God & the Divine

The weaver bird built in our house
And laid its eggs on our only tree.
We did not want to send it away.
We watched the building of the nest
And supervised the egg-laying.
And the weaver returned in the guise of the owner.
Preaching salvation to us that owned the house.
They say it came from the west
Where the storms at sea had felled the gulls
And the fishers dried their nets by lantern light.
Its sermon is the divination of ourselves
And our new horizon limits at its nest.

We go on and we tremble.
God says we can screw now.
God says to give up all your lovers,
Time to die.

When I was younger I drove a Lincoln.
God said to trade it in.
A tad lovely, then, and terrible,
And sick of my own kind,
I wanted to become a woman.
I wanted to wash the feet of other women
In public, I wanted his eyes
On me, olives on the ground.

I gave you my hand,
Now I go around with my sleeve
Tucked in my coat.

I climb no trees, touch
One breast at a time,
Hold no hands myself.

Hatred and vengeance, my eternal portion,
Scarce can endure delay of execution,
Wait, with impatient readiness, to seize my
Soul in a moment.

Damned below Judas: more abhorred than he was,
Who for a few pence sold his holy master.
Twice betrayed, Jesus me, the last delinquent,
Deems the profanest.

Thus heav’ n-ward all things tend. For all were once
Perfect, and all must be at length restor’ d.
So God has greatly purpos’ d; who would else
In his dishonour’ d works himself endure
Dishonour, and be wrong’ d without redress.
Haste then, and wheel away a shatter’ d world,
Ye slow-revolving seasons! we would see,
(A sight to which our eyes are strangers yet)
A world that does not dread and hate his laws,
And suffer for its crime; would learn how fair
The creature is that God pronounces good,

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thou

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Originally appeared in the December 1912 issue of Poetry magazine.

The cost of flight is landing.
On this warm winter day in the southwest,
down here on the edge of the border I want
to go to France where we all came from
where the Occident was born near the ancient
caves near Lascaux. At home I’ m only
sitting on the lip of this black hole, a well
that descends to the center of the earth.
With a big telescope aimed straight down
I see a red dot of fire and hear the beast howling.
My back is suppurating with disease,
the heart lurches left and right,
the brain sings its ditties.

Pain trains an undisciplined mind.
I will end yours if  you end mine.

Little feet, little feet are playing
Hopscotch among the landmines.

Hope has worked miracles before.
If  yours didn't, how can mine?

I could have learned to welcome night,
If only  you had been mine.

How dare you put words in God's mouth,
Shail?  Why not. He put ashes in mine.

Infinity, when all things it beheld
In Nothing, and of Nothing all did build,
Upon what Base was fixt the Lath wherein
He turn�d this Globe, and riggalld it so trim?
Who blew the Bellows of His Furnace Vast?
Or held the Mould wherein the world was Cast?
Who laid its Corner Stone? Or whose Command?
Where stand the Pillars upon which it stands?
Who Lac�de and Fillitted the earth so fine,
With Rivers like green Ribbons Smaragdine?
Who made the Sea's its Selvedge, and it locks

Cleanse me of my iniquity
and wash away my sins.
Laugh, Lord, at my obliquity.
In you laughter begins.

Regard this little steeple.
You gave to the High Plains
a flock of sheep, the people
who drink deep when it rains.

I shall number all the stones
Assyria has laid low.
I shall number all my bones
as David did long ago.

Oh, what a troubled route man took,
descending from the trees:
cave paintings and the printed book
made on his bended knees.

What god was it that would open
earth’ s picture book and see the two
of us on a road, snowfields glittering
on every side and poplars bent like
the fingers of an old man clutching
what he loved about the sun?

Which one was it that would peer
into our thatched, white-washed
farmhouse, and see the fur, flies,
and shit-stained walls? Which one
laughed at the barbed wire fences,
the wall topped with broken glass?