Meditations in Fast Times: 39. I am torn open

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. This is the penultimate poem of the cycle.

                39.

I am torn open,
The land is shaking;

mend me from my fears,
for all is quaking.

I look around me,
among the rubble of the place,
this is a community, this is home;
the people here have risen together here,
not all of us brilliant, rich or even nice,
but determined here to be,
united in this time and this space,
unwilling to accept defeat, to roam
aimless, beaten, to descend wholly into vice;
disasters help us to see.

The land is torn open,
the whole world is shaking;

save us from our fears,
for all is quaking.

I think of a King,
of three or more touched by Art,
plying their peculiar genius to some service,
uniting despite the challenges of time and division,
of places remembered, re-visioned, restored;
I hear a bell ring,
calling each of us to take some part,
in making or renewing bonds, soothing the nervous,
returning things to rights with care and precision,
finding and cherishing places we thought we’d explored.

We are all torn open,
all the buildings are shaking;

guide us from our fears,
while all is quaking.

We bury the dead,
but we cannot stop while others lie dying,
we must keep calm and carry on the healing,
finding new protocols, building better systems,
because we cannot go back;
it has all been said,
if we say we have not heard it, we are lying,
the life in our care is not for wanton stealing,
yet despite our miserable failures, still glistens,
with vitality even we cannot crack.

Our gates are torn open,
but all has stopped shaking;

Let us dry our tears,
and serve our remaking.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen 

Meditations in Fast Times: 34. What is poetry

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.

                34.

What is poetry, if it does not save people?

Some of us mistook one condition for another:
that cultivation of an ars poetica
was actually cultivation of an ars vita;
in our defense, I speak for us
—we did so in good faith.

And now, we sit by the waters
as the ancients did,
by those waters of Babylon,
weeping, for all is burning.

All we can say in our defense,
‘twas all done in good faith,
but we have been captured,
we have all been captured,
nonetheless.

Is it any wonder that our hopes,
as if they were our children,
have been dashed upon the rocks?

The songs we wrote
were a poor case
of poets wanting an empire.

The wind sings through poplars,
for we are nothing of nothing,
laid low and expecting nothing.

Alone,
the wind carries forward
the memory of our intention,
and the heart.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen