let it speak.
This author writes prose and sermons more than poetry, but I can't not. His prose shirks the border of poetry, anyway. He tiptoes close to it, so close that you close your eyes and let it sink in; I tilt my face up to meet it.
ADVENT
The house lights go off and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the violin bows are poised. The conductor has raised his baton.
In the silence of a midwinter dusk there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen.
You walk up the steps to the front door. The empty windows at either side of it tell you nothing, or almost nothing. For a second you catch a whiff in the air of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you've never been and a time you have no words for. You are aware of the beating of your heart.
The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.
The Salvation Army Santa Claus clangs his bell. The sidewalks are so crowded you can hardly move. Exhaust fumes are the chief fragrance in the air, and everybody is as bundled up against any sense of what all the fuss is really about as they are bundled up against the windchill factor.
But if you concentrate just for an instant, far off in the deeps of you somewhere you can feel the beating of your heart. For all its madness and lostness, not to mention your own, you can hear the world itself holding its breath.
- Frederick Buechner, from Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter's Dictionary
I found this, and I'm not sure if this is the whole poem or just the end, but here it is, nonetheless. This is one of his poems from his latest book.
“Remember too that life is very good,
And that to live is better than to die,”
And all in all I’d say so still, though sixty-
Six is not so sure as sweet sixteen
What life and death are all about.
Suppose
We lose less, dying, than we find.
Who knows?
Life’s good, for sure, but would we choose to live
Forever if we could? Or might that seem
Like twilight never deepening into dark,
Like never calling it a day, and letting
Go, and lying down to sleep.
“Life should
Be wondered at,” I said, “not understood,”
As if I thought there was a choice, then said,
“Remember love,” as if we might forget.
- Frederick Buechner
ADVENT
The house lights go off and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the violin bows are poised. The conductor has raised his baton.
In the silence of a midwinter dusk there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen.
You walk up the steps to the front door. The empty windows at either side of it tell you nothing, or almost nothing. For a second you catch a whiff in the air of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you've never been and a time you have no words for. You are aware of the beating of your heart.
The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.
The Salvation Army Santa Claus clangs his bell. The sidewalks are so crowded you can hardly move. Exhaust fumes are the chief fragrance in the air, and everybody is as bundled up against any sense of what all the fuss is really about as they are bundled up against the windchill factor.
But if you concentrate just for an instant, far off in the deeps of you somewhere you can feel the beating of your heart. For all its madness and lostness, not to mention your own, you can hear the world itself holding its breath.
- Frederick Buechner, from Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter's Dictionary
I found this, and I'm not sure if this is the whole poem or just the end, but here it is, nonetheless. This is one of his poems from his latest book.
“Remember too that life is very good,
And that to live is better than to die,”
And all in all I’d say so still, though sixty-
Six is not so sure as sweet sixteen
What life and death are all about.
Suppose
We lose less, dying, than we find.
Who knows?
Life’s good, for sure, but would we choose to live
Forever if we could? Or might that seem
Like twilight never deepening into dark,
Like never calling it a day, and letting
Go, and lying down to sleep.
“Life should
Be wondered at,” I said, “not understood,”
As if I thought there was a choice, then said,
“Remember love,” as if we might forget.
- Frederick Buechner