to hordes converted (to my rivals’ few).
Yet which of these could I say came from me?
At last I found the box my gift would fill
and put inside the best I had, my will.
Better than Best
This little church
that lives by slip and lurch
will sing off-key
and seldom will agree.
But these are yours and work for You,
and though their tones may be somewhat askew,
as amateurs, they love You so
that all their songs may not impress with polished show.
We howl and growl to serenade our artful God.
You do not think it odd
that those You made should be so artless in their hymns,
for they must use their limbs
to till the social fields of sullen earth
and bring to birth
a fair facsimile of heaven’s town
and your renown.
Like men who dig, and wives who press,
who love their children nonetheless,
and touch their faces with a hand
abrasive but as soft as sand,
they honor You with secondary gifts,
which, better than the best, may patch all rifts.
The Benefits of Pain
Now comes my pain that sweeps away the world.
The cluttered workday, all the social weights,
the habit that compels on mindless day—
all gone, or hid, like minor creatures when
a monarch makes approach. The pinpoint distant
star, confronted so immense, becomes the sun,
and I am intimate with You, and dead,
for no one lives this close to all that is.
My gratitude to You who send such pain,
who melt our eyes to let us see the real,
who break our legs so we will sit and think,
who scorch our tongues so we may speak alone
of You, think none but You, see who we are
by seeing we are not the God of all.
Distractions at Prayer
Hear me, Lord, secluded here
in this closed and quiet place.
Surely You attend our prayers
anywhere we call to You.
Still, the human mind, it seems,
wavers like a candle flame,
moved aside by every hiss,
upward and intent on You
only when the air is still.
Pain and anguish forge their own
upright highway to your home,
but our daily talk desires
isolation and the calm
of a pair who sit and talk,
all their children now asleep.
Hear me, Lord, my nagging chores
set aside to be performed
when You’ve filled my lungs with life.
Needs of family and friends
will not draw my thoughts from You
if I hold them to your eyes.
Now the thick, diurnal dust
of a thousand minor aches,
with a hundred pinprick jabs,
umbrage taken, nurtured close—
now I ask You clear away.
Either pull them from my soul,
or if it be more your will,
let my inward ear be deaf
to their buzzing. Let me be
wholly focused on our talk
here in this secluded place,
here where holiness resides
for the moment, for this day.
Disaffirmation
Why is my head a stone, my heart dry wood?
Have I drunk poison and am paralyzed?
Once towering, how am I now downsized?
I creep and crouch who early marched and stood.
These are declining days of febrile light,
of wizened biceps, quadriceps of wax.
A desperate inhabitant of shacks,
I have misplaced my attitude and height.
It may be for the best. I’ve died before,
or almost did: on mountain roads, in slums;
when pocket-poor, while feeding on scant crumbs,
and sizing up for taste the shoes I wore.
But now at least I’m grateful for this least:
my height now grown by having been decreased.
Bouquet
This pink and yellow messenger of scent
is in its seventh day and sags.
But if its lovely form is spent,
its gift remains and rises from these rags.
The vase around it stands the same and still,
and offers water like our God.
But roses decompose until
we sniff their memory and think, “How odd.”
How odd that something permanent should take
such pains for temporary bliss.
And yet this vase stands for their sake
and holds their beauty like a lifted kiss.
The Lump of Clay to the Potter
When You slap me onto the wheel’s exact center
with your accurate eye, then set me dizzying around,
may I not wobble, but sit still as I spin fast.
When You insert your thumbs to open my mouth,
may I yawn the perfect O of the perfect prayer.
When You touch me both outside and inside at once,
lifting me up, making me upright but more fragile,
may I not collapse into an ashtray, but stand
as your cereal bowl, your vegetable server,