Fill the hearts of The Faithful
in JESUS name
Amen
🔷 ⚜️ 🔷
1
There is a gold light in certain old paintings
That represents a diffusion of sunlight.
It is like happiness, when we are happy.
It comes from everywhere and from nowhere at once, this light,
And the poor soldiers sprawled at the foot of the Cross
Share in this charity equally with the cross.
2
Orpheus hesitated beside the black river
With so much to look forward to he looked back.
We think he sang then, but the song is lost.
At least he had seen once more the beloved back.
I say the song went this way: O prolongNow the sorrow if that is all there is to prolong.
3
The world is very dusty, uncle. Let us work.
One day the sickness shall pass from the earth for good.
The orchard will bloom; someone will play the guitar.
Our work will be seen as strong and clean and good.
And all that we suffered through having existed
Shall be forgotten as though it had never existed.
How fashionably sad my early poems are!
On their clipped lawns and hedges the snows fall;
Rains beat against the tarpaulins of their porches,
Where, Sunday mornings, the bored children sprawl,
Reading the comics, before the parents rise.
-- The rhymes, the meters, how they paralyze!
Who walks out through their streets tonight? No one.
You know these small towns, how all traffic stops
At ten; the corner streetlamps gathering moths;
And the pale mannequins waiting in dark shops,
Undressed, and ready for the dreams of men.
-- Now the long silence. Now the beginning again.
Donald Justice "Collected Poems" -- Albert A. Knopf. Inc ©2004
The LORD says
Arise,
Plead your case before the mountains,
Let the hills hear your voice.
Hear the rod!
Blessed is he
who after death
can approach
The LORD
and find friendship
in the Father's embrace.
Lines 187-188