A Better Resurrection

by Christina Rosetti

I have no wit, no words, no tears;

    My heart within me like a stone

Is numbed too much for hopes or fears;

    Look right, look left, I dwell alone;

I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief

    No everlasting hills I see;

My life is in the falling leaf:

    O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,

    My harvest dwindled to a husk;

Truly my life is void and brief

    And tedious in the barren dusk;

My life is like a frozen thing,

    No bud or greenness can I see:

Yet rise it shall--the sap of Spring;

    O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,

    A broken bowl that cannot hold

One drop of water for my soul

    Or cordial in the searching cold;

Cast in the fire the perished thing,

    Melt and remould it, till it be

A royal cup for Him my King:

    O Jesus, drink of me.

Time Does Not Bring Relief

by Edna St. Vincent Milay

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied

Who told me time would ease me of pain!

I miss him in the weeping of the rain;

I want him at the shrinking of the tide;

The old snows melt from every mountainside,

And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;

But last year's bitter loving must remain

Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.

There are a hundred places where I fear

To go -- so with his memory they brim.

And entering with relief some quiet place

Where never fell his foot or shone his face

I say, "There is no memory of him here!"

And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

The Gospel According to Helena

(c) 2007, Linford Detweiler, Over the Rhine

Damn

She loves to sing

She knows she may not even be that good

What does it mean when somebody

Loves to do something

So much

She

Doesn't care

Whether or not

It makes any sense to the world

What does it mean when somebody

Does something just because

It makes her feel more alive

Opens her eyes

What does it when somebody

Does something just because 

She's missing God

And wonders if she always will

She must know that all good songs

Are a form of prayer

The Wife's Tale

by Seamus Heaney

When I had spread it all on linen cloth

Under the hedge, I called them over.

The hum and gulp of the thresher ran down

And the big belt slewed to a standstill, straw

Hanging undelivered in the jaws.

There was such quiet that I heard their boots

Crunching the stubble twenty yards away.

He lay down and said, 'Give these fellows theirs,

I'm in no hurry,' plucking grass in handfuls

And tossing it in the air.  'That looks well.'

(He nodded at my white cloth on the grass.)

'I declare a woman could lay out a field

Though boys like us have little call for cloths.'

He winked, then watched me as I poured a cup

And buttered the thick slices that he likes.

'It's threshing better than I thought, and mid

It's good clean seed.  Away over there and look.'

Always this inspection has to be made

Even when I don't know what to look for.

But I ran my hand in the half-filled bags

Hooked to the slots.  It was hard as shot,

Innumerable and cool.  The bags gaped

Where the chutes ran back to the stilled drum

And forks were stuck at angles in the ground

As javelins might mark lost battlefields.

I moved between them back across the stubble.

They lay in the ring of their own crusts and dregs,

Smoking and saying nothing.  'There's good yield,

Isn't there?' --as proud as if he were the land itself--

'Enough for crushing and sowing both.'

And that was it.  I'd come and he had shown me,

So I belonged no further to the work.

I gathered cups and folded up the cloth

And went.  But they still kept their ease,

Spread out, unbuttoned, grateful, under the trees.

Open

by Luci Shaw

Doubt padlocked one door and

Memory put her back to the other.

Still the damp draught seeped in

though Fear chinked all the cracks and 

Blindness boarded up the window.

In the darkness that was left

Defeat crouched in his cold corner.

Then Jesus came

(all the doors being shut)

and stood among them.

Easter magic

by Leslie Leyland Fields

Had we crucified the rabbit--

yanked him from his fields of grass

and staked him out by paws and tender feet

to quiver, twitch and die in agony

of innocence, 

and then, in three days' time,

had seen him hop from the tomb

unscathed

but for the wounded paws and feet we felt--

then maybe now we'd talk of Christ,

pass his story down from child to child

and only faintly hint at silly myths of

wicker baskets,

chocolate eggs,

treasures hidden in the field

and some trick hare who died

then somehow disappeared.

Imperative

by Scott Cairns

The thing to remember is how

tentative all of this really is.

You could wake up dead.

Or the woman you love

could decide you're ugly.

Maybe she'll finally give up

trying to ignore the way

you floss your teeth as you

watch television.  All I'm saying

is that there are no sure things here.

I mean, you'll probably wake up alive,

and she'll probably keep putting off 

any actual decision about your looks.

Could be she'll be glad your teeth

are so clean.  The morning might be 

full of all the love and kindness

you need.  Just don't go thinking

you deserve any of it.

I, 4

by Rainer Maria Rilke

translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

We must not portray you in king's robes,

you drifting mist that brought forth the morning.

Once again from the old paintboxes

we take the same gold for scepter and crown

that has disguised you through the ages.

Piously we produce our images of you

till they stand around you like a thousand walls.

And when our hearts would simply open,

our fervent hands hide you.

A Psalm of Life

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST

I

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers, 

And things are not what they seem.

II

Life is real - life is earnest - 

And the grave is not its goal:

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.

III

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

Is our destin'd end or way;

But to act, that each to-morrow

Find us farther than to-day.

IV

Art is long, and time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

Funeral marches to the grave.

V

In the world's broad field of battle,

In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle,

Be a hero in the strife!

VI

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!

Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act - act in the glorious Present!

Heart within, and God o'er head!

VII

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time.

VIII

Footprints, that, perhaps another,

Sailing o'er life's solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwreck'd brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again.

IX

Let us then be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait.

Sonnet 29

by William Shakespeare

When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, 

Haply I think on thee, and then my state

(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Morning

by Mary Oliver

Salt shining behind its glass cylinder.

Milk in a blue bowl.  The yellow linoleum.

The cat stretching her black body from the pillow.

The way she makes her curvaceous response to the small, kind gesture.

Then laps the bowl clean.

Then wants to go out into the world

where she leaps lightly and for no apparent reason across the lawn,

then sits, perfectly still, in the grass.

I watch her a little while, thinking:

what more could I do with wild words?

I stand in the cold kitchen, bowing down to her.

I stand in the cold kitchen, everything wonderful around me.

Exit

(c) 2007, Linford Detweiler, Over the Rhine

I have to leave the city now, she said,

Or dash my soul against my will instead.

I do not wish to have the quiet part of me

That once could rest (the part

That could just be) tossed

Aside and left somewhere

For dead.

Tonight it seems to me

That what some friends call energy

Is nothing more than a phenomenon of nature known as

"Incurable Whirling Disease."

Please, take me far from here, she said,

The buildings sting and echo

With the fumy cries of yellowjacket cars.

I took her hand in mine and said,

I'm thinking of a place now

Where I used to have to tell myself

Aloud,

Those are not clouds,

They're stars.

Digging

by Seamus Heaney, Irish poet, author, and Nobel Laureate

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:

My father, digging.  I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds

Bends low, comes up twenty years away

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner's bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper.  He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf.  Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I'll dig with it.