Meditations in Fast Times: 18. The deer thirst for those brooks

Note to Readers: “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 and others.

                18.

The deer thirst for those brooks,
whose waters are diverted by crooks,
who then waste them away or pollute.

Likewise, my soul longs for that draught
surest and purest, wild and without craft;
rich and intoxicating while dilute.

Tears instead have been my cup,
the only food on which to sup;
I am derided as one of ill repute.

I am empty; my soul is poured out,
haunted by thoughts filled with doubt,
my distress, like my thirst, is acute.

From one voice to another, deep woe calls;
amid the white noise of distant falls,
it echoes among the rocks: permute!

Is the call from Another or my own voice?
No matter, it does indicate choice:
hope must in a different path or pursuit.

Now to have found pristine riverbanks,
sorrow is set aside; I give thanks
for this gift, and fare forward, resolute.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Meditations in Fast Times: 17. There is no end to the soundless wailing

Note to Readers:  “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 and others. 

                17.

          There is no end to the soundless wailing,

The silent withering of hope, hearts and flowers,
Shock sets in, a paralysis where we are silent, motionless;

All that remains is to find what drifting wreckage
Might remain, to recover anything recoverable,

To pray for the living who receive the sad communication.

       There will follow more news, a further trailing

Of speculation, into the coming days and hours,

While shock devolves toward reluctant, emotionless

Silence, the only proper response to such carnage
As resulted from this unrealized flight plan, reliable
Had it been followed, now only fit for denunciation.

       There will be no end to our flying or sailing,
Into wind or over waves, despite public glowers—
No inquiry can ever reinstitute a confidence erosionless,

No legal proceeding can undo the incalculable damage;
Somehow, we are all responsible, though none will be held liable,

And this will melt into an infamous past, beyond all explanation.

O, Thou, Ruler of the raging oceans,
we acknowledge and bewail
all our shortcomings and pitiable motions;
You cannot redress this travail,

But please accept the tragic remains
of those that were misled and all who perished;
Guard them in the depths of your domains,
knowing that they were, and are, loved and cherished.

Amen.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Meditations in Fast Times: 12. Beginning again

                12.

Beginning again
(beginning from any start or end;
to restart anew)
begins only after sunrise
and only with the willingness
to rise with the sun
into a fresh and unspoiled world,
where every sense,
      every sound,
            every creature,
is a Word that is holy,
and every face is the face of God,
and all are a danceable music together,
held aloft in the spheres
by that most peculiar Pin
of our portal's hinge,
so that we can experience
swinging freedom and flight,
and also safety, at such great height.

Such beginnings only come upon one suddenly,
and only if you believe in a magic
where seeing is believing,
even when appearances are deceiving.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Meditations in Fast Times: 11. Up from the dark

                11.

Up from the dark,
each of us from our own depths,
as if hearing the cry, “Sleepers, awake!” 

Up into the waking state,
and perhaps for an hour,
some part awake, while the rest sleeps.

We enter the train from the platform,
find the patient no longer here,
the passengers unsettled
within their myopic world of media
their gazes held in their hands,
rocking forward toward indifferent arrivals.

Little can be expected of such a day,
unless one is awakened by Genius,
tazed by the Security Guard,
or assailed by the Transient Upstart;
on such days, not even coffee will serve
to jumpstart us to a higher awareness of Life.

Though the lamps are lit,
they are eclipsed by the false day
with its mechanical nudgings and dronings,
and repetitions of soulless activitiy;
our eyes are not prepared for sight
under the burning gaze of a truer Light.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Meditations in Fast Times: 9. We've reached beyond the stars

                 9.

We’ve reached beyond the stars,
landed cameras on mars,
yet, with all our science,
struggle with compliance
with the truth: all people are one.

Space painted a frontier to be won,
but home where union seems impossible,
an idea embedded as discord—implausible,
given this rational knowing:
we are greatest when music together, sewing
knitting, inventing solutions, sowing
seeds and making technology that affirms;
a standard by which we come to terms
with the dignity of every living being
is a dream still deferred to the reality of seeing
humanity far from freedom’s joys,
caught up, instead, with material toys.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Meditations in Fast Times: 8. Wind howls over the sea like a wraith

                 8.

Wind hovers over the sea like a wraith,
the howl and yell
measure time, and tell
the story of our weak and waning faith,
as it slowly crumbles into ruin.

Smoldering wreckage
we have not found,
loss incalculable by pound,
like another of a bygone age,
hijacked and crashed,
other hearts and hopes dashed;
our lives, those lives and these
traded for political gain,
or with revenge to appease
a movement not for peace,
only for blood-soaked increase
within a culture of death.

We stand at the shore,
praying for an answer,
hoping we are wrong, and more,
waiting for a cure for such cancer
—cannot this corruption finally be consumed
so that corruption itself will cease?
—We presume all are doomed,
but what was it all for?

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Meditations in Fast Times: 7. Words are a music that should really be just words

                 7.

Words are a music that should really be just words,
quothe the conflicted scribe.

Could words mean so much,
if there were nothing poetical about them?

Words, naked against the silence,
cannot be so transparent,
or what is the point (still or trembling)?

My heart overflows with the songs
I have learned from birds;
they sing to announce their rights—
all tongues must be skilled pens,
each a sword to defend justice and truth,
pointed and crafted, learned and remembered
—as well as to celebrate the communion of sunlit joys.

Along the way and wave,
words are like the intentions we pave—
for what poetry does not its people save?

— and each step we take
is eased by the music we make;
words must intend, when addressed,
to soothe the savage and his aching breast,
to be medicine that smoothes each crease,
to be the incantation announcing peace.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Meditations in Fast Times: 6. Down the garden path

                 6.

Down the garden path,
testing serenity with math,
and the music that rises
from the bushes surprises
even the studied guide.

Where have we been?
Where shall we go?
Shall we know what we’ve seen?
Might we encounter snow?
(Our thoughts, as we march along, glide.)

This journey is the set to which we dance,
even if the music is unheard;
we all make the same contract with chance,
might face an outcome absurd.

There seems nothing on which to anchor,
though the seasons return to redeem us, from loss
of perspective or frame, or exposure to dross;
time serves neither favor nor rancor—
results neither impress nor move,
nor bow to any conscience we might behove.

Time is a game played by children,
an ancient guidebook once said;
the author, sadly, is now dead,
but we can presume his advice
was meant to encourage and entice.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen