(a cento (collage) poem I sourced from Thomas Merton’s Marian Poems http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/resources/poetry/merton.html)
Do not be troubled at the judgments of thunder,
in smiles of blood
at the world's rim.
Angels bow down like bells, Angels look up like toys.
She blesses our roofs and eaves, our shutters, lattices and sills.
Hers were the eyes that saw a star-sandalled stranger walk
like lightning down the air.
Rays of the mountain sun
silver as felicity, working and quiet
in the dancelight of an everlasting arrow.
To die like glass, by light.
This is the geometry of my cross:
nails of light
in rooms charmed with sun.
And perhaps she is in infinite light, unmanifest - not even waiting to be known as Light.
Obvious and unseen,
She is in all things, like air receiving sunlight.
Lady, why are your clothes like sails?
With feathers for sleeves,
whose arms are birds
and a mouth of great fire and lights instead of words.
Flocks feed darkness with a noise of whispers,
and tell their blessings to the distance.
How do you see her in the eyeless dark? What secret syllable
Woke your young faith to the mad truth?
My glances are as good as wine
Bellsong falls out with a sound of glass
and makes your shadows palaces of moving light.
Five angels beating bongos
Seven saints ringing their bells,
with shoes made out of shells that clatter like a box of nickels;
lugging gleaming buckets
of copper sunset –
Sentry at the rim of winter.
In the fiery dark, you quiet meteors,
and show me your flowers:
The muted lakes, the cloudy groves.
Pray us full of marrow, Queen of Heaven!
Moonlight rings upon the ice.
It is like all minds coming back together into awareness from all distractions, cross-purposes and confusions, into unity of love.
Newly confronting reality and finding it to be gentleness.
Out of the silence, Light is spoken.
Lights fly like birds behind the cane.
Light falls as fair as lyres, beamy between the branches. Plays like an angel on the mill-dam, where the lazy stream Suddenly turns to clouds of song and rain.
The skies speed up to meet you, and the seas swim you the silver of their crests.
The chiming suns
shine you up
showing your blue tongue.
You intercom
Moth Mother Kali
stained with the grey-green aftermoss of monsoons.
Rich in skeletons and buffets
in a trance of drums
sitting with red headlight between eyebrows.
The white stars talk together like sisters
from the drowned shores from the sands and the lavender water
the wine smelling yards and low cellars.
Lady, the night has got us by the heart And the whole world is tumbling down. Words turn to ice in my dry throat
and there is a sudden grin of fire.
Yet suddenly we find ourselves assembled - cured and recollected under several green trees.
A girl prays by the bare wall
between the lamp and the chair.
Her eyes as grey as doves,
flowers printed on her dress
sometimes a crown.
Her light steps lay on the paving
like leaves of gold.