new poems
According to my poetry journal, I hadn't written a poem in six months. Discounting reworkings of translations and the self-consciously bad, I had written a poem since last July, nearly nine months. Perhaps it is concidence, but I changed my meds a couple of weeks back, and now I've written a number of poems and have a bunch of fragmants gestating. Many will never see the light of day. Much of those months the only poetry I read was Psalms and canticles, and some of what I'm working on treads a decadent path between religion and eroticism. I have finished a couple, though. (Drafts, as usual. I don't even think I finished punctuating. But it shows where my head is at.)
First, a psalm:
How long, O God, how long : shall I be desolate?
Those around me, they smile : I am hollow within.
They smile to each other : only I am alone.
I have sheol within me : inwardly I am dead.
Like a pregnant mother : loneliness grows in me.
Why should I be alone : a stranger to all men?
How, God, have I harmed you : that you should take my friends?
How have I angered you : that no one shares my nights?
O be my salvation : only you can save me.
You, O Lord, can remember me : you can fill me.
Save me in the sight of the others, O my God!
Give me consolation : in this world and the next.
Second, a prayer. (I can't keep saying "they" should revive devotion to the Blessed Virgin as the Lady of Good Death without doing my part, right?)
In your house in Nazareth
You were beside your chaste spouse
He, patron of good death,
Was midwived to death by you.
Pray for us, Lady of Death.
And when the sword pierced your heart
And your Son hung on a tree
He who had grown within you
You accompanied in death.
Pray for us, Lady of Death.
But when your time for death came
From corruption you were spared
Gathered up into the skies
Together reign with your Son.
Pray for us, Lady of Death.
And when my time on earth ends
And I face eternity
Might I, by your Son's favor,
Die with these words on my lips:
Pray for me, Lady of Death.
First, a psalm:
How long, O God, how long : shall I be desolate?
Those around me, they smile : I am hollow within.
They smile to each other : only I am alone.
I have sheol within me : inwardly I am dead.
Like a pregnant mother : loneliness grows in me.
Why should I be alone : a stranger to all men?
How, God, have I harmed you : that you should take my friends?
How have I angered you : that no one shares my nights?
O be my salvation : only you can save me.
You, O Lord, can remember me : you can fill me.
Save me in the sight of the others, O my God!
Give me consolation : in this world and the next.
Second, a prayer. (I can't keep saying "they" should revive devotion to the Blessed Virgin as the Lady of Good Death without doing my part, right?)
In your house in Nazareth
You were beside your chaste spouse
He, patron of good death,
Was midwived to death by you.
Pray for us, Lady of Death.
And when the sword pierced your heart
And your Son hung on a tree
He who had grown within you
You accompanied in death.
Pray for us, Lady of Death.
But when your time for death came
From corruption you were spared
Gathered up into the skies
Together reign with your Son.
Pray for us, Lady of Death.
And when my time on earth ends
And I face eternity
Might I, by your Son's favor,
Die with these words on my lips:
Pray for me, Lady of Death.