by Oscar Romero It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a […]
by Adam Zagajewski The room I work in is as foursquare as half a pair of dice. It holds a wooden table with a stubborn peasant’s profile, pouting Hapsburg lip. From the window I see a few skinny trees, wispy clouds, and toddlers, always happy and loud. Sometimes a windshield glints in the distance or, […]
by Matthew Zapruder Oh this Diet Coke is really good, though come to think of it it tastes like nothing plus the idea of chocolate, or an acquaintance of chocolate speaking fondly of certain times it and chocolate had spoken of nothing, or nothing remembering a field in which it once at the most wondrous […]
by Denise Levertov The world is not with us enough O taste and see the subway Bible poster said, meaning The Lord, meaning if anything all that lives to the imagination’s tongue, grief, mercy, language, tangerine, weather, to breathe them, bite, savor, chew, swallow, transform into our flesh our deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince, […]
by e.e. cummings all ignorance toboggans into know and trudges up to ignorance again: but winter’s not forever, even snow melts; and if spring should spoil the game, what then? all history’s a winter sport or three: but were it five, i’d still insist that all history is too small for even me; for me […]
by Denise Levertov The Marriage You have my attention: which is a tenderness, beyond what I may say. And I have your constancy to something beyond myself. The force of your commitment charges us—we live in the sweep of it, taking courage one from the other. The Marriage (II) I want to speak to you. […]
A few weeks ago we read Luke 15:11-32, the story of the prodigal son, and read the Elizabeth Bishop poem One Art. Kathleen mentioned that Bishop also wrote a poem about the prodigal son. Here is the text: The Prodigal The brown enormous odor he lived by was too close, with its breathing and thick […]
by Thomas Merton When psalms surprise me with their music And antiphons turn to rum The Spirit sings: the bottom drops out of my soul. And from the center of my cellar, Love, louder than thunder Opens a heaven of naked air. New eyes awaken. I send Love’s name into the world with wings And […]
by Charles Simic They arrive inside The object at evening, There’s no one to greet them. The lamps they carry Cast their shadows Back into their own minds. They write in their journals: The sky and the earth Are of the same impenetrable color. If there are rivers and lakes, They must be under the […]
by Scott Cairns In the midst of His long and silent observation of eternal presence, during which He, now and again, would find His own attention spiraling in that abysmal soup, God draws up what He will call His voice from that unfathomable slumber where it lay in that great, sepulchral Throat and out from […]