poetry lamenting war #12
Mar. 31st, 2003 08:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyRadiation
a liturgy for August 6 and 9
A Call to Worship
Stand in the sun long enough to remember
that nothing is made without light
spoken so firmly
our flesh is its imprint.
Whirlpool nebula, the eye of the cat, snow
crystals, knotholes, the X-ray diffraction
pattern of beryl--all these echo the original
word that hums in the uncharted mind.
Listen and answer.
Responses
If the corn shrinks into radiant air and our bread
is a burning cinder
like chaff we will wither and burn
If the thrush and oriole vanish, borne off in the wind,
unhoused and barren
we forget how to sing and to mourn
If our cities and mountains fall into the fields
and sleep with the stones
how can we leaf through old photographs and letters
how summon our lives
our hands will be smoke
Confession
The bomb exploded in the air above the city destroyed hospitals markets houses temples burned thousands in darkened air in radiant air hid them in rubble one hundred thousand dead. As many lived were crippled diseased they bled from inside from the mouth from sores in the skin they examined their children daily for signs scars invisible one day might float to the surface of the body the next red and posioned risen from nowhere
We made the scars and the radiant air
We made people invisible as numbers.
We did this.
An Ancient Text
There is a dim glimmering of light
unput out in men. Let them walk, let them walk
that the darkness overtake them not.
Private Meditation
(Shore birds over
the waves dipping and turning their wings together,
their leader invisible, her signal their
common instinct, the long work of years
felt in a moment's flash and veer--
we could be like that.)
--Margaret Gibson, Long Walks in the Afternoon. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982.
LINKS:
Here is a biography, with links to poems and an audio file of Gibson reading (
a liturgy for August 6 and 9
A Call to Worship
Stand in the sun long enough to remember
that nothing is made without light
spoken so firmly
our flesh is its imprint.
Whirlpool nebula, the eye of the cat, snow
crystals, knotholes, the X-ray diffraction
pattern of beryl--all these echo the original
word that hums in the uncharted mind.
Listen and answer.
Responses
If the corn shrinks into radiant air and our bread
is a burning cinder
like chaff we will wither and burn
If the thrush and oriole vanish, borne off in the wind,
unhoused and barren
we forget how to sing and to mourn
If our cities and mountains fall into the fields
and sleep with the stones
how can we leaf through old photographs and letters
how summon our lives
our hands will be smoke
Confession
The bomb exploded in the air above the city destroyed hospitals markets houses temples burned thousands in darkened air in radiant air hid them in rubble one hundred thousand dead. As many lived were crippled diseased they bled from inside from the mouth from sores in the skin they examined their children daily for signs scars invisible one day might float to the surface of the body the next red and posioned risen from nowhere
We made the scars and the radiant air
We made people invisible as numbers.
We did this.
An Ancient Text
There is a dim glimmering of light
unput out in men. Let them walk, let them walk
that the darkness overtake them not.
Private Meditation
(Shore birds over
the waves dipping and turning their wings together,
their leader invisible, her signal their
common instinct, the long work of years
felt in a moment's flash and veer--
we could be like that.)
--Margaret Gibson, Long Walks in the Afternoon. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982.
LINKS:
Here is a biography, with links to poems and an audio file of Gibson reading (
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Radiation
a liturgy for August 6 and 9
<em>A Call to Worship</em>
Stand in the sun long enough to remember
that nothing is made without light
spoken so firmly
our flesh is its imprint.
Whirlpool nebula, the eye of the cat, snow
crystals, knotholes, the X-ray diffraction
pattern of beryl--all these echo the original
word that hums in the uncharted mind.
Listen and answer.
<em>Responses</em>
If the corn shrinks into radiant air and our bread
is a burning cinder
<em>like chaff we will wither and burn</em>
If the thrush and oriole vanish, borne off in the wind,
unhoused and barren
<em>we forget how to sing and to mourn</em>
If our cities and mountains fall into the fields
and sleep with the stones
how can we leaf through old photographs and letters
how summon our lives
<em>our hands will be smoke</em>
<em>Confession</em>
The bomb exploded in the air above the city destroyed hospitals markets houses temples burned thousands in darkened air in radiant air hid them in rubble one hundred thousand dead. As many lived were crippled diseased they bled from inside from the mouth from sores in the skin they examined their children daily for signs scars invisible one day might float to the surface of the body the next red and posioned risen from nowhere
We made the scars and the radiant air
We made people invisible as numbers.
We did this.
<em>An Ancient Text</em>
There is a dim glimmering of light
unput out in men. Let them walk, let them walk
that the darkness overtake them not.
<em>Private Meditation</em>
(Shore birds over
the waves dipping and turning their wings together,
their leader invisible, her signal their
common instinct, the long work of years
felt in a moment's flash and veer--
we could be like that.)
--Margaret Gibson, <em>Long Walks in the Afternoon</em>. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982.
LINKS:
<a href="http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v1n1/poetry/gibson_m/gibson_m.htm">Here</a> is a biography, with links to poems and an audio file of Gibson reading (<a href=""http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/index.htm"><em>Blackbird Online Journal</em></a>).
<a href="http://www.tricycle.com/"><em>Tricycle: The Buddhist Review</em></a> also has a <a href="http://www.tricycle.com/margaretgibson.html">selection</a> of Gibson's poems.
<a href="http://www.lsu.edu/lsupress/catalog/Spring2003/books/Gibson_Autumn_Grasses.html">Here</a>'s information on her newest book (out this year!), also from <a href="http://www.lsu.edu/lsupress/">Louisiana State Press</a>.
a liturgy for August 6 and 9
<em>A Call to Worship</em>
Stand in the sun long enough to remember
that nothing is made without light
spoken so firmly
our flesh is its imprint.
Whirlpool nebula, the eye of the cat, snow
crystals, knotholes, the X-ray diffraction
pattern of beryl--all these echo the original
word that hums in the uncharted mind.
Listen and answer.
<em>Responses</em>
If the corn shrinks into radiant air and our bread
is a burning cinder
<em>like chaff we will wither and burn</em>
If the thrush and oriole vanish, borne off in the wind,
unhoused and barren
<em>we forget how to sing and to mourn</em>
If our cities and mountains fall into the fields
and sleep with the stones
how can we leaf through old photographs and letters
how summon our lives
<em>our hands will be smoke</em>
<em>Confession</em>
The bomb exploded in the air above the city destroyed hospitals markets houses temples burned thousands in darkened air in radiant air hid them in rubble one hundred thousand dead. As many lived were crippled diseased they bled from inside from the mouth from sores in the skin they examined their children daily for signs scars invisible one day might float to the surface of the body the next red and posioned risen from nowhere
We made the scars and the radiant air
We made people invisible as numbers.
We did this.
<em>An Ancient Text</em>
There is a dim glimmering of light
unput out in men. Let them walk, let them walk
that the darkness overtake them not.
<em>Private Meditation</em>
(Shore birds over
the waves dipping and turning their wings together,
their leader invisible, her signal their
common instinct, the long work of years
felt in a moment's flash and veer--
we could be like that.)
--Margaret Gibson, <em>Long Walks in the Afternoon</em>. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982.
LINKS:
<a href="http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v1n1/poetry/gibson_m/gibson_m.htm">Here</a> is a biography, with links to poems and an audio file of Gibson reading (<a href=""http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/index.htm"><em>Blackbird Online Journal</em></a>).
<a href="http://www.tricycle.com/"><em>Tricycle: The Buddhist Review</em></a> also has a <a href="http://www.tricycle.com/margaretgibson.html">selection</a> of Gibson's poems.
<a href="http://www.lsu.edu/lsupress/catalog/Spring2003/books/Gibson_Autumn_Grasses.html">Here</a>'s information on her newest book (out this year!), also from <a href="http://www.lsu.edu/lsupress/">Louisiana State Press</a>.
