Wordsmiths: Psalm 25

ESV

Of David.

25:1 To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
2 O my God, in you I trust;
let me not be put to shame;
let not my enemies exult over me.
3 Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame;
they shall be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous.

4 Make me to know your ways, O Lord;
teach me your paths.
5 Lead me in your truth and teach me,
for you are the God of my salvation;
for you I wait all the day long.

6 Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love,
for they have been from of old.
7 Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions;
according to your steadfast love remember me,
for the sake of your goodness, O Lord!

8 Good and upright is the Lord;
therefore he instructs sinners in the way.
9 He leads the humble in what is right,
and teaches the humble his way.
10 All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness,
for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.

11 For your name's sake, O Lord,
pardon my guilt, for it is great.
12 Who is the man who fears the Lord?
Him will he instruct in the way that he should choose.
13 His soul shall abide in well-being,
and his offspring shall inherit the land.
14 The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him,
and he makes known to them his covenant.
15 My eyes are ever toward the Lord,
for he will pluck my feet out of the net.

16 Turn to me and be gracious to me,
for I am lonely and afflicted.
17 The troubles of my heart are enlarged;
bring me out of my distresses.
18 Consider my affliction and my trouble,
and forgive all my sins.

19 Consider how many are my foes,
and with what violent hatred they hate me.
20 Oh, guard my soul, and deliver me!
Let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in you.
21 May integrity and uprightness preserve me,
for I wait for you.

22 Redeem Israel, O God,
out of all his troubles.

→ Good reflections here.

Wordsmiths: Dream Song 14

Dream Song 14

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) "Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no

Inner Resources." I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as Achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into the mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

John Berryman

Wordsmiths: Goodnight / They Sit Together on the Porch

It's been ages and ages since I've actually featured a wordsmith, since I moved back to Oxford, I think! So I thought I may as well do two wordsmiths at one go! I've stolen the first one from Steve McCoy's National Poetry Month blogfest. The second is from Wendell Berry, a writer who's thought long and hard about the natural world, and whom I would love to get to know more. Both, I guess, are loosely connected thematically and capture the way a day fades away beautifully. Enjoy! (Photo: Michael Dressel. For previous wordsmiths featured on this blog, click here.)

Goodnight by David Ferry
Lying in bed and waiting to find out
Whatever is going to happen: the window shade

Making its slightest sound as the night wind,
Outside, in the night, breathes quietly on it;

It is parental hovering over the infantile;
Something like that; it is like being a baby,

And over the sleep of the baby there is a father,
Or mother, breathing, hovering; the streetlight light

In the nighttime branches breathing quietly too;
Altering; realtering; it is the body breathing;

The crib of knowing: something about what the day
Will bring; and something about what the night will hold,

Safely, at least for the rest of the night, I pray.

---

They Sit Together on the Porch by Wendell Berry

They sit together on the porch, the dark
Almost fallen, the house behind them dark.
Their supper done with, they have washed and dried
The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses,
Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two.
She sits with her hands folded in her lap,
At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak,
And when they speak at last it is to say
What each one knows the other knows. They have
One mind between them, now, that finally
For all its knowing will not exactly know
Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding
Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone.

Wordsmiths: The farthest thunder that I heard

I haven't yet featured Emily Dickinson as a wordsmith, which is quite something considering I find her a fascinating poet. Time to rectify that as I think on "life's reverberation"!



[Poem 109]
The Farthest thunder that I heard
Was nearer than the sky,
And rumbles still, though torrid noons
Have lain their missiles by.
The lightning that preceded it
Struck no one but myself,
But I would not exchange the bolt
For all the rest of life.
Indebtedness to oxygen
The chemist may repay,
But not the obligation
To electricity.
It founds the homes and decks the days,
And every clamor bright
Is but the gleam concomitant
Of that waylaying light.
The thought is quiet as a flake,—
A crash without a sound;
How life’s reverberation
Its explanation found!

Wordsmiths: The Foolishness of God

This is one of my favourite poems of all time, from Luci Shaw. I first came across it in The Christian Imagination where it left its indelible footprint. One of these days I'll love to track down her poetry collection, either Polishing the Petoskey Stone or Angles of Light. For now, enjoy this reminder of the topsy-turvy nature of God's kingdom!

.

The Foolishness of God

Perform impossibilities
or perish. Thrust out now
the unseasonal ripe figs
among your leaves. Expect
the mountain to be moved.
Hate parents, friends and all
materiality. Love every enemy.
Forgive more times than seventy-
seven. Camel-like squeeze by
into the kingdom through
the needle’s eye. All fear quell.
Hack off your hand, or else,
unbloodied, go to hell

Thus the divine unreason.
Despairing now, you cry
with earthly logic—How?
And I, your God, reply:
Leap from your weedy shallows.
Dive into the moving water.
Eyeless, learn to see
truly. Find in my folly your
true sanity. Then, Spirit-driven,
run on my narrow way, sure
as a child. Probe, hold
my unhealed hand, and
bloody, enter heaven.

Wordsmiths: Forget

No wordsmiths were featured last month, so we're definitely due. All credit for today's artisan goes to Steve McCoy, who first featured him on his blog. Being very limited in my knowledge of contemporary poetry, I've only vaguely heard of Czeslaw Milosz, the 1980 Nobel Prize Winner. Milosz was Lithuanian-born, raised in Poland, where he became a political dissident, and eventually emigrated to the United States. He died in 2004. [More on him here.]

Forget

Forget the suffering
You caused others.
Forget the suffering
Others caused you.
The waters run and run,
Springs sparkle and are done,
You walk the earth you are forgetting.

Sometimes you hear a distant refrain.
What does it mean, you ask, who is singing?
A childlike sun grows warm.
A grandson and a great-grandson are born.
You are led by the hand once again.

The names of the rivers remain with you.
How endless those rivers seem!
Your fields lie fallow,
The city towers are not as they were.
You stand at the threshold mute.

Wordsmiths: On the Comfort of the Resurrection

CLOUD-PUFFBALL, torn tufts, tossed pillows ' flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs ' they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ' wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long ' lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ' ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest’s creases; in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed ' dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks ' treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, ' nature’s bonfire burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest ' to her, her clearest-selvèd spark
Man, how fast his firedint, ' his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indig'nation! Manshape, that shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, ' death blots black out; nor mark
Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time ' beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart’s-clarion! Away grief’s gasping, ' joyless days, dejection.
Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. ' Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; ' world’s wildfire, leave but ash:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, ' since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ' patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

chevy = chase
stanches = stops the flow
shivelights = slivers of light
firedint = mark made by fire
Jack = ordinary man

---

Notes:
Hopkins is one of my favourite poets. A Catholic, he initially resolved not to write any more poetry upon entering the priesthood, and even burnt some of his earlier poetry. A tragic boating accident which claimed the lives of 5 nuns relieved him of this vow and he wrote a poem in tribute to them. I was actually asked at my university interview to read up on some of his poetics and discuss them with my tutor, which was nerve-wrecking to say the least! Although sadly, I didn't get to spend enough time studying him, the essay I wrote on him for my Victorian Lit module was probably the only time I didn't actually spout complete rubbish - not that I remember anything of what I wrote!

This is not an easy poem to read, so I'll try to provide some guidance. The first thing to note is that the full title of this piece is On the Nature of the Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection, which provides some clues. Heraclitus was an ancient Greek philosopher who maintained that everything in the world was in a state of permanent flux. For him, fire is the origin of all matter, including the soul, as it is a symbol of perpetual change.

The second thing to note is that Hopkins had very interesting aesthetic theories, and for our purposes, we just need to know that he believed very strongly that we can perceive something with great intensity; in other words, Hopkins has a basic trust that our senses can work really well in telling us what we need to know about our surroundings. And so he often tries his hardest to paint very vivid word-pictures, to the extent of coining new words. A favourite technique of his was to create compound words to try to get his point across. You also frequently find ungrammatical structures in this poem, such is the intensity of his communication.

Therefore in this poem, he starts out by constructing a picture of nature at its wildest, reflecting the Heraclitean flux. You'd notice the barrage of words thrown at you as you read it, which only adds to the effect. This celebration of nature, however, is tempered by man's place in the scheme of things. Hopkins is aware of man's frailty and mortality in the "Million-fueled Nature's bonfire". "His mark on mind, is gone!"

But abruptly, something joyously breaks in: "Enough! The Resurrection!" The wild energy displayed in the first half of the poem is now more controlled, reflecting that Nature is not its own Master, after all, but under the thumb of God. Notice the deliberate repetition in the final words - this shows the firm hand of a Creator, not the random chance of evolution. (Hopkins was writing in the age of Darwin, after all). And it is God that also enables the hope of the putting "Away grief’s gasping, joyless days, dejection". The Heraclitean conception of a "world’s wildfire, leave but ash" is at odds with the Christian belief of resurrection. We can be "immortal diamonds", sharing the same incarnate body as Christ.

Not that he didn't know how difficult life could be in the present. His notes in 1889 read: "There is a happiness, hope, the anticipation of happiness thereafter: it is better than happiness, but it is not happiness now."

But don't you just love knowing of the inbreaking of God into the world through Jesus, who dies in our place and defeats death, and that if we place our trust in him, we share in his resurrection life? "Enough, the Resurrection!"


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Holy Saturday

Untitled (Feel free to suggest one!)

The moon peers back not through the fog
Wakefulness is not granted,
the dream lingers on
like the aftertaste of a bitter lager
But the candle is lit
The table is set
And the feast is laid
Lamb, bread and wine
Flesh and blood intertwined
His life for mine
One for the many.

Hands passing along the cutlery
the breaking of bread
Eyes inwards, upwards and sidelong
As cups are raised to lips
Murmured thanksgivings.
Whispered encouragement.
Throaty laughter.
Songs bursting from bosoms.
The excited patter of tiny feet
As child gambols about with child.

Lift up your hearts!
It is the time between the dying and the rising.
Morning is not far off
The Son comes again
arrayed in glory.
Remember. Eat. Drink. Live.

© BK.

Wordsmiths: The Joy of words

Yes, I agree with you, there's just been too much self-aggrandising, pompous verbosity around this blog lately. We're in need of an antidote. C'mon BK, if you have to be leaking words, at least make sure they don't drip uselessly into a sea of nothingness! Be like today's wordsmith, exulting in

The Joy of words :D

Writing is joy
so saints and scholars all pursue it.
A writer makes new life in the void,
knocks on silence to make a sound,
binds space and time on a sheet of silk
and pours out a river from an inch-sized heart.
As words give birth to words
and thoughts arouse deeper thoughts,
they smell like flowers giving off scent,
spread like green leaves in spring,
A long wind comes, whirls into a tornado of ideas,
and clouds rise from the writing-brush forest.

- Lu Ji (261-303)

Source: The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry, Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping (eds.)

Wordsmiths: fragment. To the Moon.

Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing Heaven, and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,--
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

His childhood was dead or lost and with it his soul capable of simple joys and he was drifting amid life like the barren shell of the moon...He repeated to himself the lines of Shelley's fragment. Its alternation of sad human ineffectualness with vast inhuman cycles of activity chilled him, and he forgot his own human and ineffectual grieving.
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce.

N.B: Thought I'll post something a little more melancholic this time around.

Wordsmiths: Corde Natus ex Parentis

During Christmas we celebrate the mystery of God made man, capable of hunger and weariness and suffering and sickness and even death. Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, in a dirty, smelly stable! Christ's birth reveals to us God's sacrificial love. Jesus himself made the incredibly bold statement: "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." (John 14:9) If true, what an explosive claim! Of those convinced, the fourth century historian Eusebius could write, "How many psalms and how many songs, which from the beginning were written by pious brothers, sing about Christ as the Logos of God and confess that He is God."

I'll let Mark Noll introduce today's wordsmith:

'One of the most highly regarded Latin poets of Christian antiquity, Aurelius Clemens Prudentius, left prominent government office at age fifty-seven to retire to a monastery and dedicate the rest of his life to serving God by writing hymns and poems. His Christian hymn Corde natus ex Parentis (Of the Father's love begotten) expresses in lyric form what the ecclesiastical councils hammered out in doctrinal propositions: Jesus is fully divine, coequal with the Father (harking back to the Nicene Creed), and fully human, being born as a baby (anticipating the Chalcedonian definition).'

Of the Father's love begotten
Ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega,
He the source, the ending he,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see.
Evermore and evermore.

O that birth for ever blessed!
When the Virgin, full of grace,
By the Holy Ghost conceiving,
Bore the Saviour of our race;
And the Babe, the world's Redeemer,
First revealed his sacred face,
Evermore and evermore.

O ye heights of heaven, adore him;
Angel hosts, his praises sing;
Powers, dominions bow before him,
And extol our God and King;
Let no tongue on earth be silent,
Every voice in concert ring,
Evermore and evermore.

Fixed points for jobless times

I am lazy, the laziest boy in the world. I sleep during the day when I want to, 'til my face is creased and swollen, 'til my lips are dry and hot, 'til my hair is mussed and sinewy. I eat as I please. To think, in childhood, I missed only one day of school per year. No longer. Job-hunting. It's hard. Periods of uncertainty, rejection letters, perceived looks of pity, puzzled reactions. Even my sentences are lazy. The shortening of prose. The firing of staccatos. Write briefly, while others go for pages. I hear the head, the voices of reassurance of the commonality of the experience, the urging of patience. The body only knows of the sagging of shoulders. The feet doesn't even know what to do with itself. And that familiar refrain, set on repeat. Work hard and do not shame your family, who worked hard to give you what you have.*

While I'm looking for work, I've been trying to think through how the gospel should shape the way I live during this time. This is hard work too! Not just thinking, but then living it out. Here are some fixed points I've come up with, the stars by which I navigate these rapids:

1. Work is good. Before the Fall, God has already revealed himself as a worker, and gave responsibilities to Adam to work the garden. Post-Fall, the world-weary writer of Ecclesiastes is able to say that man finds satisfaction in his toil (3:13). The New Testament is replete with commands not to be idle. Therefore, it is good and important for me to keep on looking for formal work and also look for other ways to redeem the time, even something as simple as cleaning my room. This is especially needed for Type B personalities like me.

2. Work is not the gospel. Work can and should bring glory to God. It can be an expression of worship and love. But if my identity becomes fundamentally bound up with what I do for a living, if my job status determines my worth as a person, if I put my trust in my university degrees, than I have lost sight of what is truly good news. Even Type Bs like me who think they are not tempted to make work an idol should not underestimate the threat. And so looking for work should never become my greatest need in my eyes. God's grace is my greatest need.

3. Money is not the gospel. Earning money is good. Money empowers: it gives us choices to purchase commodities, to live in places which we otherwise are unable to. It reminds me to be thankful for my parents who were able to support me here in the UK. But like work, money can wield power over us. Again, this can work subtly. I am not planning to work for an investment bank, and I might look disdainfully upon those who do so as having the wrong priorities. But even if I take up a low-paying position in an NGO, I can still choose to make money my comfort.

4. God is sovereign and loving. He works for the good of his people. This is supremely demonstrated in the gospel event of Jesus' birth, life, death and resurrection. He does not expect us to be passive, but to exercise wisdom. Nevertheless, that does not mean that he is simply helping those who help themselves. Faith is trusting in God's promises, not of health and wealth, but in his lavish grace and his faithful provision. Times looking for employment can also be times of reflection on how God might grow us, where we might need to change.

5. In Christ, I need not fear any condemnation. Unemployment invokes guilt, screams parasite. Christ's death tells of my justification, speaks of my dependence upon him. Unemployment invites despair and despondence. Christ's resurrection implores hope and yearning. Unemployment magnifies failure. Christ ate with failures, and his followers will be at the victory feast.

6. God's people love Christ by loving one another. The gospel reconciles us both to God and to one another. Employed people, of course, can help and encourage those who are unemployed. Grace says we can never be too proud to accept help. But the unemployed can help by serving others in creative ways, with their time. The unemployed are not exempt from loving others.


Just being able to state these doesn't make it any easier of course. I find prayer hard even now. Prayer can seem like a time-issue, as in "I'm too busy to pray!" but really, when one has a lot of time, it is exposed as a heart issue. J.I Packer says that "people who know their God are before anything else people who pray". Ouch! But it does tell of my lack of trust, because my failure to pray is fundamentally that. This works because prayer = going to God with our hopes and fears = raised expectations, and so failure to pray = thinking that God can't deal with them = a way to minimise disappointment, "just in case it doesn't come out the way I want it to".

And so this becomes the daily struggle. And so here we are, in the hard business of Christian living.

Cause when it's always winter but never Christmas
Sometimes it feels like you're not with us
But deep inside our hearts we know
That you are here and we will not lose hope
- In Like a Lion (Always Winter, Never Christmas), Relient K

*This paragraph is me seeking a creative outlet and playing around with words, so please don't read it woodenly! Sentences in italics are me acknowledging intertextual references to Blues, a poem by Elizabeth Alexander, found in Body of Life.


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In the Valley

When you lead me to the valley of vision
I can see you in the heights
And though my humbling wouldn't be my decision
It's here your glory shines so bright
So let me learn that the cross precedes the crown
To be low is to be high
That the valley's where you make me
more like Christ

Let me find Your grace in the valley
Let me find Your life in my death
Let me find Your joy in my sorrow
Your wealth in my need
That You're near with every breath
In the valley

In the daytime there are stars in the heavens
But they only shine at night
And the deeper that I go into darkness
The more I see their radiant light
So let me learn that my losses are my gain
To be broken is to heal
That the valley's where Your power is revealed

© Bob Kauflin 2006
based on the Puritan prayer 'Valley of Vision'

Wordsmiths: Instruments (2)

This edition is dedicated to the recently departed Madeleine L’Engle. Many – including me! – did not know that her craft was not limited to prose but poetry too. This evocative piece is from Lines Scribbled from an Envelope and Other Poems.


Instruments (2)

Hold me against the dark: I am afraid.
Circle me with your arms. I am made
So tiny and my atoms so unstable
That at any moment I may explode. I am unable
To contain myself in unity. My outlines shiver
With the shock of living. I endeavor
To hold the I as one only for the cloud
Of which I am a fragment, yet to which I'm vowed
To be responsible. Its light against my face
Reveals the witness of the stars, each in its place
Singing, each compassed by the rest,
The many joined to one, the mightiest to the least.
It is so great a thing to be an infinitesimal part
of this immeasurable orchestra the music bursts the heart,
And from this tiny plosion all the fragments join:
Joy orders the disunity until the song is one.

Wordsmiths: Kekasih

I can't help but feel that my writing has been slipping... :(

I turn to my homeland for today's wordsmith, to pay tribute as Malaysia approaches half a century. Studying sastera or Malay literature at SPM (roughly equivalent to SATs or GCSEs) was one of the most difficult things I ever had to do, but I survived it. I do actually have a little fondness for the Malay language, though at the moment my grasp of it is really rusty!

Today's puisi (poem) comes from the late Usman Awang, who is arguably Malaysia's foremost poet-playwright. Born into a poor family, he dropped out of school at an early age, and worked briefly as a farmer and a police officer. After the war, he became a journalist, leaving the profession after protesting against perceived government interference in the running of Utusan Melayu. He subsequently joined the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, which I guess can be roughly likened to a Malaysian Oxford University Press, in that it wields institutional power over the Malay language (like OUP does with its dictionary) and publishes a couple of intellectual magazines. He died in 2001.

Usman Awang was instrumental in shaping the canon of sastera Melayu as we know it today. His poetry is widely praised as evocative and empathetic, frequently employing striking imagery. His works were blessed with the populist touch, with the kampung (village) often looming large in his ouevre; certainly he would never have been accused of elitism! He has been awarded the SEA Writers Award and was a National Poet Laureate.

Today's poem is Kekasih, or Beloved. I can't tell you very much about it, but it is lovely. Here it is in Bahasa Melayu. I will then attempt an English paraphrase. Instead of messing it up with a clunky word-for-word translation, I'll attempt to retain both the essential meaning and the poetic rhythm of the piece. (And probably still mess it up!) All you Malaysians, be polite and keep your laughter down, and do correct my inevitable mistakes! Isn't the ending so Matthew Arnold-ish?

KEKASIH
Akan kupintal buih-buih
menjadi tali mengikatmu

Akan kuanyam gelombang-gelombang
menjadi hamparan ranjang tidurmu

Akan kutenun awan-gemawan
menjadi selendang menudungi rambutmu

Akan kujahit bayu gunung
menjadi baju pakaian malammu

Akan kupetik bintang timur
menjadi kerongsang menyinari dadamu

Akan kujolok bulan gerhana
menjadi lampu menyuluhi rindu

Akan kurebahkan matari
menjadi laut malammu
menghirup sakar madumu

Kekasih,
hitunglah mimpi
yang membunuh realiti
dengan syurga ilusi.

-----

BELOVED
I will braid these bubbles
into the tie that binds you

I will weave these billowing waves
into the bedspread that soothes your slumber

I will shape these wooly clouds
into the shawl that caresses your hair

I will sew the soft mountain breeze
into the nightgown which snugly clothes you

I will pluck the eastern star
to be the brooch which illumines your bosom

I will cajole the moon from its eclipse
to be the torch that gives light to our yearning

I will sink into your eyes
into the ocean of the night
sipping the sweetness of your honey.

Beloved,
let us count the dreams
which extinguish reality
with this illusion of paradise.

Usman Awang / paraphrase BK

Wordsmiths: Upon Westminster Bridge

The sand has been trickling down the hourglass at breakneck speed. I've now actually been in London for a year! It's miles away the biggest city I've ever lived in, and there are plenty of times when I still feel like an overawed kampung (village) boy. It's a little bit of a love-hate relationship really - there are some days when it's nice to be in a place with a bit of a buzz, and I absolutely love crossing London Bridge and marvelling at Tower Bridge (the true belle of the bridges) on the way to church every Sunday. But there are plenty of times when it's really hard going, and it's easy to feel lonely in such an enormous place.

So today's poem pays tribute to 12 months in this global city. It's a well-known piece by a well-known poet, the gangsta rapper Wordsworth himself (ok, so Byron was the true rock star). Come to think of it, when I went to Oxford for my interview, I was asked to analyse this. Can't remember a single thing I said!

This poem describes London from the standpoint of a person passing through Westminster Bridge in early morning. But, this being a Romantic poem after all, it also tries to pinpoint a moment of revelation - an "Aha" moment when the persona sees London as it should be, free from pollution, subservient to Nature ("open unto the fields...smokeless air"), a throwback to more superior classical times ("ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie"). It is a living city - notice how just about everything gets personified. Ultimately, Wordsworth, as the Romantics commonly did, saw something transcendent about the scene. I wouldn't go that far. :>

EARTH has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

- William Wordsworth

Thank you, Lord, for seeing me through the past year, and help me to keep trusting in you even though I find it so hard.

Wordsmiths: The Sound of the Sea

I've finally settled on calling all posts literary Wordsmiths. And since you've all been subjected to my arid prose for the past month or so, here's some relief. Today's wordsmith is Henry Longfellow, an American poet who lived in the 19th century. Being ignorant about American literature in general, that's the extent of my knowledge! Wikipedia will be a better guide.

I believe this is not his most distinguished poem, but I chose Sound of the Sea for its simplicity and accessibility. It has an enjoyable rhythm to it, simple but evocative imagery and doesn't seek to be deliberately obscure.

-----
The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
A sound mysteriously multiplied
As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times, from the unknown
And inaccessible solitudes of being,
The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
Of things beyond our reason or control.

Update: Barb in the tagboard mentions that she has set it to music.

The Poetry post - Psalm 51: Somebody Else

Regular readers of this blog will know that I like to post a poem, or at least something literary from time to time, and we're overdue. :D I really should find a name for such posts like I do for The Wrap.

This time around I've been really struck by this wonderful paraphrase of Psalm 51 by Paul David Tripp. Try reading it aloud, it really has quite an effect!

Psalm 51: Somebody Else

I really wish I could blame
somebody else.
I wish I could place the responsibility
on somebody else.
I would love to point the finger
at somebody else.
I wish I could convince myself
that it was somebody else.
I tried to feed myself the logic
that it was somebody else.
For a moment I bought my argument
that it was somebody else.
There is always another sinner
who can bear my fault.
There is always some circumstance
that can carry my blame.
There's always some factor
that made me do what I did.
There's always somewhere else to point
rather than looking at me.
But in the darkness of bedtime
the logic melts out of my heart.
In the moments before sleep
the pain begins to squeeze away my breath.
As my mind replays the day's moments
the conclusion is like a slap.
There is no monster
to hide from.
There is no excuse that holds.
My war is not external
the enemy is not outside.
The struggle rages within me,
nowhere to point or run.
No independent righteousness,
no reason for smugness or rest.
I am my greatest enemy
and rescue my only hope.
In the quiet I face it
I cannot blame somebody else.
One more time I close my eyes admitting
my only hope is found in Somebody else.

His books are all worth a look.

Give: A primer

Isn't it annoying how something often loses its lustre when it's turned into a formal object of study and vice versa? This fundamental law of life struck again when I decided to reread the Armitage poem posted below. As I began to read it properly, I began to get more and more excited because I began to see how this simple poem actually employed very sophisticated means to get its message across. So naturally, I just had to share. :)

In doing so, I hope to achieve some larger aims: to get people to appreciate the richness of language, to show that literature doesn't necessarily have to be intimidating, and to simply celebrate the creative gifts bestowed to us by God. And of course, because it's fun! I'll try my best to explain it in as simple terms as I can.

Give

Of all the public places, dear
to make a scene, I've chosen here.

Of all the doorways in the world
to choose to sleep, I’ve chosen yours.
I'm on the street, under the stars.

For coppers I can dance or sing.
For silver-swallow swords, eat fire.
For gold-escape from locks and chains.

It's not as if I'm holding out
for frankincense or myrrh, just change.

You give me tea. That's big of you.
I'm on my knees. I beg of you.

The first thing to remember about poetry is that, unlike prose, it's all about how it sounds. This makes writing poetry more technical, although you'll never notice it in the hands of a skilled poet. There are 2 important elements here. Most people will know about the first element: rhyme, but what most people don't realise is that poetry is also all about rhythm. Have a look again at the Armitage poem. It has 8 syllables in each line, and if you read it out loud, you'll find that naturally, every other syllable is stressed. What you'll get is a "ta-TUM-ta-TUM-ta-TUM-ta-TUM". Technically, this is known as the iambic tetrameter. So why all this technical discussion, you ask? Read the poem out loud again. Notice how conversational it sounds - short sharp sentences - in fact, you could say it sounds almost incantational. This is the result of the poet employing the iambic tetrameter.

Now that we've got that out of the way, let's get on to some really interesting stuff. Firstly, let's quickly figure out what the poem is about. A quick read will tell us that this is the voice of someone who's presumably homeless and trying to get some change off someone. If you're a Londoner I'm sure an image will pop in your head really quickly!

But Armitage has more tricks up his sleeve. If that was all there was to this poem we might very well nod our heads and make a mental note to perhaps give a little to the next beggar we see. The poet bites us deeper than that. Read the first two lines again. What impression does it give you? I remember when I first read them, the picture that formed in my head was that of a middle-class lady who was basically telling her husband that she was about to throw a tantrum over something or another - probably over something that she wanted but couldn't get. So imagine how suprised I was when upon reading the next few lines, I discover that the speaker is actually the homeless person mentioned above. What Armitage does here is essentially set up the reader's expectations and then subvert them. What he does is set the tone of the poem against its content, and immediately that unsettles us.

But wait. Let's go one level deeper. If not for the content, we could easily imagine that the tone being adopted here is rather middle-class. This is signalled by the rather clean, formal language, none of the coarseness we expect from someone from the streets. "You give me tea. That's big of you." What Armitage is doing here, I believe, is not just confounding the reader's expectations, but also showing just how marginalised this homeless person is. He is denied even his own authentic voice! Instead, he has to rely on a retelling of his story through the voice of others. Indeed, he has become a mere commodity in this retelling: "For coppers I can dance or sing./For silver-swallow swords, eat fire./For gold - escape from locks and chains." Slot the coin, get some entertainment. The person becomes dehumanized.

Notice too how the poem progresses. In the first couple of stanzas there's a lot of emphasis on the "I", and also on choice - "chosen...choose...chosen" (and also the third stanza, which implies a choice of entertainment options depending on how much the person is willing to pay.) But this illusion of choice is shattered in the last 2 stanzas. The homeless person cannot actually dictate what is given to him. He might be hoping for loose change but "you give me tea. That's big of you". And so "I'm on my knees. I beg of you." He is at the mercy of the giver. I would also argue that since the last 2 lines are so close in sound as well, it's possible that in the last line, the true voice of the homeless person breaks out, if only momentarily, so that "that's big of you" is starkly juxtaposed with "I beg of you."

And suddenly the poem gains a whole new resonance, as we begin to see just how marginalized the speaker of the poem is, and the way the poem implicates us, the reader. (After all, it's likely to be middle-class people who would be reading poems!) The title of the poem "Give" now jumps out at us - it is no longer a description, but a prescription, or at the very least a challenge. The question now becomes, we have listened, now what are we going to do about it?

I'm sure I've missed out on a lot of other things, for eg. the explicit reference to "frankincense and myrrh" which can only be an allusion to Christianity here (possibly the idea of Christian charity? Or a reminder of Jesus' birth into humble surroundings?), and it's even more interesting that this poem appears in a collection called the "Dead Sea Poems". I don't know enough about Armitage, but often poems also like to allude to other poems, and Armitage might or might not have done so here.

So, have I succeeded with the aims of my post?


† Expand post

Poetry for the dark winter days

I'm rushing to meet deadlines at the moment. Thankfully, it will soon all be over; I'm 3/4 through an essay and I have a fair idea of what is going into it, it's just a matter of structuring! Anyway, I've realised that a poem on this blog is way overdue. I thought of diving into the Dickinson archive, but as I don't have her book with me at the moment, I've decided on someone contemporary. This is the only poem by Simon Armitage that I've ever read. Enjoy (or ponder?)!

Give

Of all the public places, dear
to make a scene, I've chosen here.

Of all the doorways in the world
to choose to sleep, I’ve chosen yours.
I'm on the street, under the stars.

For coppers I can dance or sing.
For silver-swallow swords, eat fire.
For gold-escape from locks and chains.

It's not as if I'm holding out
for frankincense or myrrh, just change.

You give me tea. That's big of you.
I'm on my knees. I beg of you.

Simon Armitage, The Dead Sea Poems