How much grit do you think you’ ve got?
Can you quit a thing that you like a lot?
You may talk of pluck; it’ s an easy word,
And where’ er you go it is often heard;
But can you tell to a jot or guess
Just how much courage you now possess?
You may stand to trouble and keep your grin,
But have you tackled self-discipline?
Have you ever issued commands to you
To quit the things that you like to do,
And then, when tempted and sorely swayed,
Those rigid orders have you obeyed?
Not a sign of life we rouse
In any square close-shuttered house
That flanks the road we amble down
Toward far trenches through the town.
The dark, snow-slushy, empty street...
Tingle of frost in brow and feet...
Horse-breath goes dimly up like smoke.
No sound but the smacking stroke
Of a sergeant flings each arm
Out and across to keep him warm,
And the sudden splashing crack
Of ice-pools broken by our track.
Amazement fills my heart to-night,
Amaze and awful fears;
I am a ship that sees no light,
But blindly onward steers.
Flung toward heaven’ s toppling rage,
Sunk between steep and steep,
A lost and wondrous fight I wage
With the embattled deep.
I neither know nor care at length
Where drives the storm about;
Only I summon all my strength
And swear to ride it out.
Oh, what am I but an engine, shod
With muscle and flesh, by the hand of God,
Speeding on through the dense, dark night,
Guided alone by the soul’ s white light.
Often and often my mad heart tires,
And hates its way with a bitter hate,
And longs to follow its own desires,
And leave the end in the hands of fate.
Aulder than mammoth or than mastodon
Deep i’ the herts o’ a’ men lurk scaut-heid
Skrymmorie monsters few daur look upon.
Brides sometimes catch their wild een, scansin’ reid,
Beekin’ abune the herts they thocht to lo’ e
And horror-stricken ken that i’ themselves
A like beast stan’ s, and lookin’ love thro’ and thro’
There’ s teuch sauchs growin’ i’ the Reuch Heuch Hauch.
Like the sauls o’ the damned are they,
And ilk ane yoked in a whirligig
Is birlin’ the lee-lang day.
O we come doon frae oor stormiest moods,
And Licht like a bird i’ the haun’,
But the teuch sauchs there i’ the Reuch Heuch Hauch
As the deil’ s ain hert are thrawn.
What god will catch me
when I’ m down, when I’ ve taken
sufficient drink to reveal
myself, when my words are little
more than a blurring
of consonant and vowel?
I’ m drunk on spring:
branches of waxy leaves that
greet me at my driveway,
a family clutching
trays of sweets.
How can I sing of this?
If I cannot sing, then
make me mute. Or lend me
words, send me
the taste of another’ s prayer,
cool as a coin
newly minted on the tongue.
At six I lived for spells:
how a few Hawaiian words could call
up the rain, could hymn like the sea
in the long swirl of chambers
curling in the nautilus of a shell,
how Amida’ s ballads of the Buddhaland
in the drone of the priest’ s liturgy
could conjure money from the poor
and give them nothing but mantras,
the strange syllables that healed desire.
I lived for stories about the war
my grandfather told over hana cards,
slapping them down on the mats
with a sharp Japanese kiai.
I have no idea what priests
dream of on Christmas Eve, what prayer
a crippled dog might whine before the shotgun.
I have no more sense of what is sacred
than a monk might have, sweeping the temple
floor, slow gestures of honor to the left,
the right. Maybe the leaf of grass tells us
what is worthwhile. Maybe it tells us nothing.
Perhaps a sacred moment is a photograph
you look at over and over again, the one
of you and her, hands lightly clasped like you
did before prayer became necessary, the one
Where was it that we went that night?
That long, low building: floodlights
rimmed in lavender, the moon ringed
in rose. I would rather, then, have stayed
outside, where spiderwebs glowed
like jellyfish in the damp yew hedges,
where the paths were chalky pebbles
set with giant stepping stones.
But the film was starting. In the air-
conditioned dark, a crowd of strangers,
strange families (not from our church)
in rows of metal folding chairs to see
