Poetry Blog: "A Work Day in Hard Times"

Monday, December 4 — Advent’s 1st week

These first days of Advent  — 4 weeks that dare us to imagine hope without denying violence, loss, and fear.  Year by year, they stir my blood and fill me with wonder —  work day cars moving women and men in a hurry, their driving  more confident in the light traffic.  Me?  I love the early dark, and the full moon hanging over the West side of our campus this early morning.

This year, to ease me into these 4 weeks, I re-visited the first week in December 2013 (the first year of the Work Day/Hard Times poetry list).  I found this Monday’s  post.  It’s partly an homage to a Jesuit soul friend who died too young and partly an homage to one of his gifts, introducing me to the poet Mary Oliver one hot summer day in Oglala South Dakota.

Advent blessings open me to joy even during recent mean and frightened language that doesn’t wear just on me,  perhaps on us all?   You may have read Mary Oliver here before.  Best to read her poetry slowly, with pauses, anticipating surprise.

Blessings on your work week.

john sj

Today’s Post  “Wage Peace”  (1st posted December 2, 2013)

Last Friday, November 29, was the anniversary of Bill Pauly’s sudden death at 59 of a heart attack while taking a lovely sabbatical after years of demanding pastoring on the Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation in western South Dakota.  Before Pine Ridge, Bill was pastor in a South Milwaukee Hispanic parish. Bill is a soul friend and I miss him especially at this time.  This Mary Oliver poem to which he introduced me captures his earthiness and urgency and his passion for the sacred ordinary.

Welcome to these last days of Term One.

john sj

“Wage Peace”  –  Mary Oliver

Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and fresh mown
fields.

Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup.

Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Don’t wait another minute.

Mary Oliver

September 10, 1935

p.s.  Today would be the birthday of one other soul friend, Art McGovern, sj would turn 88 today;  he died in May 2000 of cancer.  I miss him.

Friday, First Day in December

Harsh news these past days brought to mind how much of my city I share with a large Muslim community and a large Chaldean community.  I’ve posted poems from both of these places in my home culture, including these two poets.  One, Dunya Mikhail, I posted last March 13; the other, Warsan Shire, I posted the morning after the November 2016 election in the U.S.

Two poems breaks my ordinary rule for these posts.  You may want to spread their wisdom across this first weekend in my favorite month, December.

Blessings.

john sj

Have a blest weekend.

Today’s Post # 1  (from  March 13, 2017)  Dunya Mikhail

Last Friday I spent the afternoon visiting with, and an evening listening to, Joy Harjo at the University of Michigan’s Michigan League.   Joy emailed on Wednesday to explore the possibility that I could drive to Ann Arbor.   It worked out because I had a free afternoon and evening, an unanticipated grace.  She read mostly from her most recent book  Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings.  Listening took me into stillness for c. 2 hours;  to the language of her poems and of her flute, and her sax.  Definitely worth the 45 mile drive from our campus to Ann Arbor.

That night Joy introduced me to the Chaldean poet Dunya Mikhail.  Dunya and I share some of the sprawling space of Metro Detroit and we share the Catholic faith, hers Chaldean, mine 1840’s immigrant European.  When I got home, I looked for some of her poetry and found  “I Was in a Hurry.”

Today’s Post:  “I Was in a Hurry”

Yesterday I lost a country.

I was in a hurry,

and didn’t notice when it fell from me

like a broken branch from a forgetful tree.

Please, if anyone passes by

and stumbles across it,

perhaps in a suitcase

open to the sky,

or engraved on a rock

like a gaping wound,

or wrapped

in the blankets of emigrants,

or canceled

like a losing lottery ticket,

or helplessly forgotten

in Purgatory,

or rushing forward without a goal

like the questions of children,

or rising with the smoke of war,

or rolling in a helmet on the sand,

or stolen in Ali Baba’s jar,

or disguised in the uniform of a policeman

who stirred up the prisoners

and fled,

or squatting in the mind of a woman

who tries to smile,

or scattered like the dreams

of new immigrants in America.

If anyone stumbles across it,

return it to me, please.

Please return it, sir.

Please return it, madam.

It is my country…

I was in a hurry

when I lost it yesterday.

“I Was in a Hurry” by Dunya Mikhail, translated by Elizabeth Winslow, from The War Works Hard

Today’s post # 2  (from November 9, 2016)   “what they did yesterday afternoon”

they set my aunts house on fire
i cried the way women on tv do
folding at the middle
like a five pound note.
i called the boy who use to love me
tried to ‘okay’ my voice
i said hello
he said warsan, what’s wrong, what’s happened?

i’ve been praying,
and these are what my prayers look like;
dear god
i come from two countries
one is thirsty
the other is on fire
both need water.

later that night

i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?

it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.

Warsan Shire
https://sites.udmercy.edu/poetry/2016/09/30/sept-30-where-does-it-hurt-warsan-shire/

Wednesday, November 29 —  close the semester’s  finish line.

What do we want to tell students as they bring this semester in for a landing with final papers and exams?  — These fifteen weeks  demanded work, and patience, mistakes and starting over again, but sweat equity moments  can be magic,  turning plodding into dancing, turning hope into joy.

Poet W H Auden reminds his readers that, when we risk hope and pay attention,  the labor can take us to a date with Love.    “It’s worth it” —  that’s the core promise of a university.

Best to read Auden out loud, with pauses.    Have a blest day.

john sj

Today’s Post

The chimney sweepers
Wash their faces and forget to wash the neck;
The lighthouse keepers
Let the lamps go out and leave the ships to wreck;
The prosperous baker
Leaves the rolls in hundreds in the oven to burn;
The undertaker
Pins a small note on the coffin saying “Wait till I return,
“I’ve got a date with Love.”

And deep-sea divers
Cut their boots off and come bubbling to the top,
And engine-drivers
Bring expresses in the tunnel to a stop;
The village rector
Dashes down the side-aisle half-way through a psalm;
The sanitary inspector
Runs off with the cover of the cesspool on his arm —
To keep his date with Love.

w h auden

(February 1908 – September 1973)
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._H._Auden)

Monday, November 27   —  “Man’s mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells”

Back to work after a lovely 4 day weekend, a weekend that can open the imagination to beauty and stillness and rest.   Turning back into a five day work week sometimes wears, even grinds.   Perhaps that’s what brought G. M. Hopkins to this metaphor: a skylark’s wild explosions of energy and what happens when all that free spirit gets caged, skylark caged, a human being caged, “day-laboring-out life’s age.”

The cage does not define the lark, nor the daily burdens define the person.  A reminder:  it helps when reading Hopkins, to give his word play a practice run until you get the cadences right and until you give his word choices a chance startle your imagination and make you smile.

Three good surprises today?  Sure.   Have a blest week.

john sj

Today’s Post:  “The Caged Skylark”

AS a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage

Man’s mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells—

That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;

This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life’s age.

Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,

Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells,

Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells

Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.

Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest—

Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest,

But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.

Man’s spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best,

But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed

For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.

G. M. Hopkins, sj   1844-1889

Wednesday, November 22   Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi  —  “When I die”

Wednesday before Thanksgiving,  work, for many of us, begins to shift from professional skills to hospitality arts – calculating the weight of a large turkey in terms of cooking time,  family-special recipes, families gathering across generations.  Last minute grocery shopping runs,  the small-scale excitements of family and close friends with the oldest of rituals, cooking for familiar company.   Wednesday opens into a Thursday that has three Saturday-like days in a row.  Breathing time, nap times, time for old stories re-told, for the City’s massive Parade, for football.

I looked for a poet from outside the U.S. — a voice as deeply domestic and human as the ones many of our readers grew up with in what we learned to call America, a voice to remind us as we gather that this country of immigrant-set tables with foods from around the wide world.

I came upon this, to me new, poem by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi.  He opens us readers into awe and mystery and playful teasing.   Lots of free time these coming days so reading two or three times should fit into some open spaces.

Happy Thanksgiving, may your hospitality return to anoint you.  See you on Monday.

john sj

Today’s Post, “When I die”

When I die
when my coffin
is being taken out
you must never think
i am missing this world

don’t shed any tears
don’t lament or
feel sorry
i’m not falling
into a monster’s abyss

when you see
my corpse is being carried
don’t cry for my leaving
i’m not leaving
i’m arriving at eternal love

when you leave me
in the grave
don’t say goodbye
remember a grave is
only a curtain
for the paradise behind

you’ll only see me
descending into a grave
now watch me rise
how can there be an end
when the sun sets or
the moon goes down

it looks like the end
it seems like a sunset
but in reality it is a dawn
when the grave locks you up
that is when your soul is freed

have you ever seen
a seed fallen to earth
not rise with a new life
why should you doubt the rise
of a seed named human

have you ever seen
a bucket lowered into a well
coming back empty
why lament for a soul
when it can come back
like Joseph from the well

when for the last time
you close your mouth
your words and soul
will belong to the world of
no place no time

Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

(30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273)

Monday, November 20   “I don’t know
if it’s better to be good at a bad job or bad at a good job”

What’s sweet about Thanksgiving, at least one of the sweet things, is a 3 day work week followed by a 4 day weekend.  It’s a reminder that an ordinary 5 day week teaches people to be strong, develop staying power, especially when one 5 day adds onto another, something to be proud of, our work rhythms.  Interrupting them now and then, like this week, puts a light on their ordinary strength and beauty.

I hadn’t posted a poem from Detroit poet Jamaal May in a while.  He writes “Shift” with the same subtle density of language that characterizes his poetry.   “Shift” asks a reader to read two or three times to find a way into a world of growing up into an adult’s awareness while learning the honor of showing up and doing a job.   It’s worth the 2nd and 3rd read, better out loud with pauses.

Have a blest week.

john sj

Acting on an anonymous tip, a shift supervisor

at a runaway shelter strip-searched six teenagers.

Mrs. Haver was taping shut the mouths

of talkative students by the time she neared retirement,

and Mr. Vickers, a skilled electrician in his day,

didn’t adapt when fuses became circuit breakers,

a fact that didn’t stop him from tinkering

in our basement until the house was consumed by flame.

I used to want to be this bad at a job.

I wanted to show up pissy drunk to staff meetings

when the power point slides were already dissolving

one into another, but I had this bad habit

of showing up on time

and more sober than any man should be

when working audio/visual hospitality

in a three star hotel that was a four star hotel

before he started working there.

When the entire North Atlantic blacked out,

every soul in the Hyatt Regency Dearborn flooded

the parking lot panicked about terrorists and rapture,

while I plugged in microphones and taped down cables

by flashlight—you know, in case whatever cataclysm

unfolded didn’t preempt the meetings. Meetings,

before which I’d convince a children’s hospital

to pay fifteen dollars to rent a nine dollar laser pointer.

Thirty-five bucks for a flip chart,

extra paper on the house. Is it good to be good at a job

if that job involves pretending to be a secret service agent

for Phizer’s George Bush impersonator? I don’t know

if it’s better to be good at a bad job or bad at a good job,

but there must be some kind of satisfaction

in doing a job so poorly, you’re never asked to do it again.

I’m not saying he’s a hero, but there’s a guy out there

who overloaded a transformer and made a difference,

because in a moment, sweating through my suit,

groping in the dark when my boss was already home,

I learned that I’d work any job this hard, ache

like this to know that I could always ache for something.

There’s a hell for people like me where we shovel

the coal we have mined ourselves into furnaces

that burn the flesh from our bones nightly,

and we never miss a shift.

BY JAMAAL MAY

http://www.jamaalmay.com

Tuesday,  November 14

After some wet and gray days, today just knocks me out with classic November sun on crisp November air.  Mary Oliver writes of buttoning down for winter’s coming.  Her poem is all about welcoming improbable visitors into one’s life.

I missed yesterday — my new MacBook pro only got operational (thank you Mark Paulik) last night.  Very sweet to have a fresh working system.

I’ll be flying to Santa Clara tomorrow, so no post then.  One more post one day this week, I hope.   Next week back to normal until Christmas break.

john st sj

Today’s Post,  “Making the House Ready for the Lord”

Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but

still nothing is as shining as it should be

for you. Under the sink, for example, is an

uproar of mice – it is the season of their

many children. What shall I do? And under

the eaves

and through the walls the squirrels

have gnawed their ragged entrances – but it is

the season

when they need shelter, so what shall I do?

And the raccoon limps into the kitchen and

opens the cupboard

while the dog snores, the cat hugs the pillow;

what shall I do? Beautiful is the new snow falling

in the yard and the fox who is staring boldly

up the path to the door. And still I believe

you will

come, Lord: you will, when I speak to the fox,

the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering

sea-goose, know

that really I am speaking to you whenever I say,

as I do all morning and afternoon: Come in,

Come in.

Mary Oliver

I’m helping with a silent retreat at the Jesuit retreat house on the prairie just south of Denver.  Each morning and evening a small herd of mule deer is outside my window grazing in our very large yard (circa 250 acres).

I’ll be back on Monday.

john sj

Today’s post —   Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali # 5

I ask for a moment’s indulgence to sit by thy side,
The works that I have in hand
I will finish afterwards.

Away from the sight of thy face
my heart knows no rest nor respite,
and my work becomes an endless toil
in a shoreless sea of toil.

Now is the time to sit quiet,
face to face with thee
and to sing dedication of life
in this silent and overflowing leisure.

Friday,  November 3   –   “Greyhaired, I have not grown wiser, unless to perceive absurdity is wisdom.”

The sun came out for Friday in this work week.   Autumn’s about 1/3 finished (if you count from the equinox in September to the winter solstice in December);  these past days of blustery (some might say “cold!”)  tough winds  began to feel like November.      Today though, Weather.com, announces a surprise blessing;  bright sunshine, light wind gusts, clean dry air.

Why does all this end-of-work-week beauty remind me of Denise Levertov’s poem about falling in love as an elderly woman?   The poem is as improbably playful, as are these days while the season begins to dance away from the last bits of summer and into serious autumn —  leaf-poetry above where we walk.  Maybe that’s why Denise caught my attention.

Best to read the poem out loud with pauses.   Have a blest weekend.

john sj

today’s post  “Ancient Airs and Dances”

I

I knew too well
what had befallen me
when, one night, I put my lips to his wineglass
after he left–an impulse I thought was locked away with a smile
into memory’s museum.

When he took me to visit friends and the sea, he lay
asleep in the next room’s dark where the fire
rustled all night; and I, from a warm bed, sleepless,
watched through the open door
that glowing hearth, and heard,
drumming the roof, the rain’s
insistent heartbeat.

Greyhaired, I have not grown wiser,
unless to perceive absurdity
is wisdom. A powerless wisdom.

II

Shameless heart! Did you not vow to learn
stillness from the heron
quiet from the mists of fall,
and from the mountain–what was it?
Pride? Remoteness?
You have forgotten already!
And now you clamor again
like an obstinate child demanding attention,
interrupting study and contemplation.
You try my patience. Bound as we are
together for life, must you now,
so late in the day, go bounding sideways,
trying to drag me with you?

Denise Levertov – Evening Train

Wednesday, November 1
Three saints in my life

I’m posting All Saints Day like a Jesuit Homie –  three Jesuits: one I lived with for years before he died, Art McGovern.  The second lived a barely recognized life in the 1500s and was named a Saint in formal Catholic fashion,  St. Alphonsus Rodriquez.  Today’s third saint is familiar to most readers: Gerard Manley Hopkins, another non-famous person during his life.   Hopkins’ poem in honor of Alphonsus, whose feast was yesterday, is a tribute to a compelling human being and the wonder of his seemingly un-noteworthy life as a college door-keeper hundreds of years ago.

Mid-week, November chills, blessings as you go.

john sj

p.s. My laptop selectively interrupts this writing by losing its memory unpredictably.  That’s why Monday’s post played hooky and today’s is pretty late.

Posted on November 2, 2015
Monday November 2 – a saint who lived with us,  Art McGovern, sj

This time of year Art McGovern seems to come and find me.  Yesterday was, in the R Catholic calendar, the feast of all the saints.  At the opening of the Sunday 12:30 mass, I invited the congregation to think of some one person who had touched their life and pay attention to her/him as we worshipped.  I hadn’t chosen my own person yet but as we listened to the readings, I settled on Art, who died at 70 in 2000.  Art lived close to the ground — at home with play (“health food is the kind you like so much you feel good while eating it:  my 3 are pretzels, ice cream, and bacon.”) and grief, at home with losses and wins, at home  leading difficult committees, at home with impeccably prepared classes laced with kind teasing and learning (“Fr. McGovern is like feathers; he makes you laugh while  you think hard.” said a student one time).  If someone can be a world class scholar, a beloved teacher, a rabid Ohio State football fan and a kinsman day in and day out . . . .    No surprise he came to mind yesterday.

john sj

In honour of
St. Alphonsus Rodriquez
Laybrother of the Society of Jesus

HONOUR is flashed off exploit, so we say;
And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield
Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,
And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.
On Christ they do and on the martyr may;
But be the war within, the brand we wield
Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,
Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.

Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,
Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,
Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)
Could crowd career with conquest while there went
Those years and years by of world without event
That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.

Gerard Manley Hopkins  28 July 1844 – 8 June, 1889