Words
Poetry
A Wild Peculiar Joy
Irving Layton
Kind David, flushed with wine,
Is dancing before the Ark;
The virgins are whispering to each other
And the elders are pursing their lips
But the king know the lord delights
In the sight of a valorous man
Dancing in the pride of life.
For the Lord of Israel sometimes
Also reels on drunken feet: see,
In the wayward flight of eagles and moths,
In thunderstorms and when lightning
Rives the cedars of Lebanon,
O the Lord wheels in blazing footgear
Above the hills of Jerusalem.
King David is circling the Ark
On reeling feet, and he sings:
“Ho, Israelites, hear me! Hear me, everyone!
God himself staggers on drunken feet
And each night wearing
For raiment the flame of our campfires
He dances in our valleys North and South!”
Black-bearded stalwarts leap up to follow him
As he stumble around the Ark;
No one listens, none in the throng is fired
With his wild peculiar joy.
So bowing low
He kisses the Ark thrice
And with a last joyous cry reels ringing to his tent
To compose a boisterous hymn in praise of the Lord.
Untitled Document - Rilke
Rilke
If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in Gods heart;
they have never left him.
That is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.
Sabbath Moment
Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me it busyness. It does not believe
that I do not want it. Now I understand
why the old poets of China went so far and high
into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.
When the Roses Speak, I Pay Attention
As long as we able to
be extravagant we will be
hugely and damply
extravagant. Then we will drop
foil by foil to the ground. This
is our unalterable task, and we do it
joyfully.
And they went on. “Listen,
the heart-shackles are not, as you think,
death, illness, pain,
unrequited hope, not loneliness, but
lassitude, rue, vainglory, fear, anxiety,
selfishness.”
Their fragrance all the while rising
from their blind bodies, making me
spin with joy.
Words to Live By
by the stronger pull
of what you really love.
