Ripples of Stillness. Father Ralph Wright

      

      RIPPLES

      OF

      STILLNESS

      BY

      RALPH WRIGHT O.S.B.

      Copyright 2011 Father Ralph Wright, OSB,

      All rights reserved.

      Published in eBook format by Monograph Publishing

      ISBN-13: 978-0-9840117-3-5

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      INTRODUCTION

      Poetry needs no introduction. If it cannot stand on its own feet it should not stand at all. These poems were written between 1959 and 1977, the product of many different moods and moments of my life. I am grateful to many people who have encouraged me to write. To Father Patrick Barry O.S.B., who advised me to read Classics (Greats) at Oxford, to Mr. Philip Smiley, who introduced me when at High School to Hopkins and Eliot. To Father Austin Rennick, O.S.B., Ms. Vicky Schauer, to Mr. Lemoine Skinner, Mr. Lee Hawes and Mr. Bo Naunheim for much encouragement, positive criticism and helpful enthusiasm. To many others— but above all to God, the Father of us all, from whom all the worthy thoughts have come. There is perhaps no more humbling experience than that of writing poetry: one seems at times to become a pen within His gentle competent hands. May all who read these poems be brought each day closer to Him

      Ralph Wright

      St. Louis Priory,

      September 1977

      THE DEEP SONG

      The deep song

      of my silent person

      was this poem

      before it was uttered.

      TODAY

      Today

      I will do nothing but grow

      older

      and so draw

      nearer

      to the moment

      of eternal union

      with you —

      how wonderful

      to achieve so much

      by doing nothing

      JOY

      Joy is momentary

      freedom from

      the distance that keeps

      us apart

      and the time that ends

      our union

      one day

      the moment will be

      eternal

      RIPPLES OF STILLNESS

      God threw a rock the other day

      —his Word—

      gently

      into the wild pool of his creation

      —

      ripples of stillness

      are still widening

      towards the shore

      HIS MOODS

      He knows what deep means —

      grief sometimes

      hangs upon his features —

      sometimes he is beckoned by despair

      and is happy

      only with no one —

      his flights of pleasure

      are like dark trees

      poplars against a blue sky

      ruffled by wind —

      and somewhere in between is peace —

      the presence of evening with a dying sun

      people returning

      rooks calling

      into the distance —

      peace is the silence which he does not hear

      the smile or quiet laughter of contentment

      breaking gently

      almost undetected

      into being

      SCRAWL

      Distance must not despair us in our pain,

      boned material beings that we are;

      distance, the space between us, must divide

      to keep us different, whether near or far.

      But words come welding through the lonely air

      oneing us against the constant slide

      to isolation — hypodermic thoughts,

      needles against our lapse towards despair.

      They writhe incisively and can confide

      the seethingness to me of being you,

      like molten gold cleaving the ice of space

      we taste a moment's oneness, being two.

      How strange our dignity: a few scrawled lines

      secreted from a cage of crumbling bone

      prevent the fragmentation of mankind

      and keep us always only half-alone.

      SYMPATHY

      I find in you

      the kind of friend

      I mind.

      The things I've seen

      or where I've been

      you find

      and what I do not mean

      you know.

      You are not blind

      to what my nature lacks

      and so

      I may relax.