1088: Sometimes Gladness
"Sometimes Gladness"
Bruce Dawe
Sometimes gladness crooks me like an arm
Adoro te or some more crazy hymn
scrambling like a monkey up a rope
to bang for hours in my soul’s swung bell
that I was born and blessed with the broad thumb
of sheer stupidity and doused unknowing
in such uncertainty I only need
to run my tongue across my lips to taste
the salt of that immersion
Down the aisle
come all my years, none altogether miserable, none
without the saving grace of some mistake that bent me
in the sly human shape I recognise
- day-labourer slouching in at the ninth hour
to pick up a quick penny Oh ordinary
holiness of people shining out
against the blurred reredos of their dreams!
I never knew a friend who did not leave me
the richer for the knowing, pour them on
- I wait for the friends I’ve yet to meet who crowd
like seasons, apt, amenable, beyond
the familiar ambiguity of the hill.
Along each vein like air-bubbles children run
and when the heart bursts suddenly or descends
in swooning spiral to the lonesome ground
and the grasses with their dry blank commentary
are all the cushion one can choose
who knows but what some last
galvanic impulse will upraise the arm
or squeeze the throat to whisper while it can:
‘There is nothing in life as beautiful as life…’?
Bruce Dawe
Sometimes gladness crooks me like an arm
Adoro te or some more crazy hymn
scrambling like a monkey up a rope
to bang for hours in my soul’s swung bell
that I was born and blessed with the broad thumb
of sheer stupidity and doused unknowing
in such uncertainty I only need
to run my tongue across my lips to taste
the salt of that immersion
Down the aisle
come all my years, none altogether miserable, none
without the saving grace of some mistake that bent me
in the sly human shape I recognise
- day-labourer slouching in at the ninth hour
to pick up a quick penny Oh ordinary
holiness of people shining out
against the blurred reredos of their dreams!
I never knew a friend who did not leave me
the richer for the knowing, pour them on
- I wait for the friends I’ve yet to meet who crowd
like seasons, apt, amenable, beyond
the familiar ambiguity of the hill.
Along each vein like air-bubbles children run
and when the heart bursts suddenly or descends
in swooning spiral to the lonesome ground
and the grasses with their dry blank commentary
are all the cushion one can choose
who knows but what some last
galvanic impulse will upraise the arm
or squeeze the throat to whisper while it can:
‘There is nothing in life as beautiful as life…’?