“Descend with me through fire and dark below
And seek refuge in Virgil’s care as I,
Or you will join the mournful spirits there
Who heeded not on earth salvation’s cry.

If hell does shake you so to drain your strength,
Repentance waits for your second journey;
The third will lead to Christ and thrones of white.
Heaven unlocks true meaning for the free.”

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
(NIV)

Right now seems like a good time to be silent.

For us like any other fugitive,
Like the numberless flowers that cannot number
And all the beasts that need not remember,
It is to-day in which we live.

So may try to say Not Now,
So many have forgotten how
To say I Am, and would be
Lost, if they could, in history.

Bowing, in stance, with such old-world grace
To a proper flag in a proper place,
Muttering like ancients as they stump upstairs
Of Mine and His or Ours and Theirs.

Just as if time were what they used to will
When it was gifted with possession still,
Just as if they were wrong
In no more wishing to belong.

No wonder then so many die of grief,
So many are lonely as they die;
No one has yet believed or liked a lie,
Another time has other lives to live.

“Another Time”
W.H. Auden

From Bryon, who tackled the Book of Numbers:

Count Tribes of Jacob
Argument with a donkey
God guards the marchers

I’ll take a stab at Deuteronomy:

What God says, He means
And what He emphasizes
He’ll repeat again

If you wish to continue this meme, your book is now Joshua. Just provide the following instructions for those who decide to join in.

Your post should include:

1. the previous book’s haiku;
2. a link to the post where the previous haiku appears;
3. your book and its related haiku; and,
4. these basic instructions.

Have fun!

(As Eric noted in the comments, all the Bible haikus are here.)

One of the TAs for my Use of Personal Experience (UPE) class sent me this beautiful poem. Enjoy.

MY Love is of a birth as rare
As ’tis, for object, strange and high ;
It was begotten by Despair,
Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble hope could ne’er have flown,
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixed ;
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.

For Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close ;
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic power depose.

And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant poles have placed,
(Though Love’s whole world on us doth wheel),
Not by themselves to be embraced,

Unless the giddy heaven fall,
And earth some new convulsion tear.
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramp’d into a planisphere.

As lines, so love’s oblique, may well
Themselves in every angle greet :
But ours, so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.

By Andrew Marvell
(1621 - 1678)

It wasn’t the stork wearing a milkman’s hat
Who delivered her at the home of N and L
Instead, I think an angel accidentally nudged
The “Deliver New Soul” lever a twinkle too soon
And a little girl arrived in the world a month early

That little girl would learn that
Heaven dispelled shadows like a blade parting fog
And Hell regularly vomited up its victims’ bones
Only to swallow them again immediately after

She would learn that
Pens shouldn’t be used as a hammer on her sister’s crown
And glue was to make things stick together
And shouldn’t be eaten like applesauce

Wetting clothes was not polite
Relatives weren’t always normal
Boys couldn’t be kissed till she was sixteen
And what was a kiss, anyway?

Now
Every mirror she passes peeks back at that little girl
Who resembles a china doll
With a too serious face and seldom seen smile
But the woman on the outside
Laughs merrily at such illusions
Because Heaven is light, Hell is fire
Pens are instruments as well as weapons
Glue is better than staples
Sweat stinks
Relatives will always be insane
And boys didn’t have to be kissed right away
But she still doesn’t know what a kiss is

If life wasn’t detailed with such vibrant lines
Life itself was an illusion

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.

William Blake
Milton
1804

I go now to the Lord of glory
Behind I leave my life’s story
And I pray that you will see
That time was not spent in vain
For to live is Christ, to die is gain
I became what He molded me to be
Born a sinner, but died a saint
In the end forsaking death’s taint
Striving for perfection all my life
Walking by faith, not by sight
Do not think I mean to boast
In the last of these pages
For the God who’s reigned throughout the ages
Did consume me with His righteous fire
And now calls me ever higher

02.20.01
RIP: For my grandfather, BMN

Something I found in ye olde notebook earlier. For memory’s sake.

Crazy weekend ahead. Graduation ceremony+festivities, wedding, and Father’s Day packed into three days - which translates into, “serve lots of guests, entertain guests, and try not to kill myself in the process; go to wedding and try not to get lost on the way to the wedding; don’t pick on Dad too much and remember why we celebrate Father’s Day.” Some poetry to end the week and start the weekend:

Look behind at what was
You will only see the oblivion of the Past
Turn to the left and right
You will only see the futility of man’s directions
Consider this world’s offerings
You will make Lot’s wife proud
Your tears for its gain will be your eternal cage

I’m re-hashing the one below because it came to mind after I read the news about the suicide bombing in Jerusalem. It was the only reply I could come up with, really.

The grinding thunder plummets in cavity and blackness
as, Alas! another falls
And they cry and wail
“ashes to ashes, dust to dust”
But the one they mourn
only feels painful bliss under gravel and marble

It was the mortar that took him
Delivered from the hands
of one so alike
The same dark hair and starlit eyes
the same deep laugh and grace
One returned to earth and ash, the other turning to his brother
And coolly, almost lovingly, cutting flesh from bone
With steel and gunpowder

And you ask “Why?”

And the dead rise to regard you with scorn
As their oppressor walks away,
Seeking another unfamiliar face to black out
From the attendance rolls of humanity

And the dead reply,
“Why not?”

03.09.02

See ya next week!

My CW “Craft of Poetry” class has been pretty fun - here are the types of poetry I’ve learned to write or reviewed:

Pantoum (example)

Villanelle (example included - and no, it’s not as hard as the author claims - at least to me it isn’t)

Found poetry

Sonnet

Lakeside

I am the lake glittering diamonds
At the passing of gentle mother wind
Who tenderly caresses liquid
And stirs the flame within
I am the surface of the water
Whether the day is hot or cold
I ripple, dance, form many pictures
At times mirror smooth, at times pebble-rolled
I am the depths of father lake
Murky, mysterious, aged, wise
Colored with swirling sand and turbulent
Few find the treasure in sly earth lies
Above, beyond, around does my border cross
Come to my banks, bury your sorrow and loss

SMN, 2/25/03

Chant (or maybe you’re more familiar with Gregorian Chant)

Political (a self-explanatory category)

Narrative

Shards of glass
On bloody hands and knees
Along the path of life
Faltering in my shame
But never falling

Strength of will
With broken mind and soul
I carry on this task with love
Trusting in his Name
And never falling

- SMN/JMW

Sheesh, definitely need to put up the poetry page soon…

Voices and their fathers
Don’t speak to one another
In this world.
Books are celebrities,
Their keepers tolerated
To keep the peace between
Adoring masses and art.
Forget bridges.
Bring the flame,
Brand a circle,
Imprison the art
For being so greedy.

Not too sure what inspired this one, but it beats over-analyzing poetry in my creative writing class.

Note to self: must get poetry page up. Now if only my computer would cooperate…

Diving into poetry,
I breathe song set to rhyme.
Rhythm and meter round,
A school of golden fins;
Each letter, ev’ry word
In ev’ry line of prose
Touts meaning infinite.
Not even sharks snapping–
Writer’s Block Incarnate!
Every swimmer’s nightmare–
Drain my inspiration.
Though time does wait for me,
I’ll swim these depths again.
A poem’s shore is Home.

- SMN
02/04/03

The way I look
at it, I’m passing through a phase:
gradually I’m changing to a word.
Whatever you choose to claim
of me is always yours;
nothing is truly mine
except my name. I only
borrowed this dust.

- Stanley Kunitz