Winteredge

                                            
This is a poem I wrote a few years after my conversion to Christ in 1966.  The poem is about that conversion as seen from the inside.  I've tinkered with it over the years--minor revisions--but it's still essentially the same.




           WINTEREDGE

“Midwinter spring is its own season . . . .”
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets


I

No light here
nor vision of silent stars
where wrestle a soul in sludgetrough twisting
ankle through neckbone, forcing a snicker to hide
horror with smart
graffiti on gravestones,
hide in thick loneness cancer crawl from

empty, empty, nothing
swallow and lie deadly,
swallow dread in chaos and dead night.
Endless pointless interstellar void,
no hand, no help,
no go no end no way
bewilder benight be nigh be something

I it is I here
hear me here—aye, eye
see my shuddery self-embracing self-
effacing soil-searching self-entangled
solitude.
Blotchy fevered exiles
need sickbed, water, sleep:  need nurse.


II

I know, my soul, little
of you, see not deep
among your ways and turnings, nor can mind hope,
blundering through wilderness, to grip what, why—
numb ganglion—
yet do I know, my soul,
untethered howling fierce afraid, us.

Galactic billions, eons
whirling, measureless torrent
fixed to still tableaux in the eye that sees
lensed cosmology.  Frantic atomic nebular
being of me:
telescoping inscape
now to one still point beyond all roil, fix.

Fix:  eye, ear, mind
close into one, one sound,
one unformulated, unanalyzed, unasked thought,
one sun seen center to center, now and ever.
Vanishing world,
wheatstalk souls into focus
cry articulate anguish, louder, looking, lone—

poor naked wretches
pitied in the storm, still
and always year by minute not in mouthless
statistical want, but sole, particular, mother-named
soul athirst
for a sip of life,
starve in ribbed famine, starve in rice.

      And I starve, eating
      honey fuels but not feeds
my choice, my harm, my blame, shame, game
lost and life, broken, cannot mend, cannot—
I must pay
and cannot mend,
pay out, pay all, how, who pray, who.

Lonely in throngs,
weary in slack, sick
in surfeit, writhing weeping restless reaching—
each me hanging always on the cross of myself.
Need is known,
longing carved on lips:
you who hung and bled and lost and won, help.


III

Beauty in small things
all lovely in being.
Eyes have wept yet can see, surprised
fingers can touch, ears hear breath come,
housefly whir
water faucet gargle
couch springs, door slam, diesel engine, jay

squawk, aerial carillon,
morning chord and rejoice
in ruddy faces, cataract shouting and chorus
of pines sway held firm in airy arms humming
lullaby—listen:
moon-drawn tempest spume
to tumbling cloud and leaf, all sing:  praise him.

Beauty in all things,
joy of this and that,
fountain of bloodbouncing coasterride youth.
Center here, soul’s heart’s center, home—
infinite
red blood love
held in the center, the core, holds me:  his love.

Still doubt nibbles
margins of a mending heart,
whisper insinuates it’s just a fairy tale
after all.  To the word and to the testimony!
Bulwark ever
      trust (sole bedrock rest)
in Christ our hope and his astounding peace.

Father who sees
     my disease, knows my secrecies,
hears my babble, brag and whimper:  take
my heart, a cracked and blistered wayward seed.
Plant me now
to grow and to belong.
Night and night’s cold silence yield to dawn.