promisingly in May, continued splendidly in June, hot and humid in July, languorous in August, lingering wistfully in September, reluctant to depart four glorious months. You ask, what I have done? I have enjoyed long, leisurely days, revelling in endless hours of sunshine and rich warmth, shirt and shorts from dawn to dusk; pottering in the garden, at one with living green, many-coloured blossom, and rich, dark earth; writing only for my pleasure, re-reading childhood classics, to match the constant recollections of the years that were ever thus; driving to the mountain park to people-watch so-varied others enjoying their so-varied summers; finding rare satisfaction in being free of all constraints customs, clocks and calendars.

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Four glorious months. What have I done? I hardly remember that's the nature of unforgettable summers.

September, 1995

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Quebec Referendum 95 All summer long the tree beyond my bedroom window has been a shifting, fluttering, impenetrable cloud of quivering green. In strong winds one fancied the tree was about to take off, depart on some mad-cap adventure, but it never did its beauty, vitality, remained constant evening and morning for my delight. But in this the season of falling leaves, what winds could not do Nature has gently accomplished; in obedience to mother's call the leaves have loosed their hold, one by one float loitering to earth, like children called from play. Now is revealed: one mighty trunk, solid, divergent boughs, a thousand spreading branches, innumerable slender stems, finally the individual twigs, which held that living cloud strongly in place. In the Spring the pregnant buds will break afresh, and the tree revel in itself once more,

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fluttering, shifting, constantly on the move, but firmly, firmly rooted in one place. So will it prove, please God, with my country, constantly in motion, changing, evolving, but rooted, rooted in one reality, our geography in our time. Yesterday in Place du Canada, this other season of falling obscurations, all was revealed: boys and girls, men and women, homes, villages, towns, cities, provinces, many cultures, many languages, many landscapes, but all one splendid people in love with Canada, truly from sea to sea.

October, 1995

12-6

The Fur Traders They pushed their way through forests so thickly crowding only deer paths let them pass. They came on meadows dressed with grass and decked with flowers. They glided down creeks that led to lakes cunningly framed in rocks and trees, and splendidly open to sun and air. They gazed on vast inland seas, and prairies with beckoning horizons, and mountains, majestic in their solitude. They became attuned to the silence of the woods, the dawn-time cry of the loon, the night-time howl of the wolf, and the companionable murmur of falling water. A tapestry of stars canopied their bivouac, and northern lights flared, and died, and flared again. When they returned to settlements they often fell silent as men whose inner selves were far away.

Dedicated to James McGill November, 1995

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Voyaging All who live on islands stare out towards emprisoning horizons and long to cross uncharted seas to land on distant, foreign shores. Their dreams explore strange coasts, push inland on vast continents, hear queer new tongues, marvel at great cities, forge new, heart-warming friendships, rejoin the human race. When then shall we set forth from Planet Earth, to draw new charts, confront new galaxies, be challenged by strange biologies, encounter new relationships converse thru interspecies media, explore new patterns of the sciences, new structures of societies, rejoin the universe? Our watchers of the skies and learned men can tell us so tantalizing little: star types, distances, chemical analyses but of life? Nothing. Nothing at all. We are given, irrefutably, the countless, chafing reasons why we must remain forever earthbound, never to enrich our hearts and minds with cultures of the stars.

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That is why by our God we must leap beyond our tutelary disciplines to roam in awe, wonder and delight vast legendary constellations, their musics, arts, philosophies; break out from chrysalis religions to learn at last what life, universal life, may truly be. Who will not tremble, be sick with fear, at such dissolving of his parameters, love desperately her island home, her friends and family, his dear familiar bench-marks, her hither-to unquestionable values and yet not be so cowardly poltroon as linger with the riff-raff left behind? When Columbus sails again, who will not volunteer?

By my God I have leaped over a wall. Psalm 18:29 May 1995

12,9

St. Paul's Counsel And one last admonition, my brothers and sisters: take time to relax and ease the mind, with thoughts that calm, thoughts that cleanse and heal, thoughts that invite the Spirit to indwell. Brood, then, on things you know to be honest: a panelled door of solid oak; the clean bite of an apple; the shock of cold water at the first plunge; the warmth of a mother's hug; a good man's word, simply given. On things that are just: a business deal honoured to mutual advantage; generous reward for work well done; laws that promote the public good; On things that are lovely: the colour and scent of lilac in the Spring; the shape of a young woman's body, as she readies for her dive; a sunset seen and interpreted by Turner; Amadeus Mozart's Ave verum corpus; William Shakespeare on the quality of mercy, the King James Version of the Twenty-third Psalm. On things that are of good report: the Magna Carta, the American Declaration of Independence,

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the the the the

British Declaration of Freedom for all Slaves; United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights; Societies for the Care of Animals; Friends of Planet Earth.

And, to crown all else, recall the truths of the Spirit: 'all virtues are their own reward'; 'there is joy in giving, and grace in receiving'; 'forgiveness only asks that we in turn forgive'; 'love far outruns all duties and all laws'; 'holiness belongs to God alone.' Think on these things, my friends, ponder them, let them linger on the mind, and then, at meditation's end, take fresh heart, go forward and live with courage, believing God is increasingly at work among us, and will tomorrow lead the chant of Kingdom Come!

August, 1994 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, where there is virtue, where there is praise, think on these things Ep. Philipp. 4:8

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Confirmation Class No, it is not wicked not to believe in God. But it is sad, so very sad. Some people are colour-blind, some are tone-deaf they miss so much. Some are not aware of God they miss so much, so very much. They cannot know the joy of worship, the awe of the holy, the sense of ultimate security: 'The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.' There have been many bad ideas about God, but even more have been good. Myself, I am glad, so very glad, to be aware that I know Him, and have inherited the ideas that are good, so very, very good. Have you thought about God for yourself?

August, 1995

132,

Table Talk Cutting into the luncheon conversation she asked me abruptly: 'Are you still a Christian?' I answered her straitly: 'Yes.' And the table-talk continued. I wanted to add: 'But to understand that yes, you must at least care enough to read my poetry,' but the table-talk continued. Or I could have said: 'I am aware of two profound mysteries: first, I am alive, physically, mentally how? why? second, around me there is a whole universe, inanimate, animate, other minds, One Mind how should I respond? Only religion (and, given my inheritance, that for me is Christianity) only religion offers a self-respectful, practical, partial solution, one that I can live with, one that I can live by ... ' I could have said much more, but the table-talk continued.

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Or I could have said: 'I cling to two beliefs, and nurse one hope: first, I believe I know God, whatever, whoever God is; second, I accept gratefully from the past, as time-tested, generation-proven, the richly-provisioned Christian path to God yes, acknowledging there may well be others. And my hope is, now more than ever, our brightest Christian visions, suitably uplifted from myth to truth, will in God's time find their glorious fulfilment.' I could have said much more, much more ... but fortunately the table-talk continued. After all, that 'yes' was enough. Let us go listen to some Bach, or perhaps some gospel songs.

February, 1995

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Psalm 83 Lord, You have tempted me sorely! From earliest days, I have been favoured with providential care. In two World Wars our city was bombed and burned, but in both, I and mine were left unharmed. Growing up in the Great Depression, I never went hungry, nor ever felt myself deprived. I was given a good education, prepared for a career I found deeply rewarding, socially, materially, emotionally. I have lived far into old age, enjoying unimpaired good health, my heart and mind enriched by poetry, beauty, music and science. I love and am loved by close-knit family, and highly-valued friends. Lord, I have been sorely tempted to accept all this, be grateful, and be satisfied. But there is a persistent, insistent inner longing. You made me for yourself, and I shall find no rest until I find that rest in You. Bring me to Your burning bush! With gratitude to all the saints who said it first, especially Agustine 17 February, 1996

Job's Pilgrimage I. UNCERTAIN JOURNEYING .

This busy life grows claustrophobic. I must take the mind's open road, go on pilgrimage, drop all baggage and travel light, dedicated, lonely. I shall seek that Holy Place where all our questionings find resolution, all our resentments peace. In this unfolding universe there's too heart-moving beauty, too intermeshing coincidence, too smoothly-intricate coherence, for the whole great cathedral not to have an altar. In this kaleidoscopic life, my experiences are too manifold, my capacities too undeveloped, my aspirations too unfulfilled, my explorations too new-begun, for death to end me. Pilgrimages are uncertain voyages, the journeying changes all who venture. Now that I am arriving,

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even my hope is something wholly other: not that I find answers, but only that He appear! Eternal Spirit, Custodian of this Holy Place, not from the tempest of debate, but in the silence of my surrender, disclose Yourself to me! II.

THE END OF THE ROAD

My road has been long and torturous, but here at last in the Holy Place, it has an end. My questionings have fallen by the way, my hope has been transformed: give me not answers but Yourself! Ah, Lord God, I had heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see You, and I abhor myself! I have come to the end and I am not worthy! Let me depart and be no more! 'No, My son, here is no end, but only a beginning. Begin now to discover

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who I truly am, and the agony and ecstasy of what I am about. Learn to bow beneath My burdens, endure My sufferings, envisage My goals, share My hopes, experience My joys, partake of My eternity!9 It may not be peace, but it will be Life, forever abundant, forever creating, forever fulfilling, forever new.

January, 1996

1999

Memoranda Moments for Recollection

Contents 141

Winter Mornings

143

Justification

144

Winter Vacation

146

Theophany

147

Lent

149

Signs of the Times

150

After the Ice-storm

151

Uninvited Guests

154

Youth Revisited

156

Ill-Met by Moonlight

157

Robbed

160

Shaw's Morality

162,

Thank you for Summer Visit

163

Trilogy for Margaret

168

In Time of Moving House

171

Penthouse Panorama

173

Victoria Day

175

A Song for Mother's Day

177

Dives and Lazarus

182,

Believing

185

Rene Descartes Aphorism

188

Night Thoughts z a.m.

191

After Thoughts

193

Another Translation

Winter Mornings These winter mornings are well worth waking to. The world begins as grey, lighter and darker shades of grey, but uniformly grey, from sky to ground except for the branches before my window, which are black, stark bare black, sparsely powdered here and there with snow, which in the half-light is also grey. Beyond the tree, the houses across the way are dull and lifeless, no hint of any wakening escapes their tightly-curtained windows. The first sign of life comes with the squirrel, doing his daily high-wire balancing act along the power lines, and thence leaps to the tree, in hopes of withered leaf, or scrap of loosened bark. He is followed by the crow, who from the highest branch, caws loudly for reveille. The sky is grey, uniformly grey, but in the east, shamed by the raven's call, the clouds begin to blush, and delicately take on colour. With surprising swiftness, the pastel hues flood the morning mists, and above the tall apartment blocks, turn pink and peach and palest yellow. Then the sun himself arises, swathed in clouds, but making his imperial presence known with reds and golds and royal purple.

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The light strengthens, the long-limbed jogger lopes past, her pony tail a jog, and my neighbour emerges whistling to brush down his car. Now the sun casts off his cloak, and strips to run his vitalizing course, and, in a moment, snow is white again, and all the world transforms from penny-plain to glorious tuppence-coloured. These winter mornings are well worth waking to.

December, 1997

142.

Justification Winter - the snow was softly falling, the air dry and crisp, the short days dissolved in darkness so festive lights might shine entrancingly, promising the joys of Christmas. Happy shoppers gave generously to beggars and charities alike: this world was good and we'd gladly make it better. But now is truly winter. Christmas has come and gone, and we are left with icy winds, with dressing up to face the blizzard, pulling on boots, innumerable scarves, clearing the steps, the path, the driveway. Left with frozen faces, frozen fingers, frozen toes, with treacherous sidewalks, power blackouts, and snow that clogs and clogs and clogs ... Yes, yes, there are compensations, but I must not think of them. I have to justify tomorrow's flight to sun-befriended, palm-befronded Arizona.

January, 1999

143

Winter Vacation Whether you are five, or eighty-five, it is exciting in midwinter to be awakened at four a.m., and driven thru dark and silent streets, muffled with snow and treacherous with ice; and then to board a plane, which rises powerfully into black night, and lands in another world. This world, of warm sunshine, of noisy, cheerful birds, and green, green grass. Beside the path, flowers bloom in colourful masses, daisies yellow-petalled, petunias deeply purple, snapdragons red , lobelia blue and tiny white alyssum. As we shed our winter clothing, kindly airs caress our liberated bodies, tensions of muscle and of mind gently ebb away.

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Whether you are five, or eighty-five, it is still pure magic, remembering what we have left behind, to walk to the pool barefoot on grass, and let the little fingers tickle between the toes.

February, 1999

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Theophany Last Monday afternoon, I saw God on Queen Mary Road in Hampstead. I drove past the park and there was a tree, encased in ice from ground to tip, every branch and every twig, frozen in immobility. Behind me, the setting sun, breaking through the western clouds, transformed those icy sheaths to silvery garments of silken sheen that glistened with incandescent fire. The tree burned with beauty. Moses in the wilderness, Jeremiah and the almond tree, Brother Lawrence before the tree in Lorraine, which was dead in Winter but would resurrect in Spring, they all saw a tree and straitway they saw God. I saw Him only on second thought in the rear-view mirror, as one might say, but I did see Him, and as I drove I worshipped.

March, 1997

146

Lent As the hart pants for the water-brooks, as the watchman looks for the morning, as the exile dreams of his home-land, as the lover longs for his loved-one, so aches my soul for Spring. These loitering days of miserable March, these weeks of fickle sunshine and constantly returning snows, I have, by painful experience, at long last learned the true meaning and the use of Lent. This holy season, I now realize, was never meant to be some crabby cleric's masochistic discipline of petty fastings and soul-depressing introspections; but rather what the word has plainly said in our stout-hearted English tongue these many centuries: 'Lent,' the OED confirms, 'a shortened form of lengthening, the season when the days grow longer.' Now is it truly Lent, when dying Winter, reluctant to depart, throws at us icy winds, recurring snowfalls, sub-zero temperatures, freezing rain, yet still cannot prevent the heart's perception the days are lengthening!

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With that one recognition, Lent now becomes what it was meant to be: the hope-bestirring, heart-enlivening, imagination-quickening, will-to-live renewing preparation for the gospel-call of Easter, the eternal victory of Life over Death. Awaken, O Lord, my heart and mind, to be ready for Your resurrection, newly-apparailed in the garments of Spring!

March, 1997

148

Signs of the Times Spring is coming! Winds are still cold, but snow-piles are shrinking; icicles have fallen from the eaves; hedge-birds are chirping more boldly. Trickles of water gather in gutters, make little musics, dropping into drains. Grass begins to emerge bravely at edges of paths and south-facing banks, and fresh snows cannot keep it covered. Daylight stayed longer today and will stay longer tomorrow and I am getting restless to be driving down the highway, where the airs are warm, the sky is blue, and the sun is shining all the hours there are ... Spring is coming! Every day the signs are growing clearer, so that all who have eyes to see may read, and reading run with joy to greet her!

March, 1997

149

After the Ice-storm Bruised and battered by winter, acheing for the coming of Spring, I drove west and south into a softer, kindlier world. When I left the highway, I lingered past meadows lush with grass, and cottage gardens gay with daffodils, across the lawns scatterings of crocuses, yellow and blue and white. I felt myself warmed and elated; I fantasized these were the footprints of the maiden goddess, the fabled Eastre. Surely I would soon catch a glimpse of her, coyly hiding between the silver birches, slipping away, but invitingly leaving behind the crystal cup, filled from the stream which could renew my youth. But then I rounded a bend, and look, a bush of forsythia aflame with gold. I saw not a myth but the Risen Lord, alive with resurrection glory, calling me to share his victory, his conquest of death, his eternal spring.

Easter Day, 1998

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Uninvited Guests 'We are much honoured by your choice, O golden birds of silver voice,' sang the grateful English poet to the nesting goldfinch pair. They enhanced the colours of her garden, with iridescent wings in flashing flights, and charmed the mild west-country winds with ripples of cascading calls, learned surely from Aeolian harps hung in their distant southern homes. But this is Canada, our garden well in town, our self-invited lodgers a gang of black and raucous crows, who've thrown a bunch of unkempt sticks athwart the topmost maple crutch. At early dawn and when the evening dies and often times between, they croak defiance loudly on all the world without discrimination: in robber-baron style, they've staked their turf. Constantly they go and come on foraging sallies, or stalk our lawn, ready to seize unwary insects, and frighten finches from their feeding-table. Our neighbour's inoffensive cat dare hardly set a paw outdoors, for fear he'll be pursued and roundly cursed. Crows seem to have their moods now strutting proudly, stretching tall, like some drilled grenadier on sentry-go, then scrunching down mis-shapenly, they play the doomful raven of the battlements,

151

or sinister hunchback of some ruined tower. But as the days begin to lengthen, and the winds turn soft and warm, I have observed that one bird's fallen silent, frequents the nest more often, then settles in and stays the whole day long. Her companions also quieten, fly off in silence and return only to visit briefly, and I have watched them pass her food. At least once, I saw a changing of the guard, when one such visitor took her place, and she was free to stretch her wings, and ride the evening airs awhile, before returning to her self-appointed task. These outlaw crows are, perhaps, more deserving of respect and fellow-feeling, than I have thought to credit them. Nor can I forget they are survivors; like ourselves, when summer ends, they do not join the great migration, but stay to endure the winter storms, the blinding snows and bitter cold, and eke a living, God knows how, from off our frozen, barren landscape. But now that Spring has come, like us they're eager to enjoy the easier life, tho not, it seems, without regard to parenting, and the obligations that come with social living.

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Golden birds of silver voice they're not; they greet each dawn with cawful acclamation, and shatter morning slumbers; but I for one will not begrudge them lodging. Nor shall they lack a poet's salutation: 'We are much flattered by your choice, O bold, black birds of raucous voice! And when your young make their first flight, we'll share your satisfaction and delight!' (But if next year, they choose a further spot, we'll not complain, but nobly bear our lot.)

May, 1997 Professor David Bird, the ornithologist, when he received a copy of this poem, replied that it just showed that it was better to be a bird-watcher than a word-botcher. Poets disagree: the pleasures are mutual.

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Youth Revisited At the end of a perfect day of early summer warmth and gentle breezes, the hush of evening held only songs of birds. The westering sun was filtering down through young, fresh leaves to flood the garden with green and gold the ambiant air was charged with heady light. Contentedly, from my patio chaise-longue, I left my book unread to observe the doves, frugally picking up the seeds scattered prodigally by the finches at the bird-table above. The young doves were feeding single-mindedly, pausing only to slip nimbly away, as need arose, from the strutting male's amorous advances. I saw him pose, and flush the pale medallions either side of his strong, well-rounded neck and then the words said themselves: 'In the Spring a livelier iris glows upon the burnished dove; in the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,' and I found myself recalling just such an evening, in another garden, in England long ago, when we were boy and girl together, and the sun filtered through young, fresh leaves, and all the air was charged with green and gold, and breathed romance and warm, erotic love ... In the Spring, a young man's fancy, and, yes, an elderly gentleman's memory, too,

154

can happily turn to thoughts of love but the memories prove bitter-sweet. He knows he can never again experience that lovely, rare intoxication. Ah well, age has its minor compensations. I was ready as the sun went down, and a gentle dusk called the doves to roost, to take myself indoors for Neighbourly News, and an aperitif.

June, 1997 The lines slightly misquote (to improve upon?) Tennyson, 'Locksley Hall.'

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Ill-Met by Moonlight I woke from shallow, restless sleep, and found my room strangely illuminated. Across the bottom of my bed two broad silver bars. Slowly, I realized a full moon must be riding summer high above the trees, through cloudless night. I rose from my bed, looked out and up. There she was, as admirable as ever, and as cold, remote, alien yet men have been there, visited uninvited, broken her pristine silence, tracked their footprints, left their litter. Did she resent the invasion of her privacy? Never a friend of humankind, does she now look down with strengthened animosity? As I gazed at her violated beauty, I reflected that her passing through the night would move those silver bars slowly, silently, until they reached my sleeping head, not to wake me, no, but perhaps to ... I drew the curtains, carefully. Oh no, Pm not superstitious, it just is that somehow, I do not trust the moon.

July, 1997

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Robbed Here is irony. I live on Planet Earth, a minor member, I am told, of a small cluster of celestial bodies circling around Sol, our parent star, so we are called the Solar System but I never see the Solar System. Again, I live, I am told, in a vast constellation of swirling galaxies, way out on an extending tentacle but I never see the Milky Way. I am a city person, born and bred, London, Stoke, Bristol, now in Montreal. By day I live and move and have my being beneath great Sol; blazing in blue sky, or veiled by clouds, he blots out all competitors. No-one could be unaware of him! By night, I live in a huge tent of light, emanating from a myriad sources, dwellings, offices, street-lamps, illuminated signs, car head-lights, airports, beacons of all kinds, rays bouncing back from buildings, ashphalt, clouds, or simply pollution in the air; together they create, far overhead, a ceiling that obscures all beyond, hiding a whole universe with a blanket of luminosity.

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Occasionally, I am aware of the moon, in one or other of her quarters; I seldom know which to expect, or where to look for her appearing; often she has an attendant star, Venus perhaps or Mars. I have heard tell of Jupiter and Saturn, of Sirius, the Pleiades, Orion's Belt, Great Bear and fixed North Pole, a great parade, wheeling nightly across the sky. Since time began, men have known and cherished them, by them determined seasons, guided long voyages, have feared and worshipped them. These were also my inheritance, mine, telling the mystery and romance of a boundless, mythical, spiritual universe but they have been hidden from me. All I see, when I look up, is diffused and murky nothingness. Who has robbed and so despitefully impoverished me?

Who indeed, but the city-culture of my own kind? And now the global village is one vast illumination! How can I escape back into the revealing dark, back into wonder, the silence of awe?

August, 1997

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Shaw's Morality I returned after too long absence to Theatre Lyve - experiencing again lyve actors engaging a lyve audience. The piece was Shaw's 'Mrs. Warren's Profession.' The wittier lines were rewarded with chuckles, the more-outrageous with hearty guffaws; the rare, deeply human moments with that breath-holding stillness when cast and audience are one. Shakespeare again was proven right: 'the play's the thing,' and no screen, small or large, can rival it. Yet I left the theatre deeply disturbed: Shaw's Morality had revealed itself immoral. Not because the unspoken but pivotal words were whore and pimp and brothel, nor that the unashamed characters were Lust, Selfishness and Greed; certainly not that Hypocrisy and plain, old-fashioned Sin were clearly exposed for our shame-faced recognition. No, the immorality was more profound: in the play, a situation was skilfully presented as a true likeness of our human dilemma, and yet the redeeming virtue, Grace, was given no part to play. One was left with no hopeful expectations, no joy, only sad regret. Not a true likeness, a caricature, wickedly clever, perversely false.

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No preacher, Mr. Shaw, should elocute on hell, unless he can also sweetly sing of heaven. We need to be reminded in our drama God also is lyve.

October, 1997

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Thank you for a Summer Visit In a Chinese restaurant, after a pleasant meal, a pleasing wine, and pleasurable reminiscences, renewing a very dear relationship, I broke open my fortune cookie and read: c Tu receveras bonnes nouvelles par la poste.' Of course, I disdain the lure of lotteries, scoff derisively at horoscopes, smile loftily at tinker-tailor rhymes, but because hope is the one unexpected guest no one ever turns churlishly away, and even more because I share this memory with you, when I return home and open my accumulated mail, I shall more than half-expect to be pleasantly surprised ...

August, 1999

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Trilogy for Margaret To my Wife as She Enters a Senior Citizens' Residence They tell me, love, what we have long time known that your poor, tired old brain, which has served you well these four-score years, and nigh on half-a-dozen more, is beginning to wear out. You get confused, I know, I understand who's this who's come into your room? Is it your dear-departed father, or your ever-cheering son, or is it I, your beloved husband? You don't rightly know, nor does it matter, much; you know it's someone who has cared for you, shared life with you these many years, and brought the warmth of love into your heart, and you give me your gentle smile of welcome. The instrument is getting old and unreliable, but the player remains the same, mellowed a bit, perhaps, and playing a softer tune, but the mind, the person, struggling to use the faulty keyboard, is still the one I've loved these seventy years not as I ought, God forgive me, but the best that I could do. They also tell me, love, that now you need more care than I can give, that I must step aside, and let others tend and watch and bed you down. But I can come each day to visit, and if it's a day you know me well,

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or if it's one you can't quite name me, your heart will know I bring you deep affection. As long as I have wits enough for two, I'll be content to be your friend, father, husband, son, what you will, but always the one who loves, has loved and always shall. And if God will, when we have done with bodies that wear out, we'll know and love each other in His richer life, 'all human thought transcending.'

August, 1997

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To Margaret Sleeping As you slowly sleep out of this world, as you slowly sleep your way into God's other realm of being, may you there awaken just as slowly, just as gently, into another life, a quality of knowing and lovingly being known, which we, awake in this world, can only dream of ...

September, 1997

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Epitaph The time has come, my love, to lay your ashes in the ground, to give you back to Mother Earth from whence you came. High on the hill that you and I came to love so much, a little plot shall bear your name a little piece of Canada shall be for ever Margaret. But I'll not leave you lie alone. I brought you to this land and I'll not leave you now. I'll bring you flowers and memories, and when my time has also come I'll join you in that earth. Upon your stone, my name will once again be joined with yours. Be patient, love, and once again, in that lovely, quiet solitude, we'll lie together. The sun will shine, the birds will sing, the winds will blow; the rain will fall, in Autumn leaves, in Winter snow, will cover us. But every Spring, our names will reappear even if only the foraging squirrel, or the returning robin, scouting a new home,

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will linger in the young green grass to read our names, and wonder who and why we were. But we shall know, and God will know, and that will surely be enough.

October, 1997

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In Time of Moving House I pause in the midst of all this packing to salute the Summer solstice ... Another year has reached its longest day, yet only yesterday, it seems, we were in icy Winter's grip, desperate for the coming of Spring. She came at last, a slim, shy adolescent, and proved a brief, elusive visitor. Now is already Summer, leafy and mature, a young mother, fecund, already matronly. These last days and weeks have passed surely with increasing speed; the numbers on the calendar, time's unmerciful cash-register, mount up inexorably. I must be getting older, the figures do not lie, even if I'm mostly unaware. But yesterday, in the heartrending process of breaking up a home, and the painful, agonizing business of sorting books (time-honoured, well-beloved friends condemned to banishment or death!) I opened up the family archives, and lingered through albums of old photographs. I was deeply shaken to realize that now there's literally no-one left to share those heart-deep memories, my schooldays, the heady, uneasy years of adolescence, the afternoons of playing tennis, and falling in love, in carefree, golden summer-times.

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To none can I now say, 'Do you remember ... ' That really makes one feel one's age and is a scaring thought, one best not brooded. I'll lay those memories aside, in God's safe-keeping, and in another time, another world, share them again with loved-ones, joyously re-united. In my new habitat, I must be resolved and thankful I am alive in today's world. None can long thrive healthily in wistful, enervating nostalgia. I must be nourished by today's concerns, today's responsibilities, today's pleasures, and, I most thank God, today's family and friends. My firm intent, in my new home and life, must be to still have part in God's on-going purposes nothing less than the creation of a new earth, free from oppression, poverty and pain, and a new heaven (who but He could have thought of that?), and in the process (minor detail indeed, but all-important to me!), yet one more new and constantly maturing version of myself.

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Ipse dixit, Himself has said it: 'Let the dead bury the dead, but go thou and live the gospel of tomorrow.' In obedience, I leave my loved-one safely in the care of those who went before her, and return with renewed determination to the sorting and the packing.

June, 1998

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Penthouse Panorama Early as it is, the sun has still preceded me he is already two fingers high, glowing dimly red through heavy morning mists. Below him, the city sky-line slowly emerges a ruined medieval fortress, battered and broken, refuge of owls and badgers within moments, the individual buildings will stand out clearly as hives of commerce, whose foragers are electronic impulses intent on fiercest competition, and contrariwise the service of mankind. Southward the forested suburb, more truly the suburbed forest, still sleeps in leafy stillness; only in the lane by the college playing fields does a minuscule early riser slowly walk his dog, willing the world to stay in this unblemished calm. Now the broad river changes as I watch from dull pewter to bright and shining silver, ringing the city from west to east, while above it playful winds comb out the few remaining tangles in mares-tail clouds. They melt away, and the great wide sky clarifies into an immense blue dome, white rimmed only at horizons. Now I can pick out the far apartment-blocks, church spires, factories, supermarkets, and in dim distances the monteregian hills.

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The day promises to be hot and humid. This ever-changing balcon view is awe-inspiring in its breadth and height and depth but I miss the rustle of leaves before my window, the inquisitive squirrel and the raucous crow. It will be good to descend, put foot to solid ground, rub shoulders in the market-place with strangers and with friends. But O my Lord, what a view this is!

August, 1998

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Victoria Day Today, I am an Englishman. At this early hour, I listen gratefully to Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance, to John Stanley's cascading organ peals, the ethereal, interwoven Tallis voices, and relish the lilting lyrics of immortal Pinafore. Later, I shall read a sonnet of Shakespeare's intricate devising, and hear declaimed by electronic marvel the inexhaustible soliloquy of Hamlet. And I shall read a page or two of Dickens, loiter in the Old Curiosity Shop, greet again the irrepressible, perennially hopeful, hopeless Mr Micawber. And I'll join a celebratory tea with Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, with Dorothy, Agatha and Margery, or perhaps with Rupert Brooke in rural, timeless Granchester, the Church clock still at ten to three, and honey, golden honey, yet for tea ... Reverend, irreverent Rupert, though you died so young, there is a corner of my mind, your lines, that is forever England, our England. Oh, let others have their dubious saints, their shenanigans and trumpet-blown parades; we this day salute two age-defying, age-defining, glorious Queens, Elizabeth and Victoria!

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And standing in that grand tradition, I don't mind confessing that today I'm proud, damproud, to be an Englishman ... And like all good Canadians, I shall observe this day a holiday. The Queen, God bless her!

May, 1999

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A Song for Mother's Day Tune: Ellacombe

We sing a song to Mary, the Mother of our Lord, who poured out love and caring from her maternal store; she washed and fed and clothed him, and tho her means were small, in times of hurting soothed him, and gladly gave her all. And when her other children in later years were born, they each received their welcome, and none was left forlorn; her heart of love grew broader, to give each child a place, and all looked up and loved her, the source of all their grace. In every congregation we come from many shores, but sharing one salvation our faith her Son adores; we have become one family and love each other well, and name her Mother fondly, one Church, new Israel.

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So sing a song to Mary, thru her praise mothers all, who give their love unsparing, where they are, home we call. We know God as Creator, and call him Father true, but learn from our homemaker to know him Mother too.

May, 1999

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Dives and Lazarus 'Once upon a time,' said Jesus, there was a man called Lazarus. Gathering dates, he fell from the tree and was crippled. It was sad to see so strong a man reduced to begging he'd never been the kind for cadging. His pitch was at a rich man's door, the servants gave him scraps and more, but had to hide it from their master, who would have sent him packing faster. He much complained about the beggar, there nothing was that made him madder. 'Every time I leave the house, he is there the wretched louse, and I must hear his constant whine: 'master, can you spare a dime?' Every time, and so unsightly, a nuisance not for bearing lightly! Why can't he find another pitch, pester a man who's really rich?' Thus things went on for many a day till Lazarus took sick, and passed away. So that left Dives free (yes, that was the rich man's name) to enjoy his wealth and local fame. For he had vineyards and some corn-lands, cattle, sheep and many farm-hands, two wives, three sons, besides some daughters some good fortune never falters.

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All men accorded him impunity, he was the sheikh of that community. But then one lively, festive night, after great merriment and feasting, laughter, dancing and much drinking, Dives suffered a stroke, and, despite the women's wailing, physicians' skills and rabbis praying, the following day, soon after dawning, he must be buried with much mourning. The funeral was well attended, for he was reckoned well-intended, selfish rather by default than by defiance of the ought. But Heaven viewed him otherwise, not vicious, blasphemous or spreading lies, yet still accumulating petty sins, with no kind deeds for balancings. Little vices unannealed by virtue, that's the record that can hurt you, as Dives to his loss found out, when his tally was read out. From the prison of his torment, his thoughts, emotions in a ferment, tortured by remorses seven, Dives cast his eyes to heaven, and saw the blessed Abraham, welcoming the righteous home, the fellowship of good and kind,

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the pure of heart, and bold of mind, freed of all earth's grievous burdens, greeting loved-ones in the gardens, cooled by paradisal fountains, and the breezes from the mountains and there was that same Lazarus, seated at table with the best, treated like an honoured guest! 'Father Abraham, I pray, please send Lazarus this way, with cooling water for my tongue, for here I suffer all day long!' 'That I cannot do, my son, for since man's time was first begun, there has been set, twixt you and us, a fearful gulf no one may cross.' 'Then, Father, for the love of God, send him back to earth to prod my brothers and my three young sons, to practice kindness to all hurting ones. They must be warned to live with grace and so avoid this dreadful place!' 'No, my son, that too I cannot do. They have their prophets and their preachings, they have their rabbis and their teachings, Moses' laws and admonition, guidance enough for ears that listen!' 'But, Father, if one returned to life from death,

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and preached the word with mystic breath, then they would surely stop and ponder, and be persuaded by the wonder!' 'Not so, my son. If the precepts of the law men, the truths enshrined in prophet's omen, good sense preserved in long tradition, do not speak to their condition, they'll not be reached in heart or head, e'en though the preacher rises from the dead .' So said Jesus, knowing it is truth, commending itself as reasonable to the mind, challenging to the will, and joyful to the heart, this glorious truth, that wins disciples to the Way; not miracles, no, not even the Resurrection of the Easter Lord but since he still reveals that truth, that life, that graceful, loving Way, to listening, and receptive hearts, in these days as in Galilee, we cry with all the Church on earth, and all the company of heaven: 'Alleluia! Christ is risen!'

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Miracles do not create faith, but faith accepts miracles, with humility and joy.

Easter, 1999

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Believing 'I believe,' the radio presenter quoted, from some musical luminary whose name I did not catch, 'in God, Mozart and Carl Nielsen.' 'And I,' came my response with equal flippancy, 'I believe in God, the Church and the University.' I do? Now that I take time to think the matter through, I find I cannot change my first, instinctive choices. They truly constitute the geometric reference points whereby I map, explore and try to govern the ever-varied, sometimes sunny, sometimes seismic, country of my mind ...

God, the Universal Intelligence, which leaves its signature on all that happens, has happened, will happen; the meticulous Mathematician, the awesome Life-Force, the inexhaustible Creator, incomparable Artist, ever-present Father, Guardian, and Participant in this unique and glorious experiment, we call the Living Planet, the World of Earth. Oh yes, I believe in God - I could not live without Him. But the church? The fumbling, pitiable, face-shameing, visionary, indestructible, ever self-reforming church? The church of the few expectant moments which precede our morning worship; the church of the stately faith of the noble, opening hymn of praise;

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the church of shared mission and responsible living, and of that special form of friendship we call agape; the church of my idealistic youth, of my tolerant old-age, and of all the sinful, heroic, grace-abounding years between the church of little children and growing families, the church of Ross and Ken, of Esther and of Joan, and all the other faces that crowd in upon me when I pray; the church of my dear-departed wife, my long-mourned brother, my parents, and my own and very personal saints; the church of Wesley, Cranmer, Augustine and Paul, the Church of Jesus Christ, both God and Man, founded on the faith of Abraham, Moses and the prophets; the Church forever picking up the broken pieces of mankind, healing and inspiring them to pilgrimage afresh that Church I do most fervently believe in! And then the University, that privileged, challenging, open-portalled, open-minded, Learned Society, forever calling younger generations to the unexplored horizons, the new discoveries, the new beauties, the new exploits of mankind. This the seminar of Plato and his Greeks, here we rub shoulders and sharpen wits

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with Abelard and Francis Bacon, with Isaac Newton and Kenneth Clark; and the stimulating minds of our own acquaintance, the Peters and the Marios, the Margarets and Williams, and the few whose names will be revered when the rest of us are dust. I can take pride I am a graduate and fellow of no mean Community of Learning, for the gates of any college give entrance to them all. God, Church and University, yes, that's my trinity, and I am staying with it. 'God and Mozart and ... ' but who is, or was, Carl Nielsen? There's always something fresh to discover and enjoy!

November, 1997

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Rene Descartes's Aphorism "The Wise Man said: 'I think, and therefore I am.' The waiter said: 'Will m'sieur have more coffee?'. The Wise Man said: C I think not' and ceased to be!" The Wise Men, like the rest of us, must be allowed their clever quips, their in-group jeux des mots, slipped with careful spontaneity into the coffee-break chatter, to season the academic gossip; and then they hasten back to propound that all existence is illusory leaving only the immaculate, the one and only undeniable, the Great Negation. But for us, who are more simple folk, here is still the heart of the matter: 'I think and therefore am.' I can conceive my own non-existence, but I could never experience it. I can conceive my own being, and that I do experience, daily. It is the one sure fact

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in a wondrous but uncertain universe. Here then is my treasured Self-Awareness, my ground of Self-Respect, my qualification for Human Rights: cogito, ergo sum yet as I know only too well, the chance product of variable genes and hormones, the plaything of accidents of time and place, painfully subject to emotions, enthusiasms, haunting fears, conditioned by what I eat or drink, even, dammit, by the weather! Is there no refuge where my so-precious Self can find permanence, stability, quality of being, to match and justify the wonder of existing? I have learned that it is not the Wise Men who can respond to that cry, not the scientist, nor the poet, not the artist nor the musician, but only the prophet, the man charged with a mission from on high. 'This is quality of being, this is life transcendent, to know the only true God, the Mind from whence you came, and whither you must return.'

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But this world is full of gods angels, divinities, graven images, noble concepts, childish superstitions; how shall any man find a One True God? 'You shall know Me when you pray. When you stop talking and begin to listen, when you cease asking and are ready to receive. Then you will become aware of Me, the unique and Wholly Other, who is yet closer than breathing, nearer than your own body, the One whom you will know as indubitably as you know yourself.3 Cogito, ergo sum; Oro, et Ille est. I think, therefore I am. I pray, and graciously, He is.

April, 1997

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Night Thoughts 2:30 a.m. Having awakened in the night, I am, as usual, reminded that I have, or more truly, am a body; but returning to my bed, consider this not to be deplored, but rather re-inventoried, with growing gratitude for my Designer. Item, I have two legs, wherewith I walk, run, leap, swim, skate or dance, according to my mood; on those same legs, measured not niggardly in inches, but generously in length, I balance upright, as can no other vertebrate; thus I survey my world with unimpeded vision and assurance. Hallelujah! Item, I have two arms, each with fingers and opposing thumb, and all so versatile they make the Canadarm look quite inept. Can it manipulate hot Singapore noodles with bamboo chopsticks? Can it paint an Arizona mountainscape, play Bach's Tocatta and Fugue, hit seventy homers in a single season, or gently caress a loved-one's face? Magnificat! 188

Item, I have five senses, each of which deserves a poem, a whole book of poems, to itself alone colourful vision, transporting sounds, evocative fragrances, delicate feelings, exquisite tastes all wrapped in warmly-blended reminiscences wherein all five become another source of heart-engendered hallelujahs! Item, I have a brain, that out-paces the cleverest computer. It can do mental arithmetic, compose an Elizabethan sonnet, differentiate between a statement of fact and a satirical exaggeration; ponder with Plato, theorize with Einstein, weep with Madame Butterfly, rejoice with Mozart's Exultate ... Hallelujahs fortissimo! Item, the crowning benefice, that I, who am a body, also am a mind. Here is the seat of shall and will, the residence of ought, and law-court of morality; here, the gallery of beauty, the garden of goodness, the embassy of truth;

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here, the home of love, the liberating awareness of others more claimful than myself ... ad majorem Dei gloriam! And now. Lord, I have most fervently, and at great length, sung my Matins and my Lauds. But your servant truly is a body grant me the boon of sleep!

October, 1999 Matins and Lauds are the first services of the monastic day, sung immediately after the midnight bell; the monks may then resume their rest.

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Morning Afterthoughts 'Item, the crowning benefice, that I who am a body, also am a mind. Here is the seat of shall and will ... ' Yes, but there is much more to take into account. There, in my mind, I face basic reality: I confront myself. Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am but even more convincingly, there I am confronted by Another: Oro et Ille est, I pray and graciously He is, that One whom we, for want of better words, have named the Holy, Wholly Other, our God, infinitely transcendent, yet nearer than my own self. O the depth, the wonder, the mystery of God! Apart from prayer, we know him only reflected in the mirror of creation, in parable, myth or metaphor; yet how beckoning, how incitive the vision! Here indeed we peer thru a glass darkly ... but I think I can see this:

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as my mind is to my body, so is God to his universe. And as I open my mind to God, so He opens his mind to me ... Now is the soaring paean of my worship, the Psalm One Hundred and Fifty, Beethoven's Ninth, Handel's Messiah, Te Deum, Gloria and Nunc Dimittis! But for me the last word, as so often, rests with Charles Wesley: 'changed from glory into glory, till in heaven we see Thy face, till we cast our crowns before Thee, lost in wonder, love and praise!'

October, 1999 Wesley (1707-88) borrowed that splendid last line from Joseph Addison (1672.-!719)

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Another Translation Yet another? Another attempt to capture a moonbeam in a jam-jar? To distill into words thoughts too full of life to be at ease in clothing, however tailored to fit? The exercise forces us to explore afresh the pregnant, russian-doll conceptions, each opening-up to disclose another, enwombed within: Dear Father-in-Otherworld may You be reverenced, may Your rule be acknowledged, may Your purpose be accomplished, here in daily living, as in your Otherworld. continue to sustain our material needs, and teach us to share your bounty; forgive us our sins against others, as we forgive any who have sinned against us; strengthen us when we are tested, and save us when we are assaulted. for Yours is the sure and glorious rule of all life, here, and in the Otherworld, time without end. Amen and Amen.

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Yes, oh yes! That gives freshness and dignity - but perhaps we also need a more jeansy outfit? one more suited to our modern practicalities? Our universal Creator, may Your name be awesome, Your rule become real, Your plans win out, on earth, as everywhere else. give us today what we need, and teach us to share freely; forgive us our shortcomings, as we forgive any who have failed us; strengthen us when we are tested, and help us when trouble strikes. for You are the glorious Lord of all life, here and for eternity, Hallelujah, Amen. Yes, that too provokes our thoughts! - yet in the end our efforts fall short, as we knew they must.

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But as a runner flexes thighs before a race, we have stretched our imaginations. Now we can pray in the old words, with a little more understanding and a great deal more humility: Our Father, who art in heaven hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from eviL for Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever, Amen.

April, 1999

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A Tale of Two Books

Contents 199 203 205 207 2,09 210 212 214 215 218 220 222 224 226 233 237 242

A Tale of Two Books Effingham County Katharsis Westmount Park Willows The Silver Button Simple Things Candid Critic Morning Improptu Laus Patrum Matrumque Pierre Elliot Trudeau The Secret Convergent Paths The Story with a Sting Dinosaurs Trinity Sunday: A Meditation Envoy

A Tale of Two Books They are still on my shelves, two books of modern English verse, but since they date from my schooldays, their modernity began with the post-Victorians, and ended in the nineteen twenties can you imagine back so far? I read them in the years when I was growing up, years, as we slip into a new millennium, I can only now assess and begin to understand. A dreadful war won, but still haunting, an economic blight, still smothering, a yet more dreadful war, still threatening, a sense of corporate guilt, and social disillusionment all too prevalent. It is a wonder we kept our sanity; Hitler lost his completely. Yet sane we were, or some at least among us, striving to see the unchanged beauty of the world we lived in, to preserve the old respect of high ideals, and to continue the proven way of life the way woven of family love, of good-neighbouring, and the satisfaction of work well done.

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'These times of fearful guilt, nights of despair, and days of social strife,' some voices dared maintain, 'are not what life should be, and we can yet recover it.' Which brings me back to those two books, both books of 'modern' verse, the one revealing to my delighted schoolboy self the beauty of words, the loveliness of our world, the transforming power of poetic vision, the sterling worth of hope, and the sheer necessity of courage. Alice Meynell, John Masefield, Walter de la Mare, Flecker, Davies, Brooke and Stevenson, and scores of others, not always the greatest names, or established reputations, but over the years, those whose insights, images and aspirations have lingered in my memory, fed my hopes, and lifted up my eyes to mountain heights. These are they who passed me on to Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and the imperishable tradition of England's poetry. For seventy years, in bad times and in good, I have returned, time and again, to their discovery of present beauty, to their invitation to life-enjoyment, to their perception of eternity

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in the little things of everyday. These were my mentors, they spoke my language, but made it magical. And I bless the skill that chose blossoms to enhance each other, in a garden unfailingly serendipitous. The other anthology, gleaning the same fields, often culling the same poets, but taking its tone from Eliot's 'Hollow Men,' Hardy's 'God's Funeral,' and the like, decrying dreams dissolved, but envisaging no dawn, I read dutifully (it won critical acclaim) and left it on the shelf to gather dust. In these millennial days, when nations join to strive for peace as strongly as they used to clash in war, and children learn in school to love our planet, and to preserve its health as carefully as their own, I thank God those two books came my student way. The one showed me the cup of life half-empty, and turning sour; the other revealed a chalice, already half-full, and promising to overflow -

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and I chose life abounding. What schoolboy wouldn't? And the octogenarian fully reaffirms his choice. 'Now Barabbas,' quipped Byron, cwas a publisher,' but on my shelves, A Methuen has ranked a prophet.

February, 2,000 An Anthology of Modern Verse, Algernon Methuen, 192,1 (2,3rd edit. 192,7), Methuen, London. Twentieth Century Verse, Harold Munro, 192,9, Chatto and Windus, London. St. John's Gospel, King James Version, 18:40 'Now Barabbas was a robber.'

2,02,

Effingham Country From a land still bleak and winter-weary, I have driven long miles, arduous and drab, until I reached this happy, smiling countryside, this southernmost Ontario, where the adolescent Spring scatters her bounties with joyous abandon. Everywhere, warm sunshine, blue skies, puffy white clouds, and gentle April showers. Everywhere, rolling open hills, deep shady glens, dangerous curves, and broad straight roads. Everywhere, trees leafing, grasses springing, dandelions proliferating, in careless profusion. Everywhere, golden forsythia, contoured green lawns, lovingly cherished homes, in careful elegance. Everywhere, flowering orchards, promising vineyards, prospering farmlands, horses grazing ample pastures.

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Everywhere, rocks and creeks and wild woodlands, frogs croaking, birds chittering, winds ruffling branches, and geese flying over. Everywhere and everywhere ... As I wander this wholesome, happy country, as I sink into it, and myself become part of it, I know why I drove those arduous miles, and am content, deeply content.

April, 2,000

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Katharsis Today is Saturday. Yesterday was Good Friday never a day so ill-named. I read again those brutal narratives: 'and they crucified him ... and sitting down they watched him there ... ' Unthinkable cruelty. Soul-destroying sadism. I am left besmirched and wounded. Today is Saturday. Tomorrow will be Easter Day, and I must read 'Alleluia, he is risen' but will anything one can say or think obliterate from memory the stench of that inhuman satisfaction: 'and sitting down, they watched him there'? Today is Saturday, set between Good Friday and Easter Day. How can I release my mind from the one, and prepare my heart for the other? Today is Saturday. I will go to the market, and buy the largest and bloomiest pot of hyacinth I can find.

^05

Its fragrance tomorrow morning will pervade my room. I will lean over it and inhale deeply, and Life will flood through me, and cleanse me wholly, and ready me for joy ... The unfailing miracle of Spring.

April, 2.000

2,06

Westmount Park The city traffic whines and moans, but step from sidewalk on to grass, and all street-sounds are magically muted. Old-forest trees meet closely overhead. In the shade, a bed of flowers luminescent blue, fringed with gold. Meandering pools provide rural vistas, stillness conveys plashing at the weir. In the bushes, lovers embracing, in the playground, children laughing, on the lawns, mothers and fathers enjoying their young, as they toddle and fall, and try again. Girls sunbathe, boys dribble ball, runners jog and walkers stroll. Golden-agers pass a golden afternoon, watching the world go by, and artists patiently capture it in sketch and colour. In this cunningly-contrived oasis, where Nature is unobtrusively encouraged to be herself, the city also discovers its own identity: one large, many-generationed, truly convivial, family ...

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And the well-provisioned squirrels, and the portly resident pigeons, gratefully agree.

April, 2.000 dedicated to Councillor Tom Thompson

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Willows I caught a glimpse for a moment only. As I drove past, I saw in spring sunshine, on a bank of green grass, golden willows weeping into a silver stream. For a moment only, but I shall remember forever.

May, 2.000

The Silver Button My heart gladdens as the words flower in my mind. Once upon ... Once upon a ... Once Upon A Saturday. What a title for a book! A children's book, but readable for all the young at heart. Four, no, five of them, setting off with packed lunches, boys and girls together, on their bicycles, to ride by winding country roads, to their favourite lake. Weather just exactly right, hills to be trudged up, hills to be whooshed down, freedom as shirts fly out. Freedom from school, from chores, freedom from all restraints, not limited but fortified by friendship and good sense. Laughter, calling constantly one to another, as they journey on and then, what was a holiday, becomes a magical adventure! How? Something quite out of the ordinary, a little bit scary, and stretching the imagination! Calling for leadership, testing their solidarity, their courage, their capacity for wonder ...

2-10

Yes, that's it an encounter with an alien! Perfectly normal-looking, except that he isn't and every now and again proves it! A young stowaway on a visiting space-ship, Captain and crew did not know he was aboard, so cannot know he's missing ... the children must rally to his aid! All I need now is the place, their names and ages - they're important and the cunning twist of plot of which will surprise and intrigue the reader . . . The tale will invite a return to the open-mindedness, the vivid sensations of childhood, when anything could happen, and sometimes wonderfully did! Once Upon A Saturday . . . What a title! It cries out for the book! I feel like the man who has found a silver button, all he needs now is the coat to sew it on. However, just now, for me, it is time for breakfast. But it will be a marvellous story, when I get round to writing it ...

May, zooo

Simple Things It is the simple things of life which really count like opening the morning blinds to catch a wintry sun peering with pleasure thru misty clouds to enjoy a world newly white with snow, all its blemishes kindly covered, all its beauties artfully enhanced. It is the simple things of life like trundling to the airport to board a plane so swift it overtakes both Time and Spring, and lands me in a world of warmth, of desert suguaro sentinels, of incongruous, but oh-so-welcome fragrant flowers, of joyous, songful birds, and soft, caressing airs. It is the simple things of life like gazing on the Grand Canyon in all its humbling majesty and awe, and being swarmed by Japanese schoolgirls. One of them has the courage to smile and say hello, and we have happy, brief acquaintance. Do you speak English? I speak little. Thank you for visiting our country!

2.12.

Our country? Since when has the Canyon been in Canada? It is the simple things of life like being alive on this most favoured planet, so precisely distanced from the sun, not too close like Venus, not too far-off like Jupiter, but just right for life, my life, my quiet, companion-rich, daily round of simple things, like love and sympathy, pain and laughter ... In fact, just one long, ever-changing, ever-amazing, never-failing, ruddy miracle ...

March, 2.000

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Candid Critric Come on, now - be honest! 'just one long, ever-changing, ever-amazing, never-failing' but it will fail! It has to end sometime. You are old, you know it. Saying farewell to it all can't be put off for ever! True, but my guess is that will prove just one more 'simple thing of life,' and greatest miracle of all ...

March, 2,000

H4

Morning Impromptu It is undoubtedly a fine thing to live alone. One has only oneself to please, one can choose freely which little pleasures to enjoy, which little tasks to undertake, and which indulgently to forget. Of course, a congenial companion, someone to share and so double those little pleasures, someone to share and so halve those persistent little tasks, would also be a fine thing but let's be realistic: even the closest dear-companion has their own life-rhythm, their time to be active, to be still, their time to be merry, to be sad, their time to be virtuous, their time to indulge and their reading of the Preacher does not always chime sweetly with one's own. Living with another, one has to make adjustments, often many times a day. Living alone, one is free of even the most silken reins, fully free to please one's-self ...

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Until one wakes some fine summer morning, aware of a vague restlessness, some deep, inner dissatisfaction, neither to be named nor dismissed. All the circumstances of life are properly in order; the day ahead can be shaped solely for one's own satisfaction until one is forced to recognize, this fine summer morning, that I does not know what I wants. that / lacks criteria to guide decisions, because / has run out of goals. One learns reluctantly, a new lesson from experience: a life alone cannot generate sufficient purposes for daily living; freedom by itself is not enough. Of course, one could solve one's problem easily enough, if one could go back to forgetting one's-self in pleasing and enjoying a dear companion; go back to serving happily, and happily being served man was not built to live alone. As so often, Tennyson has the words: 'O for the touch of a vanished hand,

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and the sound of a voice that is still.' I grieve for the swan that has lost his mate; I grieve with every Jill who mourns her Jack. I grieve for myself. However, one can, one must, manufacture purposes. Today I can at least go out, find someone, somewhere, who needs an unexpected kindness, (such persons are not difficult to discover) and offer it genuinely for their sake, and gratefully for my own.

June, 2.000 Impromptu - unrehearsed, extempore; something one begins not knowing how it will end. The Preacher - Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

2,17

Laus Patrum Matrumque Let us now praise famous men and women, those who have gone before us in our tradition. Great things have been achieved by them, and by their work our lives have been enriched. These were leaders in our university, who by their learning and their wisdom spoke effectively among us, and stood forward on our behalf, expressing our convictions and ideals more truly than we could shape them for ourselves. Such as made music, wove words, created structures, disclosed secrets, enlarged knowledge, made us conscious of our past, and hopeful of our future. Some have left a name which will always be remembered, others are honoured by the few who knew them well; after their passing, they will be soon forgotten, but their faithful work lives on in the health of their discipline, in the teaching and discoveries of their students, and of their students' students until the end of time.

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Now praise we famous men and women, and all those, known and unknown, whose fruitful work is our inheritance. They have left their achievements, milestones of their past, to be our guideposts for the years that are to come.

April, 1992., revised September, 1999. 'Laus Patrum Matrumque' - 'Praise of Fathers and Mothers,' based on Ecclesiasticus 44, 'Let us now praise famous men.'

2.19

Pierre Elliott Trudeau This third day of October I set aside all other tasks to share in the solemn rites, in the house, in the presence, of God. No other house, no other presence, would be fitting. The nation has come together to offer pride-engendered gratitude, to bid a sad, bereft farewell, commending his body to the land he cherished and rejoicing that his spirit will continue persuasively in our hearts, contributively in heaven. The music will be sung, the words will be said, and we shall perform the rituals, we the unimportant and celebrities together. These are the formal gestures that express a deep and shared emotion. As I watch and remember, I am possessed again by his panache and passion. He, more than any other, made me feel Canadian. He gave me Canada to be my own.

Z2O

By courtesy of television, and by community of spirit, I partake the solemnities, and thank him I have my own place in this mourning, celebrating, joyful multitude.

October, 2,000

2,2.1

The Secret I lie on my back on the short sweet grass of the hill far away from city lights and I look up at the stars, 'the myriad host' how compulsively named! Are they truly swirling suns, planets, oceans, lands, civilisations? The beetle crawling on my hand, the owl hooting in the trees, the dog barking in the village below they can see but cannot contemplate the stars, the vastness of the universe. Why was I given this awareness of dimensions beyond the senses? How shall I cope with my solitariness, my vulnerability in limitless space, my lack of armour, defences, orientation, which way is up or down, where is centre - if that has meaning. I am a lost child crying in the dark - unless I dare to believe the secret whispered in the human heart, implanted in the human psyche, when we first awoke to self-awareness, thousands of generations since. 'There is a Power in the Universe who is like yourself a Person, He is your Father,

2,2,2,

or, if you will. She is your Mother. Your birthright is to be aware of Father God, Maternal Spirit. Your religion will teach you how.' Unfolding, challenging, evolving religion, open to reason, open to new knowledge, asking self-discipline, proposing goals, promising and delivering ongoing rewards and the key that unlocks the mystery of life: 'His, Her purposes are the meaning of the universe, and the reason of your being.' I can let the beetle return to the grass, I can listen contentedly to the owl hooting in the darkness, I can think gratefully of the village below, that microcosm of all human existence, I can gaze up into the stars, awed and hopeful and unafraid I have dared to stake my life the secret is truth.

June, 2.000

Z2.3

Convergent Paths The peoples of theistic faiths, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and still other voyagers who prefer to sail under other flags, make up the greater part of all mankind. Beginning from many different habitations we pilgrimage our way to the Realm of God, the divinely-purposed goal of all Earth's history, culture, evolution. Encumbered with much baggage, distracted by foolish quarrels, mutual jealousies, yes, bitter hatreds, even now only slowly awaking to the understanding, the recognition, that we seek one goal, one satisfaction for the shared hunger of all our hearts. Brothers, sisters, have you noticed we have begun to borrow each other's prayers? Does that not give experiential proof of that which needs no proving? The nearer we come to our common goal do we not approach inevitably nearer to one another?

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Sisters, brothers, we are one company, the Believers, the called, inspired, faithful, joyful, soon-to-be-fellow, citizens of Kingdom Come. We are the People of God! Hallelujah! Laus Deo! Allah akbar! H

July, 2000, after attending a Bar Mitzvah at Temple Emmanuel Synagogue and a baptism in Wesley United Church. Hallelujah - Praise the Lord. Laus Deo - Praise God. Allah akbar - God is great.

22.5

The Story with a Sting He was a young man in ancient Israel, with a very modern problem. 'Moab is my washpot, and over Edom have I cast my shoe.' Patriotic sneers in the name of God at Israel's neighbours were very acceptable when her tribal deity was but one god among many - Baal, Asherah, Yahweh, Chemosh and the rest. But if, as the exileenlightened priests were now declaring, the God Israel knew as Yahweh was in fact the Lord God, the sole Creator of the world and all its nations, must not that God have a concern for all earth's many peoples? An equal concern? But how to moot such a revolutionary idea? He was neither a prophet to declare a divine oracle, nor a priest to issue a sacred ordinance - but he could devise a story, and set it circulating, infiltrating wherever folk gather to hear the news, or pass the time in village markets and city squares. To soften the affront, he could set his story back in Assyrian times, when Nineveh was hated as much as Babylon is now, in his own days. Stories give ideas legs, and once set running, none can stop them.

Old Jonah was a prophet man, a stalwart of the Judah clan, who preached the word sans hesitation for wealth or power or social station, denouncing lies, adultery and murder, and lesser sins with equal fervour. His voice was loud, his lungs were strong, he could keep bellowing all day long. 'Don't think to hide what you're about, God's angels always will find out, and then you'll have to pay the score, twofold, threefold or even more!' It was harsh doctrine, but it served him well; people stayed good, for fear of hell!

His marked success drew Heaven's attention: 'You're just the man for my intention. I need a voice that can be heard, conviction, whereby consciences are stirred, hatred of crimes, to which you are no stranger, and courage, not deterred by danger. And since you clearly know the drill, you very aptly fill the bill. Jonah, you must go east, to Nineveh, that devils' lair and hide-away, the wicked, cruel imperial city, that wreaks its wrongs devoid of pity. You must denounce their countless crimes, and warn them of their fate betimes. For if they do not mend their ways, I shall be forced to end their days.' But Jonah thought: 'Why give them warning? Let them get what they've been earning. Let them awake some sunny morning, and suddenly their world's o'er- turning; lightning flashing, thunder crashing, houses burning, panic churning, earthquakes casting towers down, rivers flooding thru the town, warriors, families, cattle drown, the day of vengeance come at last! Oh no, I'll not go east. I will go west; as far as where the sun seeks rest, there will I hide.' Like many a preacher, he put at naught the very truths himself had taught.

So Jonah took himself to Joppa, and booked aboard a coastal hopper with passage to the farthest west, where the wandering seabirds nest. But God called up a hurricane, which struck the ship, time and again, Jonah was swept into the ocean, survived three days the strong waves' motion, until cast up, where currents parted, not far from where his journey started. 'Jonah, when I said east, I did not mean west; so now obey my strong behest, and take yourself with no more shirk, to Nineveh, that devils' lurk, and preach the word that I shall give, that even there my grace may live. All must have choice of penitence before receiving sin's just punishments.' Jonah deemed it quite unlikely those pagans ever could think rightly, ever repent them of their evil deeds, and tread new paths where mercy leads; so with good heart set out again, rejoicing he would preach in vain. He joined a merchants' caravan Damascus-bound, and then Haran, and finally the Tigris river, the sight of which set nerves a-quiver,

2,2,8

and then resplendent in the sun Nineveh, the proud, the beautiful, high-battlemented and impregnable. Her merciless troops had ravaged countries as far as Egypt's desert frontiers. He entered by the Ishtar Gate, straightway proclaimed the city's fate: 'In forty days from my arrival, only penitence can win survival. There must be days of public mourning, to show my God that you are turning away from war and conflagration, to peaceful trade's cooperation. Unless you change your wicked ways, Heaven's wrath will kindle such a blaze, that Nineveh, and all within, will be destroyed to pay for sin.' He preached in squares, in market-places, outside the track for chariot races, in front of barracks, and the law-courts, flouting the army and its cohorts his very boldness won immunity, for fear had gripped the whole community. His task fulfilled, and feeling righteous, despising those damned Nineviters, Jonah gladly quit the town, and on a hilltop sat him down. Those Satan's spawn would ne'er repent,

2,29

giving God reason to relent his just and truly right intent! No, Jonah would be there to see, with fierce, apocalyptic glee, fiery fulfilment of his forecast Nineveh shattered by a bomb-blast, all its temples, all its gods, its people, cattle, even dogs, all its might, all its fame, reduced to rubble without a name! Of forty days yet two remain, impatience he must still restrain. In angry pride he scorned all shelter; let all men see a little swelter would not weaken his determination to gloat the town's incineration. But that first day the hours crept slowly, by noon he was exhausted wholly, But God to him was very kind, or so old Jonah readily opined, for at his feet a tender shoot appeared, and speedily a vigorous stem up-reared, to spread a generous, leafy canopy, to shade the prophet's scorched anatomy. He doted on its strength and beauty, and deemed his comfort all its duty. But then God sent a canker worm, which ate the root; the stem infirm

2,30

collapsed, and soon the providential shrub was rotting garbage, smelly victim of a grub. His feeling for the gourd so strong, Jonah's lament was loud and long, deploring that a plant so beautiful, a creature to his need so suitable, should have its life so fast cut short, denied to flower as it ought. 'Jonah, do you do well to sympathize with that green plant, and fantasize it might have lived for many seasons, bearing fruits, the ample reasons why its worth should be respected, and its welfare carefully protected?' 'Yes, Lord, I do well, for it was virile, appearing here in desert sterile, and if allowed the bare essential, could have achieved a rich potential. Yes, Lord, I do well to grieve its loss. It was my vine; I'm very cross!' 'Then, Jonah, do you not think, before I let this splendid city sink into disaster and destruction, I should try some new induction to ways of brotherhood and sharing, rather than those of hate and warring? Should not the Lord of all the Earth seek to bring Universal Love to birth?

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These are my people, with whom I've striven, oft punished, oft encouraged, oft forgiven. Since all mankind are my creation, should I not care for every nation?

The young man told his story, and set it free to run thru bazaars and market places, into pedlars' spiel, housewives' gossip, schooltime lessons, even synagogue sermons. He wisely supplied no tidy ending; someone, sometime, introduced a great fish, but that has proved to be not a whale but a red herring. It is the final question that matters, seeking its answer in the hearts and minds of all who hear the story of Jonah and the City of Nineveh

March, 2,000 The mention of the Ishtar Gate, which was to Babylon what the Tower Bridge is to London or the Statue of Liberty to New York, is a broad hint that for 'Nineveh3 we should read the name of the hated oppressor city of the story-teller's own times - the equivalent of a Jew in the Nazi period saying that Jonah entered the city by the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of Berlin. For those who like dates, Nineveh was the capital of Assyria which ravaged Israel in the 8th century B.C.E. Babylon was the power which destroyed Jerusalem early in the 6th century. The Book of Jonah probably comes from the time of the rebuilding of Jewish life and thought in the later 6th-j th centuries.

2.32.

Dinosaurs They swarmed our planet in manifold profusion small, huge, lithe, clumsy, herbivorous, carnivorous, omnivorous. Some crawled the earth, heavy with armour, some glided swiftly over tree-tops, some reared great heads from crystal waters. They had evolved over millions of earth-years, flourished for commensurate aeons, the unchallenged lords of their world and then, in a few short seasons, they were finished, finished on land, finished above the trees, finished in ocean depths, erased from the catalogue of life. Were they perhaps an experiment that did not work out as planned? Was it that they lacked the promise of further evolution beyond the biological, and so their future was cut off? Clearly, the torch of life was handed to other forms, including birds in feathered flight, and mammals, small and unpretentious, but hiding in their genes, that so precious possibility, the emergence of mankind. With homo sapiens, something radically different:

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the evolving life of the mind, and a whole new range of futures. 'Cogitamus ergo sumus we think therefore we are,' but which can also be translated: 'we are permitted to continue, because we achieved the ability to think.' We marvel at our million-or-two years of evolutionary descent a brief moment of the dinosaurs' hour. We rightly acclaim the astonishing story of civilisation's swift development, a mere ten thousand years from plough to computer, from wheel to interplanetary probes. But my blood chills when I recall the disappearance of the dinosaurs. If we ourselves lack further promise, the right kind of pregnant possibilities, might it all happen again? A slate wiped clean can always be used for a fresh beginning . Have our digitized monitors, which can communicate so voluminously, have they yet downloaded the Purposes of God? They can answer How? so magically, have they yet any notions Why?

2,34

Could it be that Silicon Valley funnels merely into Dinosaur Park? Never in all our boasted history was there more urgent need for prophetic voices to ring out clearly: 'O brothers and sisters, let us cease our wars, our self-destructive hatreds, our foolish greed for possessions.' We need to hearken to these voices, and make time to ponder the possibilities of responsible, joyous planet-keeping in harmonious unity. We need to give ourselves time time to learn what it means to truly love one another; what it takes to achieve communities beyond either power-hungry Rome, or sensation-purveying Los Angeles, or the many wealth-accumulating Torontos. We need humbly to go back to school to learn what it means, and what it costs, to build Kingdom Come, the City of God's dreaming, the City of Person-to-Person Love. If we can attempt that, if we can so readjust our sights, we may yet be judged worthy -

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perhaps of further evolution? perhaps even sufficiently mature to join the Fellowship of the Milky Way? with visiting privileges to galaxies beyond? Great Creator in the Universe, Your vision be reverenced. Your rule be established, Your plan be achieved, here on earth, in time, as it is in space and eternity. Amen and Amen.

May 2000 Dinosaur Park - the dinosaur graveyard in Alberta. The closing lines re-word the Lord's Prayer.

z*6

Trinity Sunday: A Meditation I have through many years greatly admired those brave and pioneering minds, who in time of understandable ignorance, but brutal prohibition of enquiry, made themselves telescopes to peer into the skies their very names a glorious chant, Nicolas Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and martyr to the stake, Giordano Bruno. Intrepid souls, true heroes of the intellect, defying established powers, and common-sense, they broke through earth's chrysalid integuments and wonderingly discovered a solar system, intuited it was but narthex to a universe. I am fired by their physical courage, their mental stamina, their daring of the spirit, the vast outreach of their imagination ... Equally have I admired the reverent but persistent minds, that sought to penetrate that other veil, and dared to ask: what truly is the nature of our Deity? Tellers of tales, poets, philosophers, priests, in fables, myths, legends and chronicles, had, from his handiwork around them, and from history, superbly drawn his portrait as the sole Creator, unequalled Artist, inexorable Judge, the One and Only Lord of Life, the incomparably Alone.

2-37

But then those others, patriarchs, prophets, mystics, pilgrims of the heart, Noah in his ark, Moses in his desert, the Psalmist in his Temple, Jesus on his mountain-side, proclaimed him Friend and Father, the Lover of mankind. And so the questionings began: does the austere Oneness of God tell us all that may be known? We know God in creation and in governance, yes, but we also know him just as surely in experience, the Word Incarnate, God's love made flesh and blood, an event in human history - and equally again, we know him in that communion of the spirit whereby he is our conscience, our inspiration, the God Indwelling, nearer than breathing, nearer than our own selves ... And then those further questionings: if God were strictly Unity, would not Love be lonely? if God were solely Artist, would he not lack appreciation? if God is truly Father, would he not desire (as much as Adam!) an Helpmate fit for him? God is truly One in ultimate finality, in mathematical resolution, yes, but could he not also be reciprocal in relationships, artist and audience, lover and beloved, 2?»

father and other-self, in undivided, indivisible, harmonious unity? Paul of Tarsus, Athanasius of Alexandria, Augustine of Hippo, Anselm of Canterbury, they and fellow-minded seekers of the truth, dared to peer into the very heart of God, and perceived within that awesome solitude loving community. Courageously, joyously they proclaimed Triunity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three centres in one sphere; timeless Creator, intervening Saviour, indwelling Inspiration, three persons in unbroken wholeness. Perceptive visionaries, brave heroes of the soul, they breached tradition, transcended logic, to reveal a higher, more meaningful truth. And when they asked that further question, for mankind, the ultimate, Cur Deus Homo? they did not flinch from the blasphemous conclusion, only the Holy Spirit could prompt and sanctify: 'God became man, that mankind might become God.' And now we have fresh telescopes, both for the eye and for the heart. We have looked out into that universe, that unbounded Space, that unmeasured Time, and can visualize other planets, other life-forms, civilisations and religions.

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In the story of our solar system, we gratefully adore One God, fulfilling himself in threeness; then why not in the Pleiades, and in Orion's Belt, and in far-distant galaxies, as yet unknown to us, in ways as yet not humanly conceived? Is this then what God truly is about, working through countless aeons, lovingly creating throughout the galaxies, minds patterned and endowed in his own image? And they, disciplined, matured, purified, by environments, evolutions, unique to every planet, but all conforming to the grand design, become worthy to be welcomed in that Communion, which reflects the plurality-in-unity of its Lord and Inspiration? Is this the New Jerusalem of John the Seer's vision, the Kingdom of God 'as it is in heaven'? The Christian myth is fully truth and wholly beautiful for Planet Earth, but when we reach out to that boundless universe we need a creed commensurate, a Presence giving life and meaning to all Space and all Time. As we contemplate the wonder, the sacred mystery of the Trinity, we are perhaps permitted glimpses

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of yet more wondrous truths, as mountain tops reveal further, loftier ranges yet to be explored ... But then we return thankfully to the old truths, to Psalmist and Apostle: 'Lord, thou hast searched me and known me,' 'then shall I know, as also I have been known.' For this life, it is enough to recall that as the lens concentrates the light of a star, to give us one clear and faithful image, so in this disturbing, distracting, but glorious world, Jesus brings God as Father into focus, and reduces all to divine simplicity: 'I give you a new commandment, as I have loved you, that you also love one another.' And as we let love become the tenor of our lives, God dwells, refreshingly, recreatively, Spirit with spirit, within our hearts. What better way to prepare for life with, even for life within, the Holy Trinity ...

Trinity Sunday, 1999 Cur Deus Homo - 'why did God become man?5, the title of one of Anselm's books.

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Envoy The sower, said Jesus, went forth to sow, and the seed fell in many different places, but mostly, one presumes, on ground carefully prepared. The poet also writes to disseminate, so many different soils, indifferent, inappropriate, receptive, generous. The sower trusting his seed, and his aim, waits confidently for harvest. The poet can only confide his words to vagrant winds, take comfort that his true reward is in the creative process; but also hopes somewhere, somehow, in unexpected places, there may be flowerings ...

September, 2,000

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2OOI

Millennial Melange

Contents 245

Choosing a Future

246

Winter Dawn

148

Mind Vacation

2,49

Happy Hour

250

Seasons in Disorder

155

Harvest Moon

157

Seeing Beautiful

258

Haiku

259

Morning Shower

260

The Morning After

2,62,

The Broken Harp

265

For a Mother Mourning

267

For Myself Mourning

270

How Beauty Grows

271

September Eleven 2001

273

Michaelmas

276

Pilgrim Interlude

279

Post Scriptum Addenda 2002

280

Nonagen Antics

281

Personals

282

Experiences

284

Paradise Conceived

288

Gentle Reminder

Choosing a future The year two thousand and one, the opening of a new millennium, what can we look forward to? Another thousand years of much the same? the planet where 'every prospect pleases, and only man is vile'? Or will we build on our successes, the United Nations, the International Red Cross, medecins sans frontieres, all peoples concerned for all peoples? Will we win renown through-out the galaxy as the Planet of Positive Peace? Hope springs eternal in the human breast, or it would be no longer human, and needs must choose the highest if we but dream it ...

January and November, 2.001 With acknowledgments to Heber, Pope and Tennyson

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Winter Dawn Over Montreal Seen from high-rise Even before the mighty sun arises, his approaching radiance engoldens all the eastern sky, lending glory to fragmented clouds. The stars quietly remove themselves, the best and brightest fade away, leaving only the gibbous moon to show her darkest face to earth, rimmed by one last edge of brilliance. Now the sun leaps above Mont St. Gregoire and all the sky is his. On the earth below, the twinkling city lights, street lamps, house windows, arena floods, subserviently douse themselves before his majesty. The sun is left to rule alone in autocratic splendour. This day, as every day, he will give light and warmth and life to a cold planet. Without him, our world would die not poetically, but factually, freeze and die in the dark ... Yet we this day, as every day, will go busily about our small concerns, complain if somewhat cool, or condescendingly approve his benison as 'lovely weather,' because it happens to suit our personal agenda.

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Ancient generations worshiped Sol as life-bestowing, life-upholding Ra, benefactor of all goodness. Why not? Better that, than take all for granted, and thoughtlessly forget both him and his Creator. O mighty Sun, and thru you, the One Who Ordaineth, we reverence you for coming, this morning as every morning, to enact the daily miracle. You give life to our world, you gladden our hearts, and enlighten our darkness, both of body and of mind. Blessed are You, O Lord!

January, 2.001 Psalm viii, v.3: 'when I consider the heavens, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained'

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Mind Vacation My eyes closed, I lie in the radiance, on the surface of the pool, moving now an arm, now a leg, to keep me lazily afloat. At this early hour, the sun is pleasantly warm, the sky a pearly blue, the palms an incandescent green. I think of my friends in Canada bravely facing the cutting winds, thankful the flurries are snow, not icy rain. I pretend I feel apologetic for this warmth, this opulence of being, but cannot fool myself. In this ambiance of wellth their world's just too unreal to imagine. Reality is here and now, this permeating sun, this amplitude of Spring But when vacation ended I fly home, will this reality become the vague unreal, that piercing cold the all-too-present fact? Best swim slowly to the other end, stop thinking, just absorb the sunshine, the blue of the sky, the call of the birds, just float ...

Arizona, March, 2.001

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Happy Hour We gather each evening, companions drawn together by shared vacation. We rejoice in the luxury of borrowed Spring, far from the winds and snows of home, absorbing the warmth, the colour, the stimulating difference of Arizona. We luxuriate in the rocks and the mountains, the desert cacti, the elegant malls, and our friendly hosts, the men and women of this vibrant countryside. So much each evening to talk about, so many experiences to relate, so many discoveries to record, occasionally a few small confidences to share. We need this time each day to assimilate the notable incidents, the impressive views, the quickened emotions of the high-light moments. Now, each with a favourite aperitif (salutes of gratitude to the patron-saint of well-deserving, retired vacationers!) we comfortably chat and gossip and socialize, enjoying the pleasurable completion of the pleasurable day. Scenery, tours, expeditions, lake-unveiling cruises, all will be carefully remembered and, when we return home, enthusiastically retailed. The companionship of 'the happy hour,' with its kindly memories of names and faces, we will not so easily convey to others, but they will enhance our every recollection, and sweeten nostalgia with affectionate gratitude.

March, 2.001

Seasons in Disorder I. May Day The radio cursorily informs me this April past has been record cold and dry. My notebook blandly informs me this April past has been likewise barren. No poems. Yet this same April we have celebrated the cycling year's renewal, the season of resurrection and new life, Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and Easter Day. We surely soon must breathe the milder southern airs, we'll see the first small patches of green grass, the first brave crocus shoots. It will be Spring, the season that brings a lifting of the spirits, a sense of joyful liberation, known only to the winter-weary and God knows we are that. But no poems? I am deeply aware of a strange empathy with the young wife, finding herself not pregnant, feeling unfulfilled, deprived and yet smiling quietly to herself, treasuring very private memories that gladden and enrich the present, and spell the future very promising ...

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In spring-time, in spring-time, the only pretty ring-time, she'll be quickened to create new life, and every bud shall break new leaves, and every bird shall sing new songs, and I will clothe a darling thought in phrases graceful and diaphonous ...

i May, 2.001

II. The Ides of May So I wrote in hopeful expectation, even tho Winter lingered and Spring loitered. Yet all to no avail for two whole weeks, the year stalled motionless. But now, midmonth, it seems the Ides of May can be as ominous as those of March. Suddenly, before we'd time to think of casting clouts, Summer himself has come heartily upon us, a guest too soon, too self-assured of welcome! Warm, close days, that pleasure and confuse us, record temperatures at the airport, record floods in river valleys, daffodils wilting before they'd blossomed, trees looking strangely immature, inadequate to offer needed shade too much, too moist, too hot, too whelming ...

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Where are the scents of cool, moist earth? Where the fragrances of hyacinth and apple-blossom? Where the leisure to be amazed anew by the slow-unfolding miracle of returning life? We will no doubt respond to Summer's vigorous embrace with happy and unfeigned participation; we'll make the most of sunny days and all the heady joys they have to offer; but in our most active, liberated moments, our party-times of picnicing and barbecue, we'll nurture deep within our memories a lingering sense of something lost a haunting, deep regret for the gentle youth, who smiled in passing but did not stay to visit ...

15 (the Ides) May, 2,001 Clout - Scottish proverb: 'ne'er cast a clout till May is out.'

III. May's Demise Strange power of poetry! I had not known my vagrant words could reach so high, nor guessed strong Summer's sensitivities could be so easily provoked he felt affronted and withdrew, and Winter's dregs resurfaced! This penultimate of May we registered a record low,

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the winds blow bitter coldly, and scarves and head-gear are again in fashion. I wish to report, the message has been received and understood. Henceforth, I will refrain from ill-conceived and inappropriately-expressed remarks, and plead no poetic licences. (Tho there's one sentiment I'll not retract: we sadly did miss Spring, and send that winsome youth our fond remembrances, and future hopes.) But you, dear Summer, you must please return and be again our truly welcome, honoured guest! We simply cannot face the long, light days of June without you make them warm, pleasurable and, yes, luxurious ... We thirst the sheen of sun-preened grass, the reflections of ducks upon still waters, the velvet of petals, the wooing of doves, the rustle of leaves, the fragrance of honeysuckle, and all your opulence of beauty ... O come, rich Summer, come!

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And come he did, in all his jollity too much, too moist, too hot, too ... Oh, for the days gone by, when the Seasons knew their times, and poets could indulge their hopes, and sing of Springs and Summers as they used to be or, perhaps, never truly were? The true wisdom surely is to be thankful our Canadian weather is never boring, and that, when all else fails, we still have the where-withal for polite conversation, and, by no means least, a last resource for barren-minded poets ...

June, 2,001

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Harvest Moon 'I feel the moon rise. Oh, if the world of men could stay forever, half so beautiful, half so magical, then every poet could lay down his pen.' So spouted the schoolboy, acting dutifully in the Christmas play, yet even then sensing in those words a beauty different, numinous, belonging to another world ... But that was all of seventy years ago. All else of that occasion I have forgotten, except that thru the years those lines have stayed with me. Last night, as we watched the full moon rise slowly, mysteriously, above the monteregian hills, wreathed in mists that softened her beauty into a vision pale and insubstantial, like to a visitor from some other universe, the words returned to me across those many years: 'I feel the moon rise. Oh if the world of men could but remain forever half so beautiful ... ' As we watched, the moon cleared the mountain tops, let fall those misty robes, and emerged her usual bright and silver self. The magic faded ...

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Nevertheless, moments such as those leave us persuaded, there is somewhere an ethereal, eternal beauty we were created to inherit.

September, 2.001

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Seeing Beautiful She crossed our path in sunshine, as we left the grocer's parking lot, this glorious day of Indian summer. A trim little figure, nine or ten years old, short, shapely blonde hair, a neat, dark tartan skirt, and a truly wonderful vest: bright green silky velvet. As she walked in the sun it shimmered and shone with a thousand lights that turned the green to gold. On her face a solemn, happy smile, as if she were marching to trumpets, and held before her, like a proud flag, green and brown and yellow and red, a single large maple leaf, glorious in autumnal hues. Look, said my friend, she has been to Brownies, and Grey Owl suggested a competition: find the biggest, best, most colourful, fallen leaf - and she won. I joined the game: Now she is taking her leaf to show in pride to her Grandmother. Or, said my friend, she is on her way to music lesson. She is going to give it to her teacher, and they will make a little song about it. Either way, dear friend, this Fall day, you and I glimpsed beauty together, and all unbeknown to that little girl, we shall treasure her for ever.

October, 2,001

Haiku Haiku - as I understand, a Japanese form of poetry, terse in style, written in three lines, employing not more than seventeen syllables* and flavoured with whimsy, wisdom or enigma.

Spring in Canada long coming short staying loved for ever like car-bomb hypocrisy unmasked maims innocent by-standers friendship like magnetism attracts separates makes solidarity goodness difficult to define recognized gladly in person sermons and bread best served consumed fresh from oven dead men tell no tales Jesus living speaks mightily to all the world for each of us the all-surpassing wonder is me

January - March, 2.001

Morning Shower a la haikuesque

Steaming jets strike hair scalp least sensitive areas Hot waves wash shoulders breast back stimulating strengthening Warm soapy streams cleanse invigorate loins thighs Cool puddles slosh ankles feet soaking relaxing Each area its own degree. Isn't Providence wonderful? And poet seeking poem ingenious?

March, 2001

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The Morning After reading much theology

It must be an unforgettable experience to be invaded by an immense idea to be seized by its synchronicity, when its kairosity is so obviously apparent, to be dominated by its architectonic qualities, its power to reconcile so many contradictions, opening up cramped perspectives to brave new vistas; this thought so strong, so captivating, so ultimate, that oblivious to the world around, the thinker stands remote upon that peak in Darien but fortunately, only philosophers and theologians are prone to such attacks. More sober, less ambitious souls must be as I, content to experience, mark, learn and inwardly digest, those humbler moments, those common-place events, which weave the tapestry of daily life, giving it texture, colour and design, making it livable, enjoyable and, if we have eyes to see, strangely wonderful ... as, for example, this first morning tea, enjoyed leisurely in bed, the taste smooth enough to please the palate, strong enough to stimulate the senses, readying the body for the day's encounters, readying the mind for the day's first prayer: Lord, help me to live this day, as every day, with gratitude, good sense and kind intention,

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and, this morning, if possible, to finish that learned volume, with (if amazing grace can stretch so far) more profit than my irreverence deserves ...

August, zoo i kairosity - fortunate timeliness (but do not look for it in a dictionary). Darien - 'stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes, he stared at the Pacific ... silent upon a peak in Darien' - Keats: 'On first looking into Chapman's Homer.' mark, learn and inwardly digest - The Book of Common Prayer, the Collect for the Second Sunday in Advent

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The Broken Harp I read a tale long years ago, of a coterie of poets, urbane, cultured, living cosily in a small provincial town of by-gone China, the civilized days of the T'ang. Members of the administrative class, functions and life-style equally agreeable, they formed a leisured, affluent, affable group, a self-regarding, self-approving, salon de poesie. They composed verses for their tea-ceremonies, deftly allusive of the classics, gracefully conforming to accepted norms, in wording, images and sentiments farmed landscapes with distant mountains, the mystic moments of the full moon rising, the delicate allure of female beauty, the nobility of heroic patriotism, the sterling worth of shared moralities ... Shan Tong, tax-collector, a family man, happily approaching elder-status, garnering communal good opinions, both in performance of his duties and in composition of his verses. He'd earned the esteem of high officials, even, it was rumoured, of the Imperial Court. His fellow-poets, friends of long-standing, praised his pieces readily, warmly they could always be relied upon for elegance and good taste. And always becomingly he demurred:

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'My poor efforts may be inoffensive, even at times pleasing, if you, dear colleagues, generously judge them so but I realize, only too well, my simple melodies linger always in the middle register. My harp, alas, is not strung for the higher notes, arousing keen excitements of transporting joy, nor for those deeper notes, which explore the strength and courage of the sorrowing heart. My life traces paths well-trodden, thru cultivated fields, small rural towns; my humble craft floats by placid waterways, gentle streams, innocent of strong currents, turbulent white-water, or fearsome gorges. I, alas, have never loved with grand passion, have never burned with consuming hatreds, never agonized for desperate loss ... Not having endured the storms of life, I can sing only of spring-time, and pleasant, sunny summer days.' So he would speak, deflecting compliments with modest, self-deflation. But then without warning, a night of sudden tempest, a storm of truly tornado force, breaking upon their doyen and his intimates. Brutal revelations, stark stripping of pretences; passions uncovered of greed and lust, Shan could never have conceived,

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hidden with hypocrisies he could not comprehend. Lifetime reputations shattered, desperate suicides - and these his friends, the men he thought he knew ... Ravaged by warring emotions, bewilderment, repulsion, anger, and yet also pity and old affections, he found himself propelled by an unwanted dawn into a barren, disoriented future all the familiar landmarks gone, all the guiding lights extinguished. One thing alone he knew: never again would he put brush to paper. That one night of wild cacophony had shattered his harp strings for ever. And he bethought him with great longing of the placid life he had lamented. I shrank from that tale, when first I read it, and still, from time to time, it returns to haunt me. Do I fear it might prove a parable, or worse, a mirror?

June, 2.001

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For a Mother Mourning When death comes softly, when oil expended the lamp dims, the flame flickers and fades away, we can understand and give thanks. But when in mid-life, when the torch is burning vigorously, spreading warmth and fellow-feeling, creating gladness reflected in many faces, that splendid light is suddenly, inexplicably self-extinguished, and we are left with chilling, empty gloom, we are shocked into rebellion. This thing cannot be. Your son cannot be dead. It must not happen. It denies nature, right, truth itself. We rage impotently. The fact remains. What can be said? Only that I realize in our shared grief, how much a part of me you have become. In this blackness, I am sitting beside you, holding your hand ... And also, how much we need God. In His presence, we are still one whole, one extended family, bound together by deep, reciprocal concern, you, your son, your loved ones, I and your many, many friends.

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Here is no place for vain regrets, recriminations, attempts to explain; only a mutual compassion, and, from and for us all, forgiveness, forgiveness and forgiveness ... But always, in His presence, a future. Even in present darkness, the distant gleam of hope.

May, 2.001

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For Myself Mourning I have consoled others so often. It has been a professional task, over so many years, responsibly fulfilled. Also an obligation of friendship for so wide an acquaintance, willingly, sincerely accepted. But now I have to talk to myself. My sister, my last remaining sibling, has passed away, and I am assailed by grief. Surrounded by friends, I feel so alone, so destitute. We were a loosely bonded family, scattered geographically, and increasingly by death, yet, as long as one or two remained, firmly held by strangely elastic, strangely strong, bonds of common memories. But now I only am left to cherish them. Those ties were always taken for granted, as often neglected as nurtured, but now, suddenly dissolved, I recognize them for what they were. They were the influences that formed my character, confirmed my identity, moulded my person. The youngest son of four, I am what my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, produced me to be. Of course, church, school, university, books, travel, colleagues, a multitude of friends, and most deeply, my dear wife and children of our own,

all changed, developed, transformed me profoundly. But they could only work on what my family, that first initial seed-bed, had produced. As long as my one last sister remained, and we could write and telephone, or even I could know she was still there, remembering what I remember, this secured even the earliest childhood and tied itfirmlyto the present but now she has gone, and all my origins have suddenly become insubstantial. My parents, my brothers, my sisters, and all the fundamental faiths we shared unquestioning, are become merely wraiths in my private recollections. I feel so alone, so destitute. From the oncoming generations, from my many friends, I receive truly kind and appreciated condolences, but they cannot touch the spot. I have lost not only my sister, but all my beginnings, the underpinnings of who I am ... It is time then to listen to myself. What I have said to others I must now take to my own need: 'What can be said? Only that I realize in our shared grief ... how much we need God.' How greatly I now need Him! He is indeed the One, the only One, who can reach down to share those memories, for they are His as much as mine.

Because He is timeless, they are eternal. In my prayers, in His presence, I and my loved-ones, my parents, brothers, sisters, and all the basic attitudes we shared, are one whole family again. But even more, in His presence, we are one with all the saints who ever were, who are now, and ever shall be, and embrace their larger, truly eternal vision. I am not alone. I live in God's world, already a prospective member of the ageless, timeless, Company of Heaven. I can mourn my Dorothy with a new and deeper assurance, remembering her cheerfulness, her courage, her readiness to serve with love. She has joined 'the dear and holy dead who make the distant heaven a home to our hearts.' Comforted, I can resume my pilgrimage, responding to life's continuing opportunities with faith and gratitude and hope.

June, looi 'the dear and holy dead ... ' The Office for the Burial of the Dead.

How Beauty Grows A rather pedestrian medieval Latin original draws the attention of Jean Racine who gives it competent, but to my ear, less than inspired French. Prompted by the solemnity the words convey to worshipers, Gabriel Faure creates a deeply moving motet to evoke and sustain the heartfelt piety. John Rutter, captivated by its loveliness, arranges the music for exquisite embodiment by the Cambridge Singers, while the London Orchestra Strings weave a casket to enshrine the new totality, and I, listening, am left in wonderment and longing, at the very gates of Heaven.

October, zooi Latin: nth - izth century? Racine: lyth century Faure: i9th century Rutter: 2,oth century Radio Broadcast zist century - a pedigree of loveliness

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September Eleven 2001 The tallest towers of human pride, symbols and centres of global trade, the pulsing heart of world-wide change, the new techno-driven culture. The gleaming planes, the shining darts that can be hurled above mountains, across continents, beyond oceans, transcending distance. The unthinkable: the darts misdirected inwards, the planes plunged into the towers. The most powerful destroying the most progressive. Civilization programmed to self-destruct, techno-culture committing suicide for all the world to see on global television. And that other, deeper hurt: the black leaven of death, suffering, bereavement, spreading into homes, lives, hearts, beyond consolation or healing. Those wounds are going to be for ever. All this accomplished by a handful of men, using nothing more than knives, devilish planning and bitter, bitter hate: their world of family, Koran and mosque threatened by Walt Disney and McDonald's.

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We can rebuild the towers, govern the flight of planes, reassemble our cities, but can we so re-think our civilization that it will not evoke and feed such maddened, desperate fears? Can we evolve our brave new world without corroding theirs?

12. September, 2.001

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Michaelmas 2001 Father, forgive today's prayer. It just has to be said. Why, our Father in Heaven, why, in this earthly world, can such dreadful things happen? Why in a rich, rewarding existence, where there is joy, and laughter, nobility and the steady pursuit of what is healthy, beautiful and good, is there also greed, envy, hate, and these resultant, monstrous tragedies? We know, we acknowledge with shame, these crimes are human-made, but You have the power to prevent them. Why do you allow us to concoct such devilish disasters? Was November Eleven not sufficient that we must add September Eleven also to our mournful calendar? Lest we forget? Lest we forget? Even in chastened contemplation they torment and torture the human nerve. We believe, from Bethlehem to Calvary, from Vimy Ridge to New York City, you share each tear, each breaking heart, and match them with Your own, but that frankly is not sufficient answer. Why so torture Yourself - and us?

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Are we to accept that, to raise the human mind from the obedience of the best and fondest of our most-companionable four-footed friends, to flights beyond the range of angels and archangels, and so to share Your liberty of will that freely chooses Goodness, Goodness alone, for its pure sake are we to accept that this is indeed the pearl beyond all price? Beyond all price? including the suffering of little children? At that challenge even our most pious intention balks: we ought, we suppose, to say yes, but we cannot. Kyrie eleison. Lord, have mercy! Are we then left to follow love's blind instinct, and remain loyal, only because - where else to turn? No, in prayer, in worship, in fellowship together, we have known You, we do know You, as did Moses, as did our fathers, spirit to spirit, as a man knows his friend. Because we know You as a Person, and because the human heart has deeper reasons than the human mind can formulate, we are assured that in Your loving wisdom there lies some further, fuller answer an answer which some day, with St. Paul, we shall know as also we are known. 2-74

Emboldened by Your indwelling Spirit, we will strive to surpass Saint Michael and his peers, at least in this: we will humbly trust, where now we cannot see. Amen and Amen.

Michaelmas, 2,9 September, 2,001 The Feast of St. Michael and all Angels In angelology, it was thought that following Satan's rebellion, angels lost the privilege of free-will. Mankind, retaining that capacity, can sink to the level of devils, or rise beyond the hopes of angels, to share the Divine Nature. Kyrie eleison - Greek, the oldest words of Christian liturgy. For the mystery of known and permitted evil, see also St John's Gospel, 6:66-71. For Moses, Exodus 33:11; for St.Paul, i Corinthians 13:12,; for Blaise Pascal,: 'the heart has reasons which are quite unknown to the head,' Pensees, IV 2,77.

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Pilgrim Interlude By the way-side, I asked Saint Francis: 'Tell me, what is holiness? How should I understand it?' He replied: 'Holiness is not to be understood. Holiness is God, and God is holiness. There is no more to be said.' But, being a preaching friar, he continued: 'When the prophet Isaiah came to the worship place, he was allowed a glimpse of the holiness of God: "I saw the LORD, high and lifted up. Above and about him the Burning Ones, at his feet the altar, his footstool, his robe spilling down into the shrine. But between, at that searing Centre, radiating primal Light, pure Being ... I covered my face, for I heard the chant: Holy, holy, infinitely holy, is the LORD, the God of Hosts." The saint paused, and again continued: 'God of science, God of research,

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God of space and God of time, God of morality and justice, God the Artist who loves what he has made, God the Father, wondrously parenting his children, with these we may wrestle, and try our human best to comprehend. But what shall this avail, unless also we are up-lifted to transcend all conceptual thought, and are inspired, we, earth of the earth earthy, to sense and so for the precious moment, to share the holiness of God ... ' He paused again, smiled, and passed on his pilgrim way, and in my heart a choir singing: 'O worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.'

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POST SCRIPTUM

Addenda 2,002,

Nonagen Antics You are old, my dear fellow, the kind friend demurred, and yet you continue to talk and to write, and distribute these poems, so your voice may be heard do you think, at your age, that is seemly or right? To him I replied: In my youth, I kept private the webs I had spun, for fear they might sully my fame, but now that I'm happily sure I have none, as long as I can, I'll continue the game.

17 February, 2002, the day I begin my ninetieth year You are old , Father William, the young man said, and your hair has become very white, and yet you incessantly stand on your head, do you think at your age it is right? In my youth, Father William replied to his son, I feared it might injure the brain, but now that I'm perfectly sure I have none, Why, I do it again and again. Lewis Carroll: Alice in Wonderland

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Personals Japanese haiku have given fresh popularity to poetry in the form of terse aphorisms. Proverbs (and clerihew? limerick?) have long served a similar purpose: providing a thought on which the mind can chew, as a dog chews on a bone. The particular virtue of haiku is perhaps that the element of enigma emphasizes the challenge to chew.

in this world our greatest privilege to meet personally with other persons culture the window whereby we see deep into other minds only as we explore other minds can we begin understanding our own prayer the open door whereby we enter the Mind of God

March, 2.002.

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Experiences I have stood, a small boy on a scooter, fascinated by Queen Boadicea's monument on Westminster Bridge ... I have looked long on the Pyramids of Egypt, and the enigmatic Sphinx ... I have viewed the Taj Mahal, ethereal in moonlight ... I have gazed on restless oceans, where there is no land ... And now I ponder the Colorado Canyon, timeless in setting sun ... I have lived these ninety years the fragrances of Spring, the opulence of Summers, the purity of clear, cold, windless winter nights ... I have responded intuitively and rewardingly to percipient artists' visual creations, to soul-exploring dramatic expositions, I have drowned in crafted words. I have been transported, mind and heart and soul, by Bach, Beethoven, Barber, and their accomplice angelic hosts ... I have looked into friendly, eloquent eyes, and there have traded love for love ... All these have informed, have matured, educated in judgment, even bestowed some small measure of wisdom. Any self-satisfaction, any self-pride, would be destructive. Humble gratitude alone is fitting and due.

But I cannot think, dear Lord, You have designed me so deftly, so ingeniously, have tuned and mellowed me so patiently, so assuredly, to benefit so richly from these adventures, only to cast me out because the physical frame is showing signs of long-time service. I know You better than that! These my experiences, small, hard-won capacities, will surely (as I would do, upgrading my computer) will surely be copied, transferred, to some further vital technology, beyond my present guessing. Thereby my half-attainments here will find completion, satisfaction, fulfilment, as an infinitesimal but essential element in Your own incomparable Grand Design. Oh yes! That provokes the one prayer I can urge unreservedly: Your rule be established, O God, Your purpose be accomplished, Your name be hallowed, thru-out the universe and thru eternal time!

March, 2.002.

Paradise Conceived The Father said: I have observed a planet already in the making. It circles a small star in an obscure galaxy in the wide universe of our creating. I have named the star Sol. I have adjusted the planetary orbit to a careful balance whereby Sol can engender and maintain, but not endanger, a vital environment. Mountains and lands and oceans are firming up. For this planet I have spoken the word: 'Let there be Life,' and there is life. The Son said: A new planet. New life evolving, maturing, perfecting. Let us name this planet Earth and let us do something so new and wonderful on this small speck that it will ultimately enliven every part of our universe. The Spirit said: Let us make on this planet by careful evolution creatures in our own image, beings in our own likeness. Let these creatures, male and female, be formed from the earth, of the earth, yet capable of rising to immortal spirit. Beings having freewill, freedom to choose the good for its own sake! Beings fully like our selves! 284

The Father said: That can only be achieved if ultimately they become one with ourselves. I foresee great cost. We can only bring them into being one with us, if we first become one of their kind, and thus engraft our nature into their inheritance. The Son said: That is surely my mission. I will clothe myself in the person of a man. I will be born of a woman, live with mankind, work and laugh and love with mankind, and truly be of mankind. The Spirit said: I will prepare your way. I will inspire one nation to be our guiding light to all the nations. It will prove a truly burdensome role, but one with rich rewards. In that nation, I will prepare a young woman who shall, in the normal manner of her kind, conceive an embryo into which you, dear Son, may enter and make your own, a being truly human, truly divine. I shall prepare that nation, that historical period, that young woman with immaculate care. She shall be named the Mother of God.

The Father said: Undertaking this unique project, so momentous only we could have conceived it, we shall be opening the door of existence to contingency, we shall be compromising our own inevitability. In giving mankind freewill we allow the possibility of selfwill, with attendant pain and suffering and death. We shall be allowing the possibility of an Enemy, even the possibility of failure. The Son said: That Enemy must and shall be overcome! Mankind must be won to love goodness, and to aspire to their inheritance! For the wonder, for the beauty, for the unbounded love of our conception, we must embark wholeheartedly upon this enterprise. If mankind is to suffer cruelty and pain and death, then, so be it, so must I, even death in its direst form. This death I will gladly accept. But the proof of our ultimate success, dear Father, dear Spirit, will be my survival, my return to life, my return to the triumphant Unity of our Threefold Being. The Spirit said: It is fitting that you are the one to venture, for you are the outgoing, the outreaching, the proactive love of our triunity.

The Father said: Go indeed, my Son, the glorious goal authenticates the enterprise. Go with the blessing of the Father and of the Spirit. We know that you will not fail us! I and the Spirit will be ever watching over you, sharing your joys, your laughter and your agony. Go and return triumphant, bringing with you the rich harvest of your endeavour, the souls of the righteous, those who have responded to their inheritance. They shall dwell with us, and you their Saviour, joyfully, eternally, in the new heaven we shall create for them. In creating that heaven, we shall return to non-existence both contingency and death for ever. In that new paradise, only eternal life shall blossom, for we are Life Eternal. Go my Son, the Spirit and the Father go with you!

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that all who believe in him shall not perish hut have everlasting life. John 3:16 September, 2002. with humblest apologies to John Milton

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Gentle Reminder 'A poet's life,' said Yeats, 'is an experiment in living, and those who follow after have a right to know.' An experiment in living how rightly discerned! The poet actively exploring each day, making it subject to his careful research, making himself sensitive to its experiences, especially the moments others too busily neglect. Then he retires to re-live them, in order to capture, preserve, immortalize, in words meticulously, creatively chosen truly 'emotion recollected in tranquillity.' But Yeats is surely wrong that others 'have a right to know.' The poet's life's as much his own as the butcher's, the baker's, the candlestick-maker's. Rather, like all who prosecute research, poets (except, of course, she happens to be Emily Dickinson) poets find themselves under compulsion to publish theirfindingsand so generously we write, print, read aloud, disseminate, our most private thoughts, our most intimate epiphanies ...

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Our sustaining hope? that 'out there' someone, some few, have the good fortune to tune in and listen and respond to our ever-newest, ever-delighting, great discovery: 'Life is wonderfully worth living!' Not a right, dear Reader, but a privilege.

June, 2.002. 'Poetry ... takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity': Wordsworth, Preface, Lyrical Ballads

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Gold Frankincense and Myrrh

Contents 293

In Praise of Christmas

294

King's College Carols

295

Mary

296

The Carol of Mary's Sisters

2,99

God's Fairy Tale

300

Mary's Stable Lullaby

302

Christmas Colouring Book

304

Skipping-rope Rhyme

305

The Other Christmas

306

Christmas Gifts

308

Prophetic Voices

310

Truth for Christmas

312-

Silent in Bethlehem

314

His Name is Jesus

In Praise of Christmas Christmas has so many happy memories and associations, that it is a magical time for us all. It is a season especially for children, but as our years pass, it grows in significance rather than diminishes, and speaks increasingly profoundly to our reflective minds. Christmas begins as bible story, blends into a very special kind of fairy-tale, matures into legend, strengthens into myth, and finally transcends to truth - awesome truth. Consequently, I have been prompted to bring together pieces I have written over the years, to provide an invitation to not one but many different Christmases, all of them I believe richly meaningful.

2-93

King's College Carols In the bleak midwinter, on a dull and nothing afternoon, I turned a knob in idleness and instantly, by electronic miracle, time was cast back, and Cambridge richly real again: the chapel of the royal saint, structured in elegant Lancastrian stone, and opulent, dark Tudor wood, with many-coloured, many-storied glass, and high, fan-vaulted, music-tempered roof a shrine long mellowed and matured by prayer. After the quiet organ a single clear, pure treble enters the waiting silence, the words Rosetti-crafted, the notes ethereal snowflakes, conjured exquisitely from thinnest air, together legend-evoking, belief-affirming. And now the full voiced choir strengthening, broadening, proclaiming, and the gathered people responding gladly, filling the house of God with joyous celebration .... In the bleak midwinter, by miracle of grace, time was cast back, old insights brought to new awareness, and Christmas deeply real again.

November, 1989

Mary This story of a shy young girl so comely in her innocence, so humble in her ignorance, flower naturally unfolding, joy for every eye beholding, beauty pure as lucent pearl: This story of a calm young maid so tranquil in obedience, so certain in her confidence, come mature with child ingrown, wise with wisdom not her own, serene of faith and unafraid: This story of a happy mother not that she had birthed a fable, but rapt in wonder in her stable, counting shepherds, angels, kings, as the less impressive things: her babe was hers beyond all other!

Christmas, 1986

295

The Carol of Mary's Sisters When Joseph saw Jerusalem he would have lingered longer, but Mary's goal was Bethlehem and her will proved the stronger. Her babe, she said, he must be born in David's royal city, but travel-tired she looked so worn she moved all hearts to pity. And when the inn could find no room, her plight was soon confided; the women rallied close to them and ready help provided. The beasts were quickly led from stall, sweet hay was Mary's bedding; and Joseph sent to common hall to join a local wedding! Innkeeper's wife was in command, for she was midwife truly; old Martha served as her right hand, arranging all things duly. The women who ground out the corn said they'd provide hot water; the chambermaid had old sheets torn, and sent home for her daughter.

296

The barmaid to the landlord said: 'You'll have to serve the tables; your boy for once can earn his bread, I'm needed in the stables.' The cook said to the kitchen crew: 'It's none sae great a hassle; ye'll hae to sairve a mutton stew, ma place is wi' the lassie.' Poor Mary laboured all night long until the dawn was nearing; all night the women kept her strong with kindnesses most cheering. When Joseph in the morning stirred the landlord wished him joy-o: 'my woman's just sent out the word, you're father to a boy-o.' Then all the men slapped Joseph's back, and called for morning pitchers; they made a merry toast and crack, wished dad and son great futures! Glad Mary in her stable lay, her baby softly nestling, she thanked her sisters from the hay, on them she prayed God's blessing.

297

The old ones said: 'No fuss, my dear, to serve you is our pleasure.' The young ones said:'It's very clear, we envy you your treasure.' The angels then could sing their song, and shepherds come a-calling; three Wise Men brought their gifts along, but sisters first gave all, gave all, her sisters first gave all.

Christmas Eve, 1989

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God's Fairytale Rough-hewn rafter beams, dank straw upon the earth, smell of hay and cattle food, broken yoke and girth just the stable of an inn, another one-night berth. Gripping, tearing pains, a woman caught forlorn, smell of blood and female sweat mid the scent of corn just another human life imperious to be born. Snow-white snuggling roofs, gold star against the blue, kings akneel with shepherdmen, angel song anew, Mother Mary, Holy Child God's fairytale come true.

Christmas, 1933 and 1983

299

Mary's Stable Lullaby The folk-song Mary is crooning is now called 'the Ashgrove.' The tune repeats the first melody, enters the second, and then reverts to the first. This pattern is followed in the second stanza, and the singer then returns to the beginning, and so continues until mother and child both fall asleep.

O hush you, my manling, don't cry now, my darling, the sun is fast setting, the night-time is here. See, there's the moon rising, the bright stars are shining, the chickens are roosting, the cock's fast asleep. The ewes are safe-folding, their lambkins are suckling, the oxen cud chewing, the ass munching hay. And you have been feeding, it's sleep you're now needing, so hush you, my sweeting, don't cry any more. Soft breezes are blowing, the doves softly cooing, the kittens are purring, the evening is still. Strong Joseph is guarding, the doorway cross-lying, no bears will come prowling, no wolf can slink in. 300

Thru all the night darkling God's love will be watching, He always stays waking, and hallows our rest. So hush you, my darling, sleep, sleep now, my manling, rest warm in my nursing, safe-cradled in love.

December, 1997 and 1998

301

Christmas Colouring Book Come sing a song of Mary! Clothe her in festal blue! She heard the angel message, consented so to do. Humbly as the Lord's handmaid, she bore his Son so true sing a song of Mary, and colour her in blue! Come sing a song of Jesus! Clothe him in royal red! Mary's lap becomes his throne, flowers crown his head, angels, shepherds, magi three kneel where the oxen fed sing a song of Jesus, and colour him in red! Come sing a song of Joseph! Clothe him in peasant brown! He'll brave the tyrant's anger, and steal the child from town, across the lonely desert to Egypt they'll go down sing a song of Joseph, and colour him in brown!

302.

Come, sing a song of Christmas! We'll draw us at the creche, with party-hats and dresses, and make-up on our face. Use silver for my neck-tie, gold for your dancing-shoe sing a song of Christmas, I love the world - and you!

December, 1997 and 2.000

303

Skipping-rope Rhyme for a Sunday School Party

Slowly Christmas, Christmas, Party-time, Jesus, Jesus, Birthday-time. He came down a little child, He is kind and mercy-mild. Even though our sins are seven, He will take us all to Heaven. Faster and faster One, two, three, four, we are climbing to the door. Five, six, seven, eight, we are at the Pearly Gate. Nine, ten, eleven, see, Peter has the Golden Key. Fast as you can Now the door is opening wide, soon you will be safe inside. In, in, in, in, in, in ... until the skipper fouls the rope Out! Come back to earth a little while longer!

Nonsense-time, 1996

304

The Other Christmas Christmas Eve The snow the city had longed for fell during Carols at Midnight; as we scuttle home, the white carpet crunches frostily, the stars shine cold. But why did the snowfall not reach my heart? why do I go unfeeling through the motions of Christmas? Boxing Day The family table is spread and we are all present; old and young contentedly, eat and drink and talk together; after the meal we play games, old and new. As we laugh, tell stories and enjoy each other, Christmas sneakily invades my heart. Why were you so late? But thankyou, thankyou for coming!

December, 19 8 2,

305

Christmas Gifts The Wise Men from the East came offering gifts, carefully symbolic gold and frankincense and myrrh. In return, the Christ-child also gave us, wise and simple folk alike, gifts generously angelic gold and frankincense and myrrh. In the cold and dark of winter, his dusted gold lights up our streets with tiny, twinkling fairy lamps, that make our gloom a wonderland. In the cold and dark of winter, his fragrant season so stimulates our senses, that we conceive new ballets, plays and pageantry, and all our theatres, concert-halls and churches are vibrant with imaginings. In the cold and dark of winter, his healing balm so melts hard hearts that warmth of honest human kindness flows into all relationships of rich and poor, young and old, neighbour with neighbour. For one great celebration, enriched with gold and frankincense and myrrh, mankind becomes the Holy Famil.y

306

From us to You in duty, those gifts, so carefully computed; from You to us unmeasuring these boons beyond all treasuring, foretastes of Kingdom Come! But if I make this poem, and offer it to You as simply, sincerely, as the shepherds gave a lamb, will You turn that also into gold and frankincense and myrrh?

December, 1995

307

Prophetic Voices What does the Lord require of you, sons and daughters of mankind, but to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. But you will need help. Behold, we tell you a mystery: a young woman shall conceive and bear a little child, and he shall grow and talk and laugh, and weep and suffer, and he shall die. But then he will return ('shall' ordains a destiny, 'will' personally promises) but then he will return and re-assure his friends: £ I am not dead but risen!' And they will then recall his words, his teaching, his values, his homely parables, his good living and his good loving, and they will cry in wonder and delight, 'We did not know it then, but looking back we now do know, that man was God, becoming one of us! From this time on, all human life has taken on new meaning, new horizons. God became man, that man might become God!' Sing Noel, sing Gloria in Excelsis, sing Hallelujah Chorus, and live it up in daily goodness, mutual enjoyment, and constant intercourse with Heaven!' 308

Behold, we tell you a mystery the transforming sacrament of one man's life, the strange, alchemic mystery of love.

October, 1998 The prophetic voices echo Micah 6:8 and Isaiah 7:14; the affirmation of the first disciples echoes John 2,0:2.8 and similar passages. 'We tell you a mystery' echoes Paul, i Corinthians 15:51.

309

Truth for Christmas Theories, ideas, imaginations are later often proven true by coherence with the factual world of matter, space and time. But other theories, ideas, imaginations, do not have so long to wait. They are straightway known for truth by their own quality, their apt coherence with our scale of values our ideals of goodness, love and beauty. So is it with this most daring of all imaginations – that the Maker of the Universe should stoop himself down to enter the life of his own Planet Earth as a little child grow up in human community to become a man, sharing our joys, our happiness, our evil and our tragedy. But that therefrom he should shape and craft a way of re-creation for all mankind new grace, new life, new hope, offered and experienced in this factual world of matter, space and time, that is a thought so wonderful, so beautiful, our hearts leap up to cry aloud: 'Oh yes, it fits with every human need and circumstance, and is so like God to do just that, it is indubitably true!'

310

O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant ... True God of true God, Light of Light eternal ... O come let us adore Him, Jesus Christ, the Lord!

December 1997

311

Silent in Bethlehem These are the quiet days, the calm that follows Christmas and New Year. The family gatherings, the feasting, the partying, the exchanges of gifts, tokens of love, are past. Now I can be quiet, free from distractions, healthy, enjoyable distractions, God-given and God-blessed, but at this time, unessentials I can gladly lay aside. For I must take that road again, that quiet, winding road to Bethlehem. Take that road again, by myself, alone. I shed all other hindrances, forget the scientific debates, discard the historical considerations, transcend all questionings, to allow my soul the relief of undistracted, uncomplicated, unencumbered worship, pure worship ... here at the open stable door, I kneel in silent contemplation: the father, the mother, the Holy Child. God's measureless love for His creation made visible in tiny, human form. God's love for all humanity and each of us can say, for me, for me!

312,

Silent in wonder, silent in joy, silent in awe, silent in adoration ... silent in Bethlehem. January, 2.001

313

The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a girl betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, and the girl's name was Mary. And the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And behold you will conceive and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus, which means 'The Lord saves.'

His Name is Jesus Before he came, he bestowed honour on a maiden, whereby, as she in truth foretold, all generations would call her blessed: Jesus was his name. When first he came, he came humbly as a new-born, already a parable in his tiny person 'you must become as little children': Jesus was his name. While he was here, he welcomed children and enjoyed women friends; Talitha, Mary and Martha, Mary Magdalen, these all were persons whom he highly regarded: Jesus was his name. While he was here, he enlisted eager young men, and prized their company; he called himself Son and knew God as Father; his concern was for all, children, women and men: Jesus was his name.

3*4

He preached his gospel, that we should care for one another; he demonstrated against oppression, even to the point of dying on a gallows: Jesus was his name. After he died, he returned to life; he appeared first to Mary Magdalen, then to Peter and the other companions, and to all his friends, to reaffirm them all: Jesus was his name. When first he came, he completed a family, Mary and Joseph and himself their child; then he formed a disciple-band, and after his resurrection the Church: Jesus was his name. Now King he reigns, is first in our hearts and our esteem. He makes us one family worldwide, of every race and culture and creed: Jesus is his name. For from his throne he loudly proclaims it: 'My Kingdom is not for Christians only.' 'The Lord saves'- how rightly the angel commanded: Jesus shall be his name!

315

Wherefore God gave to him the Name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and every tongue proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Epiphany, 1993 Christmas, 1997 Luke i: 2,6-31 Ep. Philipp. 2,: 9-11

3 i6

INDEX

Index: Poems by Title A Bow at a Venture, 103 A Song for Mothers' Day, 175 A Tale of Two Books, 199 After the Ice Storm, 150 After Thoughts, 191 Alfred, 2.9 Amazing Grace, 41 Amor Vincit Omnia, 76 Another Translation, 193 Artists, no Awaking at Night in a Country Inn, 57 Believing, 182, Birthday Gift, in Brother Sun and Sister Moon, 16 Canadian Quartet, 10 Candid Critic, 2.14 Choosing a Future, 2,45 Christmas Colouring Book, 302. Christmas Gifts, 306 Coach Journey, 5 6 Confirmation Class, 132, Contagion, 64 Contingency, 96 Convergent Paths, 2.2,4 Credo, 40 Dies ex Gratia, 51 Dies Favoris, 81 Dinosaurs, 233 Dives and Lazarus, 177 Dives My Name, 8 5 Dr. Foljambe, 69

Early Summer Rain, 116 Earthbound in Florida, 59 Easter Day, 93 Effingham, 2,03 El Camino Real, 2.0 Envoy, 2,42, Epitaph, 166 Experiences, 2,82. For a Mother Mourning, 2.65 For Myself Mourning, 2.67 Fur Traders, 127 Gentle Reminder, 2,88 Gladiators, 62, God is a Music, 91 God's Fairy Tale, 2,99 Going to the Zoo, 3 8 Good Friday, 92. Grinzing, 31 Haiku, 2.58 Hampstead Calendar, 52, Hampstead Garden, 13 Happy Hour, 2.49 Harvest Moon, 2,55 His Name is Jesus, 314 Holy Ground, 89 How Beauty Grows, 270 Ill-met by Moonlight, 156 In Time of Moving House, 168 Indian Summer, 3 Inheritance, 2,4 Job's Pilgrimage, 136 Justification, 143

Katharsis, 2,05 King's College Carols, 2,93 Klio's People, 112. Laus Patrum Matrumque, 2.18 Lent, 147 Living Planet, 87 Loqui Humanum Est, 4 Makers, 83 Mary, 2,95 Mary's Stable Lullaby, 300 Meditation in the Mode of Christ, 12.1 Meditation in the Mode of Tao, 118 Michaelmas, 2.73 Migration, 60 Mind Vacation, 248 Montreal Mornings, 114 Morning Hour, 106 Morning Impromptu, 2,15 Morning Shower, 2,59 Muse Replies, 108 Napoleon, 30 Night Thoughts, 188 Nonagen Antics, z8o Ontario July, 15 Paradise Conceived, 2,84 Partners, 14 Penthouse Panorama, 171 Personals, 2,81 Peter talk 1990, 34 Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 2,2,0 Pilgrim Interlude, 2.76 Pilgrimage, 39 Prophetic Voices, 308 Psalm 83, 135 Quebec Referendum, 12,5 Rationale, 86 Rembrandt, 73 Rene Descarte's Aphorism, 185 Robbed, 157 Rocks, 61

Scholars, 66 Seasons in Disorder, 2,50 Seeing Beautiful, 2,57 September Eleven, 2,71 Shaw's Morality, 160 Signs of the Times, 149 Silent in Bethlehem, 312 Simple Things, 2.12, Sixth December 1989, 34 Skipping Rope Rhyme, 304 Snowbird, 113 St. Paul's Counsel, 130 Suddenly Last Summer, 3 2, Summer '95, 12,2, Table Talk, 133 Thank you for a Summer Visit, 162, The Broken Harp, 2.62. The Carol of Mary's Sisters, 2,95 The Inn of Emmaus, 42. The Morning After, 2,60 The Other Christmas, 305 The Secret, 2,2.2, The Silver Button, 2.10 The Story with a Sting, 2,2,6 Theophany, 146 To Margaret Sleeping, 165 To My Wife, 163 To Some Contemporary Poets, 6 Trinity Sunday, 2,37 Truth for Christmas, 310 Uninvited Guests, 151 Victoria Day, 173 Voyaging, 12,8 Westmount Park, 207 Willows, 2,09 Winter Dawn, 2,46 Winter Journey, 78 Winter Mornings, 141 Winter Vacation, 144 Writing a Piece of Prose, 8 Yellow, 105 Youth Revisited, 154

Fontanus Publications Fontanus Journal 1988 volume i 1989 volume 2, 1990 volume 3 1991 volume 4 1992 Montreal City 35oth Anniversary volume 1993 Redpath volume 1994 Stephen Leacock volume 1995 volume 8 1996 volume 9 1998 volume 10 Fontanus Monographs 1991 Adam Gacek, Arabic Manuscripts ... 1993 Calvin Evans, Soren Kierkegard Bibliographies ... 1994 Barbara Lawson, Collected Curios, Missionary Tales from the South Seas 1994 A.J.Hobbins, On the Edge of Greatness, The Diaries of John Humphries, Vol. iy 1948-49 1995 Max Dunbar, Essays from a Life: Scotland, Canada, Greenland, Denmark 1996 Albert Perez-Gomez and Louise Pelletier, Anamorphosis: An Annotated Bibliography 1996 Adam Gacek, Arabic Lithographed Books in the Islamic Library, McGill University 1996 Irena Zantovaska Murray, Sources in Iconography at the Blackader-Lauterman Library, McGill University 1996 AJ. Hobbins, On the Edge of Greatness, The Diaries of John Humphries, Vol. II, 1950-51

1997 Joan Bevan and Maria Pacelli, The Quintessential Anaesthetist, Wesley Bourne: A Retrospective on the Foundations of McGill Anaesthesia 1998 Goldie Sigal, A Garment Worker's Legacy: The Joe Fishstein Collection of Yiddish Poetry 1999 AJ. Hobbins, On the Edge of Greatness, The Diaries of John Humphries, Vol. Ill, 1952-57 2,001 AJ. Hobbins, On the Edge of Greatness, The Diaries of John Humphries, Vol. IV, 1958-66 2003 S.B. Frost, Autumn Harvest, Selected Poems Orders may be placed at: McGill-Queens University Press 3430 McTavish Street Montreal, Quebec Canada H3A 1X9 Tel: 514-398-3750 Fax.: 514-398-4333 E-mail: m q u p @ m q u p . c a