When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety. When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear. When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile. We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid,...
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Late justice may be more useless than none. Some expungings or making-rights or getting-backs lack the capacity to correct. The formerly aggrieved become exacting in unattractive ways: intolerant of delay, determined to collect. And shocked— shocked—at their new unappeasableness, who had so long been so reasonable. (Kay...
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This is my prayer, that I shall never find The secret of thy name; Never attain to bind The zone of thought about thy formless flame. Grant me the grace that I may never hear The one resolving chord Which shall at last make clear The deep harmonic mystery of my Lord. Shield thou my sense, that I may never know All that thy love can be; Let not my probing go To the dread heart of thy divinity. Wrapped in thy quiet, I do but ask to...
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Come to your Heaven, you Heavenly choirs, Earth hath the Heaven of your desires. Remove your dwelling in your God; A stall is now his best abode. Since men their homage do deny, Come, angels, all their fault supply. His chilling cold doth heat require; Come, seraphims, in lieu of fire. This little ark no cover hath; Let cherubs’ wings his body swathe. Come, Raphael, this babe must eat; Provide our little Toby meat. Let Gabriel...
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1 Last night the geese came back, slanting fast from the blossom of the rising moon down to the black pond. A muskrat swimming in the twilight saw them and hurried to the secret lodges to tell everyone spring had come. And so it had. By morning when I went out the last of the ice had disappeared, blackbirds sang on the shores. Every year the geese, returning, do this, I don’t know how. 2 The curtains opened and there was an old man in...
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