Meditations in Fast Times: 16. let sunrise break through fog

Note to Readers: Now that I am nearly half way through, I wanted to say a little something about what this series of posts is all about. “Meditations in Fast Times” is a devotional writing experiment for the Season of Lent. Each day during the season, I am writing a poem as a meditation on, taking as my inspiration and intertextual basis, T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”, as well as incorporating the daily office, current events, and other readings—some the same as those Eliot used while composing his seminal work, others from my own readings. The intertextual approach Eliot used in his writing could be cryptic, as he was alluding to many other writings, as well as personal experiences; the average person would find annotations helpful, but he did not annotate the work. A few scholars have made attempts to do so; I have worked on my own annotations. While the style of Eliot’s writing was considered “modern,” “post-symbolist”, even “neoclassical,” it must be said that all writing, throughout time, has carried subject, rhythm, tone and trope, forward from the past. Eliot did not invent intertextuality; it can be said that every text is a product of intertextuality. One of the ways that we draw listeners or readers in to whatever new idea (if any) we might have is by offering familiar context from the past, much like making a hat-rack available, on which we can hang something familiar and then introduce something new, or ponder what never changes.

                16.

let sunrise break through fog,
that there be joy in the morning!
yet, even so, even so,

for though the flowers bloom
under beaming majesty,
there is continual cause for wonder.

let me ponder my flight
that fonder I might grow
of this childhood,

for what and for why
did this seed burst forth
into bloom?

let me consider
self as emerging
from some deep interior,

for it must be
that there is every
purpose under the sun,

let me seek mine own,
attempt to outgrow
the stories of my youth,

for it is true
that most being seeks
to find completion in purpose

let me therefore accept
the world and
serve it,

for surely it is all life
that being supports
and, mutually supported, is;

let me therefore give thanks that
being is and teaches continually
through osmotic exchange

for what purpose, then,
if not to fold and enfold,
to mix and mingle?

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Meditations in Fast Times: 15. Save us! For the waters are rising

                15.

The broadcast news announces:
triumphal cars deployed to the border,
all sabers rattling and threat of sanctions;
echoes of former days,
of charging up an army or two
while the rest of the world wonders
—and all for a spit of land by the seaside.

Save us! For the waters are rising;
we are sinking in the muddy deep,
and under our feet,
there is no firm ground.

Must what was stolen,
time and again, once more
be returned to the hands of thieves,
these soft spoken cult heroes,
offering promises on deceits?

While winds howl
on the raging seas,
one solution is man overboard,
while another will call for peace:
Shut it! one said,
and there was quiet,
while the other fellow got
shut in the belly of the fish;
in the end,
each was a kind of salvation,
though one was more difficult to clean up.

What, then, of this latest
crime over Crimea?

One martyr said,
where the heart longs,
the will cannot fail to choose;
reason, in the end, must justify.

© 2013 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen