Читать книгу Psalms for Skeptics - Kent Gramm - Страница 8

sing psalms unto him (a)

I’d like to have an audience of One—

but then again, I’m not so sure—who knows

aesthetics and appreciates a rhyme

that’s just a hint in a rhythmic poem

even when the candy of its images

is metallic as blood, or when all you

get is visual assonance—ambiguity

be damned sometimes, when what the poem says

is all it says, as if Lord Tennyson

had eaten Eliot for breakfast, won—

an audience appreciative of form,

who sits up nights admiring human wit;

sly, kind, ironic, sad. [Here, warm applause

from the audience inside the poet.]

sing psalms unto him (b)

Unto whom else? Many of us have no

reader but the One who hears in secret:

“for I say unto you, when you pray, go

alone into your room and close your door;

the One who hears in secret will reward

you.” On the busy streets no one will know

I was not good enough for anyone

but myself. (I planned to write “anyone

but God,” but who could be that good or bad?

Is God who wants my poetry only

in my head?—He and I two kindly old

gents content, yea, pleased, with the mediocre;

one formerly in shorts—tan, grassy lad;

the other a Whirlwind of white and gold.)

seek his face

Your face is home, and nothing else we have

is ours. The universe’s filigree

of fire and colors and geometry

a billion billion deep is its own grave,

a vast performance of holes and splendor

perishing: an image always leaving

its mirror in our mind, magician’s sleeve,

a shimmering house with its key next door

in Grampa’s overalls pocket. He sits

at his little kitchen table, coffee

in an old cup warmed up from yesterday,

sugar cube a diamond die of snow, listening

to the radio, musing memories,

begetting you and everything he sees.