Friday September 13 –
I have not posted this compelling e e cummings post in several years. When i read it, i wonder how i could have passed over one of e e’s master works. Brave and strong enough to stand erect where Friday the 13th and mean political winds blow across the world.
Best to read out loud, with pauses. Have a blest weekend.
john sj
p.s. i am in the second week of my sabbatical, here on the vast high plains of the pine ridge Lakota Reservation, surely one of the sacred places of my last 50 years.
e. e. cummings, a self-portrait
i am a little church(no great cathedral) by e.e. cummings
i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april
my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth’s own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness
around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains
i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing
winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)