Poems I Journey With 26

The car I escaped uninjured from

Life surely challenges us; everyday brings one or other crisis. That is seemingly the way we grow and mature. However, it is hard to see that from the depths of a problem or of a tragedy or from any event that brings us face to face with our fragility and mortality. I have just walked free, totally unscathed physically - indeed no one was injured at all, thank God, just twisted metal and and few blocks in a wall displaced -  from crashing my car having nodded off momentarily at the steering wheel. However, existentially I am shaken to the foundations of my being. This is surely what the Existential Psychotherapist and Psychiatrist Irvin Yalom has in mind when he speaks of death/dying/mortality as being one of the major ultimate concerns we encounter in life.  It is at times like these that I like to turn to poetry and music in the quiet corners of my soul when my friends and family have gone their busy way as they must. The poems of Wendell Berry are a wonderful comfort to me today as they are gentle, sublime and profoundly touching. I’d like to share several poems from the pen of this great author with the reader today as I grapple to make sense of what has happened to me the day before yesterday. Berry is 84 years old and still alive and writing prolifically. He is an American novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. He is a recipient of many prestigious awards for writing, for the humanities and for his advocacy of environmental issues. Anyway, the first poem that is quieting my troubled soul today is this one:

The Peace of Wild Things - Poem by Wendell Berry

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. 

The great Wendell Berry

The second poem is equally as simple and pure and touches me deeply where I need to be healed. This little poem calls me to be deeply present in what I do and to live in the blessed NOW.  I remember an old Dominican priest once telling me that “Now is the sacrament of the present moment.” I thought that was a lovely statement and a deep truth expressed theologically and poetically. The second poem reminds me of that truth, that healing truth.

What We Need Is Here

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here. 

Once again the third poem I wish to share with you here is equally as simple and pure and once again touches me deeply where I need to be healed. When we get in touch with the deep peace that lies in natural things, even though nature can be violent and cruel at times too, we can be healed. When the calm after a storm touches our soul we can be healed. I’m sure survivors of natural disasters have often been healed in spirit thereafter by the healing power of the peace in nature. Anyway, I deeply need the healing power of the following beautiful lyric:

Woods - Poem by Wendell Berry

I part the out thrusting branches
and come in beneath
the blessed and the blessing trees.
Though I am silent
there is singing around me.
Though I am dark
there is vision around me.
Though I am heavy
there is flight around me. 

Journal of a Soul 65

Grief

One of my favourite pictures of Sean Kelly (1994 - 2014) with one of his nephews - Sean was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin today, 27/09/2014 after 10 A.M. Mass in Sheriff St Church

Sometimes it's best to say nothing at all.  An Irish singer-songwriter, Ronan Keating, wrote and sang a love song entitled "You say it best when you say nothing at all."  Keating was, of course, writing and singing about love being communicated without the use of words.  Here I am writing about grief at the time of death, and really its expression in sobs and tears and gestures (like hugs and kisses) is way more effective than words, which really come later to give that grief a little shape in our minds.  Speaking of death and love or love and death (perhaps the order matters?) I am reminded of the wonderful Song of Solomon or The Song of Songs which I remember studying in Scripture class over thirty years ago.  It is a Biblical song about human love or more precisely, sexual love.  The words that knit themselves together in my mind are "Love is as strong as death: many waters cannot quench it."  My memory, obviously is somewhat flawed as these are not the exact words, though my rendering of them actually capture wholly the import of the text that actually reads:

Song of Songs 8: 6, 7. - Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the flashes thereof are flashes of fire, a very flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it... 

I have just returned from a most painful and upsetting funeral for a recent past pupil of our school who chose to end his life by hanging himself from a tree in a park right opposite our school.  The grief of his distraught family and friends was simply overwhelming to say the least.  What words could capture such momentous bereavement which the pastor/curate described as a veritable "tsunami of grief."  In fact the celebrant, whose name I don't know, was wonderfully prayerful, compassionate and so understanding of the needs of the young people present that it was a wonderfully fitting send off for a young man of twenty years.  

We are such fragile vessels really, vessels through which the blood of life runs all too quickly, and all too often so painfully.  Amid all the grief today love was simply palpable.  In times of grief we come together to support one another.  Before the end of the funeral Mass this wonderful priest invited all Seán's friends up around the coffin - my goodness what a wonderfully kind and intuitive thing to do.  Then he incensed and blessed with holy water the coffin and the boys.  Needless to say, there was not a dry eye in the church.  Thank God for such good understanding pastors.  They do exist and are too infrequently acknowledged for the great work and service that they render to the community.  However, what I want to do now is simply append hereunder a short poem I wrote some minutes ago in memory of our former student Seán Kelly:

For Seán:

A short poem in our time of pain

The grief that fell upon us like a black pall

In the middle of a summery September

Was unseasonal, wholly inappropriate

To how we should feel in such sunny times.

But life has a habit of stopping us in our tracks,

Of calling us back to more important things,

Of making us think of the littleness and brittleness

Of all we construct with human hands...

Lest we become complacent, smug or self-satisfied,

As if to say we are wearing life too lightly,

That we must amid this unseasonal growth and sun

Wear heavier winter clothing weighted with our grief

At the passing of one so young, so full of life,

So full of the music that throbs at its heart –

A talent so natural and so good

Fallen unripe to the ground

Under a beautiful lonely tree:

But we came in our pain and in our brokenness

With our cards, our music and our tears

And we held each other around your coffin

And we prayed for comfort at the altar of the One

Who wept when his great friend Lazarus died –

Of the One who in innocence was crucified

Of the One who promised that life goes on –

And so we know that your spirit lives on,

That your music will never die

For you live in our hearts and souls

And smile upon us eternally.

(P.S.  I have just finished writing this poem as a tribute to the late Seán Kelly, RI.P., to his dear family and his many friends.  We were blessed to have known you, Seán, such a wonderful young lad.  Rest in peace, Seán and stay with your friends always!)