#lent poetry

[septembersung]

Good Friday Christina Rossetti

Am I a stone, and not a sheep, That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross, To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss, And yet not weep? Not so those women loved Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee; Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly; Not so the thief was moved; Not so the Sun and Moon Which hid their faces in a starless sky, A horror of great darkness at broad noon – I, only I. Yet give not o’er, But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock; Greater than Moses, turn and look once more And smite a rock.

[seraphim-eternal]

A little while, and you will see me no longer. Again in a little while, and you will see me.

John 16:16

[9fruit]

notes on the below by ada limón, published in “the carrying” (2018)

[asoftepiloguemylove]

i will do as devils do. fall.

Sylvia Plath The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath / S. Osborn Blasphemies at the 5th Street Station / Kate Cayley Lent / retirementfund (on etsy) BEGOTTN HORROR PATCH / Ethel Cain Sun Bleached Files / Nicola Yoon The Sun is Also a Star / unknown

i. Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

[ "I need a father. I need a mother. I need some older, wiser being to cry to. I talk to God, but the sky is empty." ]

ii. S. Osborn, Blasphemies at the 5th Street Station

[ " 'if there is a light then i am going to swallow it. if there is a god then i'm going to make him cry.' / - s. osborn, from 'blasphemies at the 5th street station,' published in The Rising Phoenix Review (via lifeinpoetry)" ]

iii. Kate Cayley, Lent

[ "When I think of God, I think of hiding. The way a child hides. In hope of being found." ]

iv. retirementfund, BEGOTTN HORROR PATCH

[ Black patch with a screenshot form the horror movie Begotten. A grainy black and white image of a woman standing as she looks down at something. "GOD IS DEAD / ALL HAIL NATURE" ]

v. Ethel Cain, Sun Bleached Files

[ "What I wouldn't give to be in Church this Sunday / Listening to the choir, so heartfelt, all singing / God loves you, but not enough to save you" ]

vii. Nicola Yoon, The Sun is Also a Star

[ "I wish I still felt that way. Growing up and seeing your parents flaws is like losing your religion. I don't believe in God anymore. I don't believe in my father either." ]

vii. unknown

[ Black and white drawing of a statue of a man looking upwards into the distance. "GOD ONLY LISTENS TO ME WHEN I SPEAK THROUGH SIN / IN TRANSLATION MY PRAYERS FALL FROM GRACE BUT I AM HEARD" ]

[cloudyfacewithjam]

Augustin Jordan (César Domboy) in SAS: Rogue Heroes Season 1 Episode 6

[fictionadventurer]

There's nothing quite like the euphoria of finding a book at exactly the right time. A book that you might mildly enjoy or even dislike at another time, but you happen to come across it in just the right mood or mindset, or at just the right age or just the right time of year, so it fits perfectly into your heart and it's elevated into something spectacular.

[alpha-furry-tb0y]

she's the most girl ever and I love her! The animal is a pika, they tend to form relationships with rabbits in the wild, and it just makes me think of her

I'll probably repost this with her tattoo at some point

[meadow-roses]

In the middle of the world, in the centre Of the polluted heart of man, a midden; A stake stemmed in the rubbish.

From lipless jaws, Adam's skull Gasped up through the garbage: 'I lie in the discarded dross of history, Ground down again to the red dust, The obliterated image. Create me.'

From lips cracked with thirst, the voice That sounded once over the billows of chaos When the royal banners advanced, replied through the smother of dark: 'All is accomplished, all is made new, and look - All things, once more, are good.'

Then, with a loud cry, exhaled His spirit.

Golgotha, John Heath-Stubbs

[lionofchaeronea]

An Epigram for Holy Saturday

Anthologia Palatina I.54 (author unknown) O suffering, o cross, blood that drives away sufferings, Wash all the wickedness from my soul.

ὦ πάθος, ὦ σταυρός, παθέων ἐλατήριον αἷμα,      πλῦνον ἐμῆς ψυχῆς πᾶσαν ἀτασθαλίην.

Blood of the Redeemer, Bartolomeo Passarotti (1529-1592)

[culturevulturette]

The Lent Lily

'Tis spring; come out to ramble   The hilly brakes around, For under thorn and bramble   About the hollow ground   The primroses are found.

And there's the windflower chilly   With all the winds at play, And there's the Lenten lily   That has not long to stay   And dies on Easter day.

And since till girls go maying   You find the primrose still, And find the windflower playing   With every wind at will,   But not the daffodil,

Bring baskets now, and sally   Upon the spring's array, And bear from hill and valley   The daffodil away   That dies on Easter day.

A. E. Houseman

[a-queer-seminarian]

Glory to the God who shows us how to rest.

How can you take the time to rest today?

[septembersung]

Simon the Cyrenian Speaks Countee Cullen

He never spoke a word to me, And yet he called my name. He never gave a sign to me, And yet I knew and came.

At first I said, “I will not bear His cross upon my back— He only seeks to place it there Because my skin is black.”

But He was dying for a dream, And He was very meek; And in His eyes there shone a gleam Men journey far to seek.

It was Himself my pity bought; I did for Christ alone What all of Rome could not have wrought With bruise of lash or stone.

[seraphim-eternal]

My soul is sorrowful, even unto death.

Matthew 26:38

[donnadarling]

Glass

(A poem by Donna Darling)

"Be ye holy as I am holy," He said So we know we're doing well. For Heaven knows the Holy One Never descended into Hell! Holiness never sat beside sinners Never healed their aching wounds Never drank wine, held men Never blessed the unwed womb. "Take up your crosses," He said So we wear them round our necks. Large enough for the worlds to see Small enough not to break a back Or if we want to suffer like Him A candy one we might buy. We'll fill it up with broken glass Call it martyrdom when we bleed and cry

[revmeg]

There is a spaciousness in failure. The minister, breaking the bread, wears a small smile that suggests he knows the futility of what he does and does it anyway, out of love, out of habit, the way the two are, over time, indistinguishable. I love because I have grown the habit of love. I cannot love all at once, by will or by choice. It happens gradually, like water overtaking the shore. Slowly, without noticing, the shoreline alters. I suppose that is what this man might mean by grace. I was not raised in churches, for the usual reasons. I am ambivalent about this, but would rather ambivalence than certainty, given the history of certainty. I will live ambivalently, which is a pretty meagre supper, not much more than a self-regarding gruel, perhaps an excuse for evading the problem of evil, or the other problem, of good, by not quite believing in either one. By not quite believing but longing for belief. At eighteen I walked out of a church in Italy into the square where a bunch of boys played soccer and I knew God was real in the blunt humiliation of that statement. But then my life went on as before, God just another metaphor. And maybe God was present only because I was a tourist, the boys and the thousand-year-old paving stones placed there so that I might find them and be transfigured, while they (the boys, the stones) remained luminously flat, without fault or flaw, without meaning except for mine.

from "Lent" in Lent: Poems by Kate Cayley, p. 48

[badolmen]

Soldiers kill sheep in the streets and I see bison skulls piled high, the bullets are made in the United States.

Trees are set ablaze by tanks and I see Moses kneeling in fear and reverence, God does not speak from these flames.

The people starve and I see seaweed gathered in baskets on Irish shores, Dutch tulip bulbs boiled with rabbit bones.

When they said ‘never again’ it was never for love of the hundreds of millions murdered, nor fear of the systems that allowed such evil to rise. They said ‘never again’ to shipping lane inconveniences, to stock market woes, and to being seen for cowards.

At least a coward would sit in quiet fear, content in inaction. Now they sign over billions, condemning millions to the total destruction. Where is the shame? Where is the apathy? At least in that I can call them mere cowards. What else am I to call them but the evil they so long taught me to revile?

God have mercy on their souls. God have mercy on ours. For the body is doomed - the bombs will still fall, the blood will still spill, the graves of thousands will fill.

(How long is the queue to the pearly gates? Is St. Peter agrieved to see so many young faces? Are wives rejoicing or grieving the reunion with their husbands? Does the brother laugh or cry when he finds his sister among the crowd?)

From Carthage to Auschwitz we were warned. From Roman roads to shipping lanes we watched the weapons trade hands. And when we cry out to the powers that be, they turn away - unseeing, unhearing, unfeeling. Machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts.

But the horror is in knowing they are not machines. This is not their nature. They are men. Born with a love for humanity in their hearts, a desire for community and companionship and art. How did they lose such a fundamental part of their being? Was it beaten out of them by bitter men before them or did they discard it themselves, as though it were a cancer to be excised? Does it matter when they so zealously jump knee deep in blood and bone among bomb shattered homes?

And while it is troubling to consider that, being human, we too can have our hearts hardened, it is far more uncomfortable to consider that, being human, they may one day revert to natural compassion. And what does one do when the machine becomes man again? When he proves it was a choice all along? A choice he refused and snubbed until the bodies cooled and the graves grew grassy with age?

God forgive what I cannot.