For the Troubadour Friars

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_of_Assisi

there's a cricketing quickening
a soft returning, after sulfur
into the iron of revelatory swords,
when words are wielded by fiery
angels. when the grasses grow brown
instead of up, up green. listen
to the sounding lip-less trumpets
the blistered mollusk of harvest,
the moons that grown longer
and more prideful of their cold brightness -
that indigo fabric, all pin-pricked,
and meekly paying homage for free suppers.
Set the spinner and the shuttle
weaving your september impress, the settled corset,
the breathy deepness of mabon's huntress
and the one girl inside who remembers
the day when all the earth was still new.
Hearts still new. Red, beating with ease,
she cut her hair, as bodies birthed
ideologies, weighted
with the tilt of mythologies
sneezing into a barrel of fingernail seasons
suffering in prophecies. In the middle
of the snowy somethings I will brave, (and
any other manner of weather too) I will
light the fire in the morning; a candle
in the window to come home to
in the evening (where there is darkness,
may I make light) You saw
there resting jeweled in the bleakness
so much brilliance that it
sang songs within you (make me
an instrument) and painted delights.
And all this because something that climbed
now slithers; something ate it's fill of sickness
and in feverish ecstasy decidedly knew
the One other importance (and his father
a merchant); bridges are structured like
feathers and bells, obelisks and churches:
there are hollow places everywhere
and they gleefully echo.
 

Reviews

[W.k.kortas]

The learned Jack has spoken well here--and you can certainly argue that Francis, in his renunciation of earthly goods and pleasures, was closer in spirit to pagan beliefs than the tenets of the Church. The phrasing, imagery, and wordplay in this piece are each, in their turn, first-rate; the renunciation of earthly goods, of material wealth, is wonderfully expressed in phrases such as "the blistered mollusk of harvest", the "hollow places" of "obelisks and churches". While its subject, at least broadly, is historical in nature, this is no academic set-piece; it is fully personal and flesh-and-blood as well. The wise Doctor has cited this as "lovely and powerful", which is something that only true art can pull off successfully, and I concur wholeheartedly.

[J.P. Bristow]

I put this into my favs......an incredible manifestation of thoughts on religion and the waxing of time...really brilliant

I am reminded of Mali Ayaz
Though shame it be a fair one's curls to shear,
Why rise in wrath or sit in sorrow here?
Rather rejoice, make merry, call for wine;
When clipped the cypress doth most trim appear

........swearing vows of poverty -chasitity and obedience-

interesting-perhaps"He" made the sacrifice knowing such expectations to be impossible.

[Ed Hart]

"tilt of mythologies," this stuff's got to be coming through like a Schubert quartet; say, Death and the Maiden. You've certainly top-lofted your self here, my dear, and gone right on by where my comments can reach. You do real good at humbling the likes of me, and cleanse me of my poetical conceits... Thank you.

[Doctor JKC]

I enjoyed the pagan references,i.e. Mabon.
Buddhism and Paganism will certainly surpass
the biblical religions soon.

Such a gorgeous poem and so well written
and thought out.
I will have to return to it a number of times
so it sinks in in a number of ways.
Most of my mind works in a hard-boiled way and a piece like this
helps to open it up.

St. Francis and his band were true saints
and much heralded in yogic circles.

Lovely and powerful,
Jack