As tributaries choke — oh miserly skies —
Roots bronze their flora and tendril deep,
Groping for the waters that deeply seep,
That verdant leaves again unfurl and arise.
Where rivers carve folds and deep valleys,
Life — opportune sprite — burgeons as water
Slowly meanders while the air grows hotter,
And painting green these fainting arteries.
The encroaching desert, willful, whittles,
Gnawing living ribbons into shreds of green,
Fraying spirit from biome and from gene,
'Til all is soul dust and anguish of angels.
These winds of wraith scorch my oasis,
Burning to char the sacred and the wild,
My waning soul is mournful and unbeguiled,
Bedraggled in dust, hands open to graces,
Yet unseen.
7 comments:
This reminds me Victorian poet Christina Rossetti's "Cobwebs." Or, more accurately, your depiction of a dying creation -- one which is dependent upon gasping interrelations of earth and water -- seems to preview or preamble the quite dead and gone creation portrayed in Rossetti's account. She imagines a creation with "neither night nor day, nor heat nor cold, nor any wind, nor rain, nor hills nor valleys; but one even plain.." In the margins of this poem I have penned one word: "numb." Ezekiel's valley of bones is not far from here..
Both accounts need to be heard; that said, I am a sucker for threads of hope in a broken world, or a meandering, choked river which is "painting green these fainting arteries." ;)
Thanks for the kind words David M David. I can't see you're profile?
I prefer anonymity, as I am known all too often..
Check out my website if you get a chance and drop a comment.
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Tell me at least this...how did you find my blog? Thanks.
via Storied Theology blog..
-- non sequitur: What are your thoughts on Dante's Comedy? Have you any suggestions regarding critiques of his work?
I am doing a paper on Canto III of the Inferno, where I am countering Dante's theological/philosophical claim of standing adroitly for the privation of good; that refraining from choosing or deciding what is "good" and what is "evil" actually bolsters the biblical prophetic canon (i.e. Jeremiah is a prophet to all the nations, i.e. Hosea takes a prostitute).
...Daniel Kirk's blog? From one of my comments there? OK!
On Dante...I'm hardly the expert...certainly know nothing of the secondary literature worth mentioning. I read a contemporary translation a few years ago and found it both disturbing and yet a wonderful use of a theological medieval imagination. Pax!
hmm, well that is just the thing. I wonder if Dante's primary source of influence is philosophical rather than biblical. I feel like his text is asking not exegetical but speculative questions regarding salvation and renewal. For instance, the idea that we become disembodied "lights" which float up in the sky somewhere; or that we must, here on earth in this present mortal coil, choose between evil and good. Does not the biblical portrait have us note a creation which is wholly sacred and profane at the same time, and if one is to try and categorize them then they are doing it a great harm? Dante's imagination is beautiful, but his dualism is foreign to the biblical oomph. That is my take anyway.
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