Tag: Malcolm Guite

Pathway Poem #16

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Today’s poem is by Gwyneth Lewis. She is a Welsh poet who writes in both Welsh and English. I discovered her in Malcolm Guite’s The Word in the Wilderness: A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter where he shared her wonderful poem “Homecoming”. But I will save that one for a later blog.

For today, her poem “Midwinter Marriage” seems appropriate. It is found in her book Parables & Faxes published by Bloodaxe Books. I hope you will read it slowly, twice.

Midwinter Marriage

After autumn’s fever and its vivid trees,
infected with colour as the light died back,
we’ve settled into greyness: fields behind gauze,

hedges feint in tracing-paper mists,
the sun diminished to a midday moon
and daylight degraded to the monochrome

of puritan weather. This healing cold
holds us to pared-down simplicities.
Now is the worse-case solstice time,

acutest angle of the shortest day,
a time to condemn the frippery of leaves
and know that trees stand deltas to the sky

producing nothing. A time to take your ease
in not knowing, in blankness, in vacuity.
This is the season that has married me.

You may find in the poem some wonderful metaphors worthy of your meditation. If so, don’t allow my meandering to cause you to forget to take time with those images that have attracted you.

However, what attracted me were the last three lines. “[Winter is] a time to take your ease / in not knowing, in blankness, in vacuity. / This is the season that has married me.” One of the most influential books of Christian mysticism or spirituality is a little anonymous book from the 14th century entitled The Cloud of Unknowing. The author stresses that our understanding can never penetrate the cloud of unknowing that separates us from God who is incomprehensible. Only love alone can reach God.

Winter time is appropriate as a time to remember how little we can fathom of God’s nature–though what we can fathom is beautiful, full of spring time life and glory. Each season carries within it metaphor and symbol to draw us toward the divine. Even dark winter.

It is easy for me to be married to winter, as Lewis imagines herself to be. Perhaps it is my melancholy nature. Whatever the case, winter can help me experience God. It is is a pathway, perhaps dark, but a true pathway, none the less.

When I read this poem last year, it inspired the following haiku:

mid-winter darkness
monochrome unknowing time
emptiness resounds

As always you may share this blog with others and encourage them to follow. And I would love to hear your thoughts on winter!

Peace,
LaMon

Pathway Poem #5

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I continue to share poems from some of my favorite poets. I have found poetry a way of spiritual growth, so I share these that we might grow together.

Today’s poet is Malcolm Guite. The poem is entitled “What if …” It is found in The Singing Bowl: Collected Poems by Malcolm Guite. As always, I encourage you to read this poem aloud. This one is really fun to do so–unless you get tongue-tied.

What if every word we say
Never ends or fades away,
Gathers volume, gathers way,
Drums and dins us with dismay,
Surges on some dreadful day
When we cannot get away
Whelms us till we drown?

What if not a word is lost?
What if every word we cast;
Cruel, cunning, cold, accurst,
Every word we cut and paste,
Echoes to us from the past,
Fares and finds us first and last,
Haunts and hunts us down?

What if every murmuration,
Every otiose oration,
Every blogger’s obfuscation,
Every tweeted titivation,
Every oath and imprecation,
Insidious insinuation,
Every verbal aberration,
Unexamined asservation,
Idiotic iteration,
Every facile explanation,
Drags us to the ground?

What if each polite evasion,
Every word of defamation,
Insults made by implication,
Querulous prevarication,
Compromise in convocation,
Propaganda for the nation,
False or flattering persuasion,
Blackmail and manipulation,
Simulated desperation
Grows to such reverberation
That it shakes our own foundation,
Shakes and brings us down?

Better that some words be lost,
Better that they should not last,
Tongues of fire and violence.
Word through whom the world is blessed,
Word in whom all words are graced,
Do no bring us to the test,
Give our clamant voices rest,
And the rest is silence.

One word of explanation; in the final stanza lines four and five the term “Word” is a reference to the ancient Greek philosophical term logos. It was also used in the New Testament book the Gospel of John. In both contexts, The logos is the prism through which the world was created.

Guite reminds us of how the words we use are filled with destructive power. The poem closes with an affirmation that useful words are more likely to be spoken out of the background of silence. In calm silence, right words, helpful words, even holy words, can arise to bless all who will hear them. May we practice a little silence.

Peace to you all,
LaMon


A Morning Walk

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Last night I read a sonnet in Malcolm Guite’s After Prayer: New Sonnets and Other Poems. It is in a series of sonnets on the images George Herbert used in his wonderful poem Prayer (1). The poem can be found in George Herbert: 100 Poems, selected and edited by Helen Wilcox.

The image for this sonnet was “heaven in ordinary”. Guite’s poem was beautiful. It helped me write this haiku:

with the light of Christ
heaven in ordinary
shines through creation

Then this morning after writing in my journal, I went for a walk after writing. Before I left, I prayed that I would see some of that divine light shining during my walk. Returning home, I wrote this haiku:

windy november ground
covered in dead wet leaves…
promise of new life

May you see the divine light in your life today!

As always feel free to share my meditations with friends. Anyone can become a follower and receive these in you email inbox. Just click on the appropriate icon–near the bottom, I think 🙂