The Elevation

Today I offer another poem, this time of recent composition.  I haven't much to say about it except that it follows, in some measure, the speaker's stream of consciousness and is meant to be more a compilation of the speaker's thoughts at the moment of the Elevation than anything too heavily theological (not that I object to such things, though!).  Thus, without further ado:

+JMJ

The Elevation

By Caitlin Clancy

Copyright 2012

Sweet smoke-clouds waft over the silence –

A stillness pervades eager air –

As lifted above the high table,

Of Presence a few are aware.

O halo of light in hard darkness!

White purity over fine gold!

How comes it, my Lord, that You dwell here?

But of this no man is yet told

Gracious gift of the Father to mankind –

Sons of Adam and Atreus all!

Crippled with cravings corrosive

And cursed with the death of the Fall

Yet strangely is given, this goodness –

Upon tongues of traitors He rests

Calling in voice of thin silence

Whom Angels taste not nor request

Thus man in his desert partaketh

In Manna he never deserved

Into his house there descendeth

The one only who perished unswerved

Then round the stone table they gather

The ones who deep mystr’y behold

Eternity blending with time -

Eclipse of new, ancient and old

Simplicity of Godly glory

Comes down like the fall of soft dew

And hear now the words from the Logos -

Bold, good, wild, utter, and True!

Does not our blood rush in triumph?

Do not our souls pound yet amain?

Here in our midst is Existence!

And Beauty Himself is not vain.

Exulting – an ecstatic vigor!

Truly each, every has read –

Receiving for once is Becoming;

These children are raised from the dead.

King’s blood burns surely within them –

Divinity’s untainted flow,

And through dimm’ed veil of the senses

Perceiving the One whom they know.

The silence gives way to proud organ

And fades in the thoughts of men’s time

But still in the silence there whispers

One constant and eternal rhyme –

And only they shall foreknow it

Who took what they, unworthy, love –

And rev’renced with filial wonder

A child, a lord, and a dove.

The Madness to the Method

+JMJ

Pardon my pause in posting!  Life has been on triple speed and as of late I've not had much time to pursue the art of blogging.  Nevertheless, here is a poem I wrote for my English professor last semester when she required me to use a particular analytical method on a paper.  While the Method was misery, the poem it produced - in the style of T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - was, I think, well worth it.  

The Madness to the Method: A Highly Imperfect Poem for a Highly Infuriating Tool

By Caitlin Clancy

Let us go then, you and I,

Our good senses to defy,

And use methodic madness

For the English teacher’s gladness.

With its tedium

Of broken argument,

The Method wanders with insidious intent,

Into the minds of unsuspecting youth

And rubs its claws

Upon the light of truth.

But do not ask what

More cannot be done –

For, quicker than words run,

There will be time

To murder, uncreate,

That awful thing,

Which, dropped onto your plate,

Has, questioning,

Beat you much

But seldom given aid –

And drowned the voice

Of muse-like fair mermaid

It seems to me that Method

Is a pin

That sticks the panicked poet

To a wall –

In jest, perhaps,

Or some half-cruel sport,

Where aching writer cannot make retort

And I’ll confess me very unsurprised

To find Method on a table, etherized,

And hear its dying voice recall,

Yes, drowning with a dying fall –

But I shall not much miss it,

No, not at all.