Poems for life
The Grandeur of God
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod ?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs -
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah ! bright wings.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Other
that I can hear the small owl calling
far off and a fox barking
miles away. It is then that I lie
in the lean hours awake listening
to the swell bom somewhere in the Atlantic
rising and falling, rising and falling
wave on wave on the long shore
by the village, that is without light
and companionless. And the thought comes
of that other being who is awake, too,
letting our prayers break on him,
not like this for a few hours,
but for days, years, for eternity.
R S Thomas
Late fragment
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
Raymond Carver
Rainbow
de rainbow
you know
God know
what he doing -
one big smile
across the sky -
I tell you
God got style
the man got style
When you see
raincloud pass
and de rainbow
make a show
I tell you
is God doing
limbo
the man doing
limbo
But sometimes
you know
when I see
de rainbow
so full of glow
& curving
like she bearing child
I does want to know
if God ain't a woman
If that is so
the woman she got style
man she got style
John Agard
