Dear brother, show one how you loved the Son
In her. You knew the Lord gave her to you,
Who left all hopes and homes and callings, too,
Because you loved your Father found above
The earthly frays of fate. What curious ways
The Lord saw fit to fan your living blaze!
It has been said you walked with her and wed.
How did you long, or read the Song of Songs?
How did you build the place where she belonged?
You were the bridegroom just as much the bride,
No, twice the groom; God's love of her the fair
Joined her to you and, in you, Christ in there.
Dear sister, show us how the love of Jesus
Espoused you, mind and heart, to him, the blind
And barefoot troubadour. You left behind
The love of mortal men for something more
Eternal--fertile, like an endless year
Of spring. Was that the love that made you hear
The word your Lord sang through the clown ignored?
Insane, they brayed, because you dearly prayed
To be a beggar's bride. Then, to have paid
With golden hair the dowry! Sister Clare,
You stole your body in the name of God;
Now teach us all to love like thieving Francis,
Your brother, father, son, and willing clod.
May 30, 2003
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6 comments:
Existing transcendentally requires many people to be formed together into one.
Never Bet the Devil Your Head, by EA Poe.
Another curveball. Please say a little more, Anonymous. What is it that brings Poe to mind? How are you reading this poem?
I suspect you are writing transcendental poetry, while Poe was the supreme anti-transcendentalist. That contrast, I thought, would fascinate you. Perhaps your place was the frog pond is in the 1840s.
You know your literature better than I do. You are also more widely read than me: you know Hesse, Poe, Sartre, and folk tales (having cited Rapunzel). But alas (or alleluia), I do not identify with the 19th-century New England transcendentalists. And while to be an American today is to be an Emersonian, I do not identify with Emerson or the lesser lights.
There is a yearning for transcendence in this love letter to St. Francis of Assisi and St. Clare, but I'm too Catholic to be a transcendentalist. But upon re-reading this piece, I can now see what you observe. This poem is one of the last I ever wrote in this fanciful, Romantic style. I don't think I would ever write this way again. (Compare this to the earthy, bluesy songs I write nowadays!)
For what it's worth, Boston Common is my holy ground. I live a few blocks away from the Common. I work in an office on Tremont Street facing the park. I worship on the Common every Sunday with a church for the homeless. As for the Frog Pond, I've got mixed emotions. Once I went on a date with a girl who took me ice skating on the pond. It was a clumsy experience, figuratively and literally, and it was our last date.
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