On Donne

A Hymn To God The Father


WILT Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.


Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.


I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ;
But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore ;
And having done that, Thou hast done ;
I fear no more.
~ John Donne

I've found Donne's poetry very useful actually, because it expresses so much struggling and uncertainty. I was thinking about it, and I realise it's a lot like Jacob on the mountain, wrestling with the angel. I think for the longest time he had no idea who he was fighting, until daybreak when he was defeated into submission, his hip wrenched to force him into a position of worship. Only then could he plead for a blessing, and receive it. A recurring line in Donne, especially when he wants assurance from God, is "the Lord throws down, that he may raise up." Most literary critics think Donne struggled with great uncertainty in his faith. But I read the poems and I wonder, if we have failed to identify the real struggle? Maybe he is struggling with God, and for him certainty was in that struggle, and it was not the effort to remove the struggle or defeat the foe that would deliver him from uncertainty. If you're struggling with your doubts, fears, pride or whatever, look again. At break of day, you may just find that all along you were struggling not with yourself or an unknown enemy, but with God. And that's a great relief to me, because I never can face my sins directly. It's kind of a different way of looking at one's salvation, I guess. We Protestants suffer from this "battle your sins" mentality, when we really should be facing the other way. It's submit to God, resist the devil and flee temptation.

Morning, Morning Angel Mine

Four in the morning
you turn me over
to speak into me some new knowledge.

Today's lesson is about life more abundant
and sweet singing
about why we move so
to the kumina of the Congo
"All a we a one Bungo"

Why we sing so to the Yoruba of Brazil
Gilberto, Gil, Nascimento, jobim
riffing down the lips of a stone flower
wonder which notes register keener
wild woman crying or wild violins.

Mornings with you Cherubim I wake
to hear you whispering all the promises you make
when we are on the earth plane and awake.
Soft in the hours of nectar
you whisper to me of promises kept
and promises keeping.

They fall about us like angel feathers
swept with the lightest of brooms.
Airborne now are our promises
in this lit and sanctified room.

What they cannot see
is that their reality
smokes dimly at the periphery
of us. What we are about is
liquid jewels for wine

Carnelian star apples
ruby bird cherries
celebrations in a sealed space
sacred and divine.
Their striving horns
emit dull sounds and fall
as lusterless still lives,

What we are about
is outside of imagining.
Today's lesson is about
life more abundant and
sweet singing

Golden apples and
sweet cups brimming
spirit and rosemary wine

Old wine skins cast off
into the flow
of the regenerating
Rio Nuevo
upon your lips
the taste of new morning wine

Morning morning
Angel mine.

by Lorna Goodison

****

Because I have had enough of Andrew Marvell's overrated poetry in class.

Before

Before the gate has been closed,
before the last question is posed,
before I am transposed.
Before the weeds fill the gardens,
before there are no pardons,
before the concrete hardens.
Before all the flute-holes are covered,
before things are locked in the cupboard,
before the rules are discovered.
Before the conclusion is planned,
before God closes his hand,
before we have nowhere to stand.

By Yehuda Amichai, translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell

The Fisherman

Although I can see him still.
The freckled man who goes
To a grey place on a hill
In grey Connemara clothes
At dawn to cast his flies,
It's long since I began
To call up to the eyes
This wise and simple man.
All day I'd looked in the face
What I had hoped 'twould be
To write for my own race
And the reality;
The living men that I hate,
The dead man that I loved,
The craven man in his seat,
The insolent unreproved,
And no knave brought to book
Who has won a drunken cheer,
The witty man and his joke
Aimed at the commonest ear,
The clever man who cries
The catch-cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise
And great Art beaten down.

Maybe a twelvemonth since
Suddenly I began,
In scorn of this audience,
Imagining a man,
And his sun-freckled face,
And grey Connemara cloth,
Climbing up to a place
Where stone is dark under froth,
And the down-turn of his wrist
When the flies drop in the stream;
A man who does not exist,
A man who is but a dream;
And cried, 'Before I am old
I shall have written him one
poem maybe as cold
And passionate as the dawn

~ W.B Yeats

The cold and passionate poetry of Yeats. Writing...is it trapped within the circle of the self?Do we all secretly write to that fisherman in our mind? Writing: cold and distant in its reliance on syntax and logic, the formalities of poetic structure, to communicate passion. A poem as cold and passionate as the dawn. That which is concrete dreams of the abstract.

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

~W.H Auden

The Unknown Citizen

(To JS/07/M/378/ This Marble MonumentIs Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in everyway.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war,he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent ofhis generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with theireducation.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

~Wystan Hugh Auden