Sestina

She sits with her back to the bitter wind
The quiet cries of the pale in her hand
The little bird’s trusting muffled song
From within the shifting of his wings
Makes silent rufflings in the shadows
In the bird’s hushed-gentle throat.

The girl looks down and clears her throat.
As her mother follows the wayward wind
Into the paths of darkness, painful shadows
With her destiny in the palm of her hand
And, soaring on a devil’s wings
Distorts the girl’s pure playful song.

The little girl wishes she could sing a song
Like the bird’s, but the dust pains her throat
Instead, she holds the bird’s steady wings
Keeping him from flying into the wind
Stubborn, she holds bird and mother in hand,
She will not let them cross the shadows.

For a moment, she heard the silent shadows
Speak, and their words were the words of a song
That treasure held in conniving hand
Is a knife pushed down magician’s throat
But treasure thrown to the wiles of the wind
Is treasure that will grow bold white wings.

And if the treasure has strong white wings
Then it will call out creatures of the shadows
Who praise the glory of the wind
Whose ears will hail no sudden song
That rises from a sainted throat
But hopeful whisperings of moon at hand

The girl raises her freckled hand
And, arbitrarily, bird tests his wings
A joyful song in the girl’s one throat
As her mother glides in hidden shadows
And both join in the bird’s free song
They see now beauty in the free wind.

The girl holds the shadows like clay in her hand
And the gifted wings fly like the song
In her brave throat and float above the forgetful wind.

I wrote this poem for a contest, but I didn't like it in context enough to submit it as my entry. I wrote a better one that will be my entry. This one is just a pretty thought. I hope you enjoy it. Echoes in ink, C.

my father moved through dooms of love, by e.e. cummings

After first hearing e.e. cummings when one of my writing students read 'i am so glad and very' aloud for our class, I have been determined to figure this man out and read more of him. I was entranced by this poem, and thought perhaps, you'd like it too.

my father moved through dooms of love
e.e. cummings
my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height

this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if(so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm

newly as from unburied which
floats the first who,his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots

and should some why completely weep
my father's fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.

Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy;
praising a forehead he called the moon
singing desire into begin

joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoice

keen as midsummer's keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly(over utmost him
so hugely)stood my father's dream

his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn't creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.

Scorning the pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain

septembering arms of year extend
less humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise
offered immeasurable is

proudly and(by octobering flame
beckoned)as earth will downward climb,
so naked for immortal work
his shoulders marched against the dark

his sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he'd laugh and build a world with snow.

My father moved through theys of we,
singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child was sure that spring
danced when she heard my father sing)

then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine,passion willed,
freedom a drug that's bought and sold

giving to steal and cruel kind,
a heart to fear,to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of am

though dull were all we taste as bright,
bitter all utterly things
sweet,maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit,all bequeath

and nothing quite so least as truth—
i say though hate were why man breathe—
because my father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all

Curtain

"How strange that the Lord should wait until the day before Sabbath for his curtain to tear!" Zechariah made a buzzing sound in his throat. Since the cough had taken hold, his humming had grown steadily weaker.

Judah reached up to take the curtain from the old priest. The temple had stood, solid, since the days of Zerubbabel, and the curtain, as a general rule, had been no exception. It had certainly been strange for the curtain to tear from top to bottom on the stormiest day Galilee had seen since Judah could remember, indeed, the day before the Sabbath.

"Why do you think the Lord chose last Friday for the curtain to tear?" Judah asked, a grin quirking the corners of his mouth. He handed the torn curtain to a Levite who stood nearby to attend to it.

Zechariah smiled more broadly, a laugh gurgling in his throat, his full brown beard twitching. "Who knows? The Lord works in mysterious ways, my boy."

Judah laughed too. Though he was supposed to be too old for playing, this was still his favorite game. Growing up in the temple had not been easy, but Judah had found hope and happiness in his favorite priest, a man who was like his father. They had played the game they played now every day for years, asking questions of each other about the God they both served. Why do you think God chose to use a boy to slay the giant, Zechariah?

He still remembered the answer to that one. Zechariah had replied that boys are weak, boys are clumsy and small, and God wanted his people to know that He had won the victory, not little David.

Judah looked up to Zechariah, still standing on the ladder, staring up at the blanket which was to temporarily replace the curtain. Judah thought if Zechariah tried, he could pierce the woolen blanket with his fierce glance and see the Lord's place.

But Zechariah would never blaspheme like that.

Reminded of their old game, Judah said, "Zechariah? Why do we have a curtain before the Holy of Holies?"

The priest heaved his bulk off the ladder and sat down on the floor next to Judah. "You know the answer, don't you?"

True, Judah knew the answer. God was too holy for the ordinary people. Only the High Priest was allowed behind the curtain.

"But why the High Priest only? Why couldn't the ordinary people go through some sort of ritual to pass behind the curtain and make their own offerings to the Lord?" Judah said. A thread brushed past him. He caught it in his hand and stared into its forgiving fibers.

"God ordained for it to be the High Priest. He has been necessarily purified."

Here came the second phase of the game - trying to see how much they could get the other to prove before he said, 'It's the Lord's mystery," which was always the end to their game.

"The Weeping Prophet says the heart is desperately wicked. All hearts. Not just the ordinary people and the sinners."

"The Lord also says he will create in us a pure heart."

Judah frowned at the thread. "Why would God make it so that the ordinary people can't know him?"

"He is holy, my son."

Judah looked up. "Does he not love us, Zechariah?"

Zechariah looked away for a long time, and for a moment, Judah thought their game had ended sadly. It was quiet, the only sound the wailing of a crowd of mourners outside the temple.

"Oh yes." Zechariah said, startling Judah out of the silence. "He loves us very much. Where does it say that, my son?"

"In the Torah."

"Yes."

"How could he love us if he is never with us?" Judah said, quietly.

Zechariah looked away again. "It's the Lord's mystery."

---

Judah sat outside, on the street. It was stiflingly warm, sticky, and his shirt was sticking to him, not at all pleasantly.

In the distance, the call of a peacock, mimicking the mourners who still stood outside.

Women. So many women in this crowd. They were moving past him now. Good. He couldn't stand the sound of their hopeless, ululating cries. They made his skin crawl.

It was so warm, so lulling and warm. He felt himself begin to relax into waxy half-slumber.

But someone was shouting, breaking him from his very comfortable dream.

"He is alive!"

A female voice, happy. He opened one eye, recognized her as a woman he had seen in the temple on occasion. An older lady, respectable, quiet.

It seemed to him that something was unfortunate about her, but he couldn't quite place it.

"He's alive!"

Who's alive, woman? and would you be quiet? I'm trying to rest.

He felt like saying it, but he didn't.

"Jesus is alive!" Something about that name stuck with him.

Oh. That was the unfortunate thing, wasn't it? Her name was Mary. She was the one with the maniac blasphemer prophet as her son.

Alive? He couldn't be alive. Wasn't he the one who had died, the day of the storm?

The day the curtain tore?

He had listened the man speak once. He had called himself the good shepherd. He was a carpenter, this Jesus, but he called himself a shepherd. What did that make Judah? A sheep?

The thought had struck him as funny when he first heard it. Now, it seemed vaguely familiar, and faintly disturbing. What was it the prophet Isaiah said?

We all...

we all like sheep...

We all like sheep have gone astray; each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

Who is the He in this verse, Zechariah?

It's the Lord's mystery.

"The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep."

Judah could hear that voice, that perfect voice, in his mind still.

But I don't understand. You are a carpenter, not a shepherd. And you're dead.

"Jesus is alive!" The woman's shouts mingled with the mourners.

We all like sheep.

Judah heard something, but couldn't seem to place it. We all like sheep have gone astray.

Maybe he was the good shepherd. He had laid his life down. And his mother seemed to think he had returned.

The Lord has laid on him the iniquities of us all.

More unidentifiable sound.

The iniquities of us all.

Judah remembered the lightning, the thunder around him, cowering, as the curtain tore. Unreasonably loud, that thunder. And the words, over and over, soundless and screaming, in his mind and above him like the thunder itself, It is finished.

And it was. The good shepherd had laid down his life for his sheep, he inexplicably understood. Because the Lord had laid on Him, that shepherd, the iniquities of us all.

The sound he could not hear shrieked in his ears.

He had killed the Lord of hosts. He had been the one the weeping prophet, Isaiah the prophet, and all the others had spoken of. It was his iniquities, it was his pain.

That was his criminal death that the Lord had paid.

Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord. I am afraid.

Why so afraid?

I love you. You know that, don't you? I love you. Where do you find that, little Judah?

The Torah.

That's right. And I have a question for your game now, little Judah. Why did I choose Friday for the curtain to tear?

It is the Lord's mystery.

No mystery is hidden with me, little Judah. How can I love you if I am never with you? I do not dwell in the Holy of Holies, behind a forbidding curtain. I am among you. You are my people. I am your God. I love you. I will always be with you. How can it be otherwise, dear little one? I dwelt with you as Christ the Savior. Now I dwell with you as your friend, your lover, your king, your Messiah. I am with you, to the very end of the age.

Who are you, Lord?

I am Jesus.

Judah could still hear the sound in his mind, and now Jesus' words showed him what it was. The curtain was torn in two. The path to God was open.

The Night

And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness, he called Night.

It was now about the sixth hour and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun's light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two.

For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.

I, Jesus... am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star. The Spirit and the Bride say, "Come." And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.

It is so dark out here, Father. It's so cold, and chill, and I am frightened. The stars even hide their light. I cannot break this blackness, this perfect, pure blackness.

Father, I am afraid.

Why is the night here? Is it not daytime? Why, Father?

These torrents of rain cover me. They are in my hair and my eyes, and the scream - the pained, pained scream - fills my ears and my heart. Who is crying out, Father? And why is he anguished?

Then the wailing begins. I cannot tell where it begins from. Perhaps the man in the center of the three? The wail is unbroken, unadulterated pain. The man arches his back, trying, trying so hard to...

To breathe, I think. Below him, the woman is wailing too. Their screams harmonize together in cacophony with the screaming. I think it is the wind.

I am afraid, Father.

Above the shout of rain and wind and tears, I can hear just one thing.

Small gasp. Small gasp.

The man in the center is making the noise. He tears his hands on the spires and raises himself up.

"Father! Into your hands I commit my spirit. It is finished."

It is.

The wind is louder. The rain pounds harder on my face, my outstretched hands.

I'm crying. And I don't know why.

It is finished.

That is why. It's done here. The suffering, finally over. The pain, finally done.

But his life is ended. Cut short.

The darkness plunges even blacker. And then I realize.

Light has perished from the world.

Come back.

Come back.

End the night, forever.