Sabbaths, 2000

I

In the world forever one

With the informing Love

That gives its life to time,

In the day of alchemy,

Come round at last, transmuting

Corruption to pollution,

Transmuting lies to blindness,

And light to dark, the known

Destroyed in our unknowing,

Under the sun that shines

Beyond evil and good,

The goldeneye alights

On the cold river. Grace

Unasked, merely allowed,

Gleams round him on the water.

II

When we convene again

to understand the world,

the first speaker will again

point silently out the window

at the hillside in its season, sunlit, under the snow, and we will nod silently,

and silently stand and go.

III

As timely as a river

God's timeless life passes

Into this world. It passes

Through bodies, giving life,

And beyond them, giving death.

The secret fish leaps up

Into the light and is

Again darkened. The sun

Comes from the dark, it lights

The always passing river,

Shines on the great-branched tree,

And goes. Longing and dark,

We are completely filled

With breath of love, in us

Forever incomplete.

IV

The house is cold at dawn.

I wake and build the fires.

The ground is white with snow.

The snow fell all night long.

It fell impartially.

It whitens every branch.

The sun shines on the snow.

No wind has touched the woods.

The deer stand still and look.

V

I know for a while again

the health of self-forgetfulness,

looking out at the sky through

a notch in the valley side,

the black woods wintry on

the hills, small clouds at sunset

passing across. And I know

that this is one of the thresholds

between Earth and Heaven.

It is a place in the world,

a place also in the mind,

the mind's most native place,

ancient beyond time's age,

from which even I may step

forth from my self, and be free.

VI

Burley Coulter, once in time

Alone, afoot, in moonless night

Out on the world's edge with his hounds,

What was he looking to set right?

The world sings at its farthest bounds.

To know it does sets right the dark,

And so an old man found his work.

VII

The young ewe has given

birth to her first lamb.

She calls it from the weariness

of its coming. It answers,

and so we rest, look upon

this work, and find it good.

VIII

Some had derided him

As unadventurous,

For he would not give up

What he had vowed to keep.

But what he vowed to keep

Even in keeping changed

And, changing, led him far

Beyond what they or he

Foresaw, and made him strange.

What he had vowed to keep

He lost, of course, and yet

Kept in his heart. The things

He vowed to keep, the things

He had in keeping changed,

The things lost in his keeping

That he kept in his heart,

These were his pilgrimage,

Were his adventure, near

And far, at home and in

The world beyond this world.

IX

We hear way off the approaching sounds

Of rain on leaves and on the river:

O blessed rain, bring up the grass

To the tongues of the hungry cattle.

X

I've come down from the sky

Like some damned ghost, delayed

Too long in time enforced

By fire and by machines,

Returned at last to this

Sweet wooded slope well known

Before, where time flows on

Uncumbered as the wind.

No man intended this.

What came here as a gift

We use for good or ill,

For life or waste of life,

But it is as it is.

To the abandoned fields

The trees returned and grew.

They stand and grow. Time comes

To them, time goes, the trees

Stand; the only place

They go is where they are.

These wholly patient ones

Who only stand and wait

For time to come to them,

Who do not go to time,

Stand in eternity.

They stand where they belong.

They do no wrong, and they

Are beautiful. What more

Could we have thought to ask?

Here God and man have rest.

I've gone too far toward time,

And now have come back home.

I stand and wait for light,

Flight-weary, growing old,

And grieved for loss of time,

For loss of time's gifts gone

With time forever, taught

By time a timeless love. I stand and wait for light

To open the dark night.

I stand and wait for prayer

To come and find me here.

XI

Days without strength or hope,

days that pay the cost

of the always losing battle

that is never lost, and yet

in no foreseeable lifetime

is ever to be won. "And yet,"

I say again to myself,

"And yet.. . "

These have been days of rain,

and now the river in flood

carries its familiar load

of dissolved earth, plastic trash,

whole trees. One water drop

in a tangle of vines,

catching the sun, shines.

XII

1

We follow the dead to their graves,

and our long love follows on

beyond, crying to them, not

"Come back!" but merely "Wait!"

In waking thoughts, in dreams

we follow after, calling, "Wait!

Listen! I am older now. I know

now how it was with you

when you were old and I

was only young. I am ready

now to accompany you

in your lonely fear." And they

go on, one by one, as one

by one, we go as they have gone.

2

And yet are we not all gathered

in this leftover love,

this longing become the measure

of a joy all mourners know,

have known, and will know?

An old man's mind is a graveyard

where the dead arise.

Copyright Hudson Review Winter 2002
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