|
POETRY
This weeks poetry page features two poems by Fr. Kilian
McDonnell, founder and president of the Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural
Research on the campus of St. Johns School of Theology and Seminary in
Collegeville, Minn. McDonnell, who is celebrating his 80th birthday, the 50th
anniversary of ordination and 55 years as a Benedictine monk this year, began
writing poetry five years ago.
Many of his poems, he told NCR, are inspired by German
scholar Gerhard Von Rads Old Testament Theology.It was an
eye opener for me, he said. Especially the theme of struggling with
God. Abraham, Jacob, the prophets. They were of course struggling with
themselves, too.
Struggling with the visions and the encounter. The
meeting
was kind of thorny. It was glorious and magnificent and spiky.
And thats what drew me to it. And also the presence of God in history.
That God was immediately involved in history, and its unfolding.
I wanted to show the struggle but I wanted to show the
ultimate triumph. What we do in the struggle, and how God eventually overcomes
us. God makes us whole.
Pelagius Undone
You have accomplished for us all we have
done -- Isaiah 26
No sudden Tabors, No angelic
visitations Betrayals had not reached a critical mass.
My fig
leaf had not fallen off My sins had not been published in the
Morning Mirror.
I had not felt hounded. The sun had not
darkened, The mountain of fire had not fallen into the sea,
But as
I turned to hang my tan jacket on the paneled wall I knew.
In
that light -- one moment that November day I saw my smudged years,
unsmudged.
Sure, I was captain of my unconquerable soul, standing
at the helm, hand upon the wheel.
Stupid groundings were my
own, with all the clarity of Greek necessity.
But there is a
management, like wildest love, that leaves me free, opens the
gate.
Abraham Binds Isaac
Go to the Land of Moriah --
Genesis 22:2
Take me at my word, trust my face, my
hand. Gather up the flock and herd, leave your fathers
house. Quick now. Though you be seventy-five, Sarah ten years
younger, the son of your decay will be great in the far land. Fear
not.
Good to your word you brought me to the soil of
Canaans famine. Eighty-eight and counting: no son, but promises
recycled in blood. Keep faith!
Every promise is a test. You have
no past, no future, only Now. But my life keeps waiting for your
dyspeptic will. Do hurry! Ninety-nine is past and Sarah weeps. Still
the covenants reissued, signed in a snip off my manhood (Puberty
rites at two hundred?) Steady boy!
Suddenly toothless Sarah blossoms.
No one in Ur of Chaldees, no one in Haran has ever seen antiquity
sit upon the birth stool. Courage man! We giggle in our lumpy bed as
though we discovered the cosmology of love. I lay my ear upon her belly
to hear his heart. Its true.
Sarah spreads varicose veins to
whelp a roaring beast whose howl is heard beyond Beer-sheba and the
sands. Hes here. When the boy is ten I hear: Go to the
land of Moriah to burn in offering on the mountain your Isaac, the son
you love. A trap?
As I said, every promise is a test, every
covenant a threat. Yahweh lurks behind each blessing like a fang.
Beware the Greeks.
Is there no end to tempting, no honor among the
gods? After long delays -- and I mean long -- you sent a child of my
loins. Tardily.
Let me ask about fidelity, promises, pacts thrice
vowed. Like a rug merchant postponing delivery you might
escape. Renegotiate?
And now again you haggle, with Isaacs
blood for barter. After stops and stays, you ask this? After years of
smooth sayings? Once more?
Woe to the chosen, to the elect. You
will die upon an abandoned hill as a sign of contradiction to that fierce
and thorny love. I go.
I bind my only son upon the altar on
Moriah, but you stay my hand. I return to Beer-sheba, heavy with the
knowledge of God and wary. I wait.
-- Fr. Kilian McDonnell Collegeville, Minn.
Poems should be previously unpublished and limited to about 50
lines and preferably typed. Please send poems to NCR POETRY, 115 E.
Armour Blvd., Kansas City MO 64111-1203. Or via e-mail to
poetry@natcath.org or fax (816) 968-2280. Please include your street
address, city, state, zip and daytime telephone number. NCR offers a
small payment for poems we publish, so please include your Social Security
number.
National Catholic Reporter, April 12,
2002
|
|