UNWED MADONNA
Behold the girl madonna-yet-to-be,
Not Raphaelite, no halo on her hair,
No willing curve of arms that wait to bear
The unknown child who comes relentlessly.
No, rather, she is angry with the life
She shares with the fierce alien within,
The maggot in her flesh that would have been
Her own loved image--if she were a wife.
How pensively she stands, how pale and young:
She does not rave, she does not even cry.
Her brain thuds heavily, "To die! To die!"
Yet even her child will not arrive unsung.
Some hour her love will throb like blood to greet
The unknown atom pulsing in the womb
And, as her flesh cocoons him from dark doom,
Her heartbeat will be music, sad and sweet.
And this will be her child's first lullaby,
Far sweeter than the rest she may construe:
"There's no one else who can take care of you,
Not even your own ego, only I."
She will stand like a candle, and her soul
Will shed a warm, protective aureole.
"No other one, no other one, no other.
Just I myself can live to be your mother."
BALLAD OF CHRIST OVER JERUSALEM
At dusk He came upon the slope
Above green-tiered Jerusalem;
He came in grief of flagging hope
For beautiful Jerusalem.
Men would die on of death within
When He had offered life to them;
With stern, pure eyes He saw the sin
Of green, white-walled Jerusalem.
Her whitest stones would not remain
In future, sacked Jerusalem;
Travailing girls would die in vain,
And driven men would die in war,
And they would give their lives in vain,
Both he who killed and she who bore.
"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Jerusalem!"
Eternal angels whispered peace
Unto the Son of God,
But oh, the eyes of Son of Man
Were turned away from them
To green and white (where lights increase)
Jerusalem.
Where men would live in tragic pain
And men would die in tragic pain--
Ah, His great tenderness for them,
For women and for men.
Their sorrows had no number;
His sorrows had no number.
"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Jerusalem!"
MESSY DESK
The sound of bells and clicking clocks mark
the receding movement of the mass
and pebbles on my desk. I pass
along moraines of memos, minutes, fill
fossil folders, check dinosauric data, page
through the paper strata, sift the verbal till,
sedimented miscellany of a new ice age,
in hopes of finding bedrock. Once, I recall,
I saw a jagged thrust of outcrop in a field –
it was
plowing ended at its edge. Likewise, concealed
beneath these coffee stains and half-bent
Paper clips, the formica surface awaits
a fiery eruption of volcanic thought, sent
up to consume the clutter. The trash abates.
-- Fr. Lennart Pearson
MR. CHIP
“Something grand is coming!” So says the sign
announcing the new convenience store. Beside
the sign, four grey walls of concrete block confine
a cubic space for “Mr. Chip,” described
as if the structure were an old baroque hotel,
a Verdi opera with a singing cast the size
of
bred Englishmen on holiday, the ultimate prize
for decathlonic agony, a funeral speech
for Pericles, a Churchillian political design
for winning war or peace, ideas that reach
for stars, a Steinway ready for a Rubenstein,
a finale worthy of a William Tell.
No, convenience grandeur only wakens pity,
as though Bunyan’s pilgrim, on fleeing hell,
had said his destination were “
-- Fr. Lennart Pearson
BEING
It’s ironic how, being free, we choose,
become imprisoned in our choices,
and then want back the freedom that we lose.
Poor bride! Poor Groom! the noisy voices
of their guests (surprise!) are obligations
in disguise. That simple wish upon a star
ends up a managing of constellations
with bangs and holes and dwarfs as far
removed from honeymoon as laundry day
from Mardi Gras. The stupid parrot squawks
of eagledom as if there were a way
to flee the quotidian conspiracy while hawks
are soaring elsewhere. Now both caged
and counted on, I simply long to simply be
– no actor in another’s play, no staged
model of warning or example, no epitome
of anything. I’d rather have my flaws
rubbed down by one who really understands
how tiring it is to always represent a cause
and who, in turn, would welcome loving hands.
-- Fr. Lennart Pearson
THE KISS
They kept it simple, since they were but two.
The sacred words and actions were not new,
But subtly, there was now in her inflection
A tenderness that startled him – compassion
suited to a deeper seeing
into sacramental mysteries. Being
both aware, they waited. Suddenly, the wonder –
this time in, with, under
palace shadows, among tourists, in the roar
of traffic. But now it was not simple anymore.
-- Fr. Lennart Pearson
