Four poems from 1943

To Sarah, Laughing
Genesis 21:6

I know for I have felt it, too,
Love's promises conceiving,
And hid my lack of faith in joy,
My joy, in unbelieving.

I know -- I, too, have tasted sweets
Distilled from long communing
Of love's full sun on chaliced flower
Rich fragrance of late blooming.

I know, for we have fathomed pain,
My love and I, in secret
How curiously in lowest earth
Is wrought life's substance, deepest.

I know the burgeoning of growth,
Long, quiet exhaltation,
When in continuance is made
Of love a new creation.

And though new birth must come with pain,
Sweet joy will follow after.
Dear Lord, I cannot praise enough,
My heart is full of laughter.

(May 1943)

****

(In response to a parishoner's observation
"It must take courage to bear a child these days")

Courage? To receive new life and bring it forth
Into a world long barren from refusing what is new?
Courage? To assist in love's creation
For a world gone mad with hate's destroying?
Rather say it would take courage to live on
Poor for the want of new hopes and aspirations,
Blind to the blaze of the new light,
In guilty shame for lack of innocence
To lead the way out of old mistakes.
New worlds do not come
From niggardly measuring of acceptance,
Nor from timid shunning of the unknown,
But from new beginnings
Set formless in the void of secret deeps,
Their substance seen, yet being imperfect,
Only by the One who willed it so.
New worlds shall come from patient bearing
The discomfort and the weight of new conceptions,
And heedless of our poor plans
To maintain the safe convenience of our former state
They shall be given substance
And grow into reality.
So shall a new race of men be born
Out of the eager acceptance of the seeds of truth,
Our readiness to bring forth
New ways of using freedom's rights
Without the blight of gain,
Our humble bowing to the travail
That must be suffered while we resist
The coming of the new.

****

Travail

Go out to meet pain's steel blue thrust,
Resist it not, but move along its terrible arc
Yielding to its probing test.
Let it open to the quick,
Deeper, deeper, deeper,
New sensibilities of enduring.
Rest awhile, fully spent of desire,
On soft wings of subsiding.
Then, knowing well the adversary's fiercest blow,
Stand off to watch, unmoved,
The curious manner of its sharp descent.
See it glance off
The buckler of your fearlessness,
The shield of objectivity.
Release the taut fingers that clutch at suffering
With tense expectancy that it will yield
Nothing but sorrow.
This is the moment for the fullest trust,
The most complete acceptance
Of the depths as well as heights of love.
Enter into it aware of the presence
And the power of eternal ends,
When heaven and earth meet
To shape a human destiny.
Let it move and shake your little world
Of self-sufficiency, purge mind and heart
Of dross in preparation for your other task.
Soon the dark waters
Will cover your head with their thunderous swelling,
Until the gentle hand of mercy
Reaches to grasp and set you
Quivering but clean-shriven
On a long white shore
Of quietness and peace.

(September 17, 1943 -- I was born on September 16)

****

Mothersong

Could I have held you cradled thus,
dear one, and not know
the longing men must ever feel
beneath their careful show
of courage, for the caress and safety
of encircling arms,
and warm protection of return
to all sweet mothering balm:
to tender hollows of green hills;
home's welcoming embrace;
familiar nuturing of native
tongue and land; soft grace
of brooding curve and lulling sound;
death's womb; and, when wars cease,
Jerusalem, encompassing
her own with walls of peace.
O, Everlasting Arms, Thy love
with gentle strength enfolds
all mother-yearning ones within
this war-sick, aching world.

(late September, 1943)