Remember:
A working definition of blessing
This piece was written in early 2001 as part of the Beatitudes
project, a song cycle drawing on the theme of blessings or beatitudes,
initiated
by composer Raffaele Marcellino. It has recently appeared in the
magazine, Salt, v.16.
1
Saw the shadow of earth
cross the face of the moon.
Moon looked
red
in the little light that reached it.
Saw my judgement
cross a
country of strangers.
They looked frightening
(I don't understand
them);
they looked dangerous
(they don't want me here). Blessed are
you
who know where your own shadow falls. I breathe the smoke of your
feast,
you eat up my life.
I am the ground underfoot,
I am your
neighbour.
You do it because you are able,
you do it because I am far from
you,
you do it because you think there will always be more. I say
blessed are you
when you meet me,
who give back
the shine of my own
life
quietly turning. 2
Lost in the gap that waits
in the ribs of
the world,
loose in that place
I stumble
towards a
heartbeat.
Now, here in the light and noise
of my first day,
give
me a place that will teach me -
bind it into my new bones -
power to
bless. I turn my will to your good -
this is power to bless.
You
turn your will to my good -
bringing a change in the world's hard
weather. 3
Stretch yourself out
in time, in space,
be a meeting of
strangers.
Be blessed - you have no choice,
you will surely be
wounded.
We opened a door that was always there,
followed the howling
down,
crowding to serve the thing that flails
in the weightless space of
our terror.
We soothe it with chunks of ourselves,
promise to call down
our children,
feed it their juiciest years,
the days of their love
songs.
Lie down,
let memory grow
like a thorn-tree from your
chest,
its shade the unregarded ground
where breath and speech can
come
to scatterlings from all the worlds.
Tongues of leaves and
air
call up the rain,
spiny shoots push trampled earth,
another planet
turns its unlit face
towards the stars. Fist turns on itself,
a
closed world.
Happy are you,
sore and afraid as you are,
who open your
hand to bless.
Happy are you,
clenched so long
in a whirlwind of
ashes,
who open to calm and shine back the life
of another
face. 4
Earthlight, moonlight,
light of an ancient star,
turn with
me now
as darkness settles the hollow bay,
sweet layers pressing
down,
fresh over salt.
Curls of light from the boat's prow,
chaos of
light, the bow-wave.
Knife-edged, lines burn in the wake,
green
flames, haloes and sparks
from every moving thing.
See what life attends
us;
we, with our answering clamour,
our dark star riding the
swell. From the wreckage,
footprints, silver in ashes, lead away -
after winter, something can happen,
ground rising in steam like a dark
loaf -
lives are coming up,
trumpets and bells from
underground. Prickling with lights, the town flinches
where its past
presses in too hard,
fits too tightly, rough wool and lousy.
Flashing
evening to itself across the water,
its stories are shifting. Wind
twists
meanings of floodlit landmarks;
the belltower scattering
changes;
new pink watch house and hotel.
What are these places? Everything
echoes,
the dead and those not yet born returning,
speech in fragments
like a gust of bells. In the winds of the equinox,
all our flags are
ribbons.
Between equal weights of night and day,
in the whip of this
air,
I feel their rags flick past my face,
loops and turns mapping
old paths that still run to the water,
thumbprints that fold into new
whorls. Earth and sky have moved again in sleep;
dark limbs, joints of
light
flung in patterns we didn't see before.
Yesterday an eye opened in
my breast;
worlds are rolling there,
the city a struck bell
retold in
this fracture or wound,
new sounds from these pieces. 5
There's a
voice that breaks from us -
words and the howl of what can't yet be
said.
Our mouths and hands are full of blood -
closed to injure,
let
them open now to bless.
We wait, we turn, we call -
speech from all that
is - a little thing,
like a hazelnut in the palm of your hand.
Hold,
breathe, bless.
Eyes gleam from scrublands returning;
wandering
brightness, spreading arc of shelter;
small proofs - an age of destruction
passes.
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