|
by Leonard Feeney, S. J. New York 1943 [Note: we have included here only that
poetry and verse in the Omnibus that was not therein attributed
elsewhere and which we do not anticipate will appear elsewhere on the site.] The
Cloud Song should come promptly when the eye beholds A Himalaya floating off in folds, In wayward vales of silent plume-like lather: Song should be swift the gist of that to gather, Have fixed in snow-flame phrases and dispensed This continent of quiet uncondensed, Ere the explosion into forks of fire, The crash and downpour of a frail empire Whose trickling ruins the minnow shall be fond of Soon, and paper boats sail on the pond of. Sun
and Moon The sun begets the shadow, The moon the silhouette; The noon is for Narcissus, The night for Juliet. The image in the water, The idol in the sky, Are opposites that alter The angle of the eye. The love behind the window, The truth within the wave, Will keep the heart unhappy And make the head behave. The bridge is set for vanity, The balcony for pride: - Beneath a man his body And above a man his bride! The Buttercup I always come in multitudes; I am part of a
festival Of buttercups, each buttercup so rare and dear and
small, Alone, I guess I am practically no buttercup at
all. What praise I get a million ways must promptly
divided be, Who am but one little flaming note in a vast
symphony Of buttercups in your meadow, as far as your eye
can see. The rather common kitchen nomenclature that I
wear, Like a good humble buttercup, perforce, of course,
I bear; Though the items in my title were a much later
affair Than I, who in ancient Paradise Our Father did
allow To grow and become a buttercup as sweet as I am
now, Aeons before your crockery, centuries before your
cow. The Doves
The doves, - they fly to the moonlit
elms and cry: Tickitacoo! Tickitacoo!, The whole night through. They tell their loves in a song that has
but a note or two: Tickitacoo! Tickitacoo! That’s all they do. And on and on till dawn, while the world
is sleeping and all the other birds are too, They wake and shake the silvery leaves
with a strain that is never old, and never new. There’s snow upon their feathers, but
their breasts are full of flame. The seasons change, but still their
melody stays the same: Tickitacoo! Tickitacoo! Ever soft and true. Tears Through metal and through glass The transcendentals pass. Water must forgive The sieve, And sunshine dare not say The window was in its way. So, in the alternate enterprise Of light and liquid in the living eyes, That soak with sorrow every sweet surprise, Perhaps when people weep we should not rue That it is good and we are glad they do. Four Apostrophes to Silence
I I am harried and hounded with Hush, Hush, All through the voice-vacated night. Whirlpools of respite around me rush; Quiet consumes me quite. Finger on lip, is the countersign. A whisper were worse than a word; While a delicate thunder I know is Divine, Booms, and is never heard. II Nothing is ever hid: Nothing you ever dreamed or did. It gets into the gestures, It trickles through the tones, And in our ultimate vestures Will rearrange the bones. No voice is ever drowned. Nothing becomes a stillness that once was a sound. III
My only grievance against God, Towards Whom no grievance could ever be, Is that all even is never odd And two and one are always three. IV Little Miss Troubled Heart is trying To say what love cannot say: Slumberless all the night and sighing, Half asleep all the day. Little Miss Troubled Heart is telling With breast sobbing and eye welling, Not even a millionth part Of what is troubling Little Miss Troubled Heart. What the spirit knows Gives us repose. But what the spirit wills is What kills us. The Incomparable A little less softly than a breeze The Incomparable goes; But this because of the necessities Of substance, I suppose, And the noisy abundance of her hair: A distinctly relative affair, Not noticed until I am compelled to compare The Incomparable with a breeze that blows. A little more muffled than a bird’s Her voice leaps into sound; But this because of the natural weight of words, Which even in the most thrush-like throat is found Of all our gentle daughters. The Incomparable’s ways are wilder than the waters, And her innocence most poised to please When least assaulted by my similes. The Evergreen When crimson beauty stales an autumn sky, And leaves in lovely rot come floating down, The birch, for shroud, will shade its swaddling
gown, The maple will be fickle to its dye; Sumac and elm will both begin to sigh For alien tints of lavender and brown, Envy a golden evening cloud’s renown, - But I my true love-hue will not lay by. Earth bred me in the mead, aye in the mud, And in no sunset lacquer will I preen; Fidelity is in my root, my blood, And color-loyal all my tribe hath been. Leaf vowed to leaf, whatwhile we were in bud, To ever be forever evergreen. Entia
Multiplicanda In the little kingdom Of thingdom That has no soul, A pebble will tinkle and roll In a bric-a-brac bowl; By the brewing and brothing Of silver and steel A knick-knack is never not nothing And a trinket is real. By repulsion, attraction Devoid of all immanent action, The length, breadth and thickness of stuff Is existence enough In the little kingdom Of thingdom. In the little kingdom Of thingdom Where shells become pearls; Where diamonds are princes and princesses, emeralds
earls, The well-fueled ruby will flash, The coin on the counter will clash; There’s a lovely alarm for the ear, Were there someone to hear; There’s a mineral meaning to find, Were there only a mind, In the little kingdom Of thingdom. In the little kingdom Of thingdom Where hands are all handles, The lady was pleased to put shiny white sticks under
lily-white candles, With one of her fingers residing in ringdom, A beautiful pledge evermore That was bought in a honeymoon store, One day, in the little kingdom Of thingdom. Reveille (for
the Carmelites) Now
see them stand at strict liturgical attention: The athletes who teach the body how to pray; Who
think no work but worship worth the mention, Determined that there is no other way Save
through the solitudes to reach salvation And the secret singularities of the soul, Each
measuring her strength in meditation Before the plunge through darkness to the Goal. There
will be time enough for lights and lilies When veils are shed and lids lie on the eyes. Now,
at a soundless hour when sleep the sillies, Pull the bell-rope again and wake the wise! Virgin Most Prudent May
after May I see by candlelight Above an icon that I kneel below, Her
head in shadow nodding left and right, Most sweetly and discreetly nodding No. Year
after year I must agree to let her Decide what to provide me for my good; Pray
as I may, I cannot ever get her To grant what would be wonderful if she would. Spring
comes, and little birds make warble. Snow thaws, but not Our Lady of the Snows. Tapers
I melt before relentless marble. Poems I write from what to live is prose. After the Little Elevation O wheat-like, white, little, still-as-death, Circumferenced Jesus of Nazareth; My duty, Your beauty to recondite, To fashion You frangible, frail and light. You come translucent to hold and handle, To peer clear through, Dear, and see a candle, With a tractable trait to elate my heart Who make You and take You and break You apart: - Yet sever You never, St. Thomas said, For wetness to water is not more wed Than these twin fragments I now expand, In my left, in my right, in my either hand. The Saints have gazed at in other guise This Body, ecstatics with other eyes; But sinners with semblances rest content: Its measure and mould as a Sacrament. So daily at dawn, by the grace of Mary, With well-worn words in a voice I vary, I give God God, and at God’s behest, For whatever may ease her or please her best. Resurrection In crocus fashion, sunlight-wise, The Body of Our Lord Slipped through the stone-bound sepulchre, Streamed through the soldier’s sword. Though stripped and whipped and spat upon, Sundered with nail and spear, Thus did our dust in Him prevail At the robin-time of the year. Albeit our interval under Earth Must needs much longer last, Let there be always ready the roll Of drums and the trumpet blast. With bones ablaze and flesh aflash And hair set flying free, So shall I come to you, loved ones, So shall you come to me. Resignation at Midnight
Sleep has already come to other eyes, Dreams
are not driftwood gathered in their thickets; Nobody else is left without allies To
count the clock-ticks and applaud the crickets. But self is self, assignment without appeal, However
restlessly one plays the part. Out of another’s slumber my soul would steal Home
to its ache in this accustomed heart. Something
Within Me Something within me is delighted When a little quatrain is completed; Something within me does not care. I have a half desire to hear it recited, And by a voice I love repeated: And I have half a loathing for the whole affair. Metaphysics in the Marketplace I am fond of the beginning of a fact: A potency in progress toward an act, A sorrow getting set to be a sigh, In a love-song the lurking lullaby; Half a hymn and half a syncopated third, The flutter of a fledgling on its way to
be a bird, The murmur of a whisper on its way to be
a word. Likewise, I like the respite and the
pause, The suspense in a sentence, the comma in
a clause, The little will-be where there
was a was. Lastly, my predilection for an ending, When existence in pretense has stopped
pretending: The infant’s second innings in the old, Survival of the glitter in the gold; I love a story when a story’s told, - And the muffle of a bell, And the echo in a well, And the open gate of Heaven and the slammed
door of Hell. After This Our Exile It’s just as dreary out in South Dakota, It’s just as tiresome down in Tennessee; New habitats don’t help us one iota - Take it from me! Nor does it matter if or whom one
marries, Despite what’s written in romance and
rhyme. Helen, you know, was bored to death with
Paris, After a time. Our set-up is a permanent nostalgia, Our peace apportioned to another scene. Life is a pain without or with
neuralgia, At sixty or sixteen. If there were any other hope but Heaven, If joy could flint from any other spark, Think you, my loved ones, for a moment
even, I’d keep you in the dark? Love is a Loyalty They left no literature
of their love, Rosie and Harry; He had a pedlar’s cart to
shove, She had a wash to carry. Valentines, verses, and billets
doux They were unaware of. Drudgery, more than a dream come true, They had their share of. In separate roamings an unseen rope - In wet and dry weather - Some fibrous fidelity, hempen hope Bound them together. That they were childless,
God willed to be, Though gossips were
ruthless; But you can ask Abraham
Blum, M.D. If this be truthless. Through tittle and tattle
and tenement talkings, Through shadow and shame, She cooked his cabbage,
and washed his stockings, And bore his name. Not much of a marriage to
tell of this is, For better or worse; But surely some sort of a
Mr. and Mrs., In a sort of a verse. The Way of the Cross Along the dark aisles Of a chapel dim, The little lame girl Drags her withered limb. And all alone she searches The shadows on the walls, To find the three pictures Where Jesus falls. Sister Jeremy There was once a young nun with a
truth-troubled face, And a will like a whirlwind ungeared of
its whirl, Who survived the election and blinding
of Grace With the grace of a girl. And they gave her a cross, and they gave
her a ring, And they lengthened her dress and
unlengthened her hair; And they said: “Now, my lady, you’re
ready to sing Any song that you care!” But the process that proved her was
rather precise, And her surplus of feathers they sheared
from the dove Who was bound on a flight through a
forest of ice With no warmth but her love. And her story, electrotyped, printed and
bound, And dispensed in the shops of aesthetic
regard, Is the one you will find in most
convents around, If you look very hard. Aunt Abigail Oh, once I was a debutante And wore a social curl. Now I am someone’s aged aunt, No longer like a girl; No longer like the rose in spring They said I once resembled. I find it hard as anything To get myself assembled. I don’t know what o’clock it is Or if I’m late for tea. I can’t find where the pocket is In which I keep my key. I think I’m late for supper too, My lettuce and cold lamb. I’d yawn if it were proper to, To show how old I am. I think my mind is wandering, I think my head is through With puzzling and with pondering What am I next to do; I wear a bonnet on it So I’ll still know where it is, And the little flower upon it Is to throw you all a kiss. The Devil’s Man God the Father made sleep, and God the
Son the vigil; But the Devil made insomnia. God the Father made food, and God the
Son fasting; But the Devil made dyspepsia. God the Father made speech, and God the
Son silence; But the Devil made sullenness. God the Father made love, and God the
Son chastity; But the Devil made coldness. God’s man is the Father’s and Son’s, beloved of
the Holy Ghost. If he does not sleep, eat, talk or love as much as he might,
it is because he is waiting for a Kingdom that is not of this world. The Devil’s man is a sullen dyspeptic, a sleepless
misogynist. He does not need to wait for Hell. He is already in it. To an Infant Marcia was lent us to illustrate How little was God when His love was
great, When flesh disguised the Divinity In millimeter and milligram And showed the size of Infinity To the ox and the ass and the lamb. St. Joseph’s Christmas Not envied, not desired, Only admired: - A girl on this will thrive As on no thing alive. And such was God’s rare plan For Mary’s man. He watched his loved one flower Hour after hour, With footstep caused no fear In angel-anxious ear, Gave her his husband’s praise In nought but gaze: The exquisite adulation Of contemplation That lets a fact reveal Itself as real, And, in Our Lady’s case, As full of grace. He must have marveled most When of the Holy Ghost Her little Son who shivered, At dawn was delivered. He must have feared and feared And hid behind his beard When what was not his life He welcomed from his wife And his bride’s Babe and Lord Adored and adored. At Christ’s Nativity, St. Joseph, I love thee. Warning to Contemplatives |