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Only at midnight

When the hands of the clock stood up tall

Did we guess how large

The world was

When the round curve

Of the moon in unbroken deeps

Shivered the scudding clouds

And burst past branches

With a revelation:

The loneliness betwixt

Might be, not in her,

But us. It may be we

(An old deep legend) who

Are broken, while the world

Dances through unspoken

Atmospheres and

Beauty confounds us

By being good.

It is not the dead that

Walk at this deep birth

Of dawn, but the Living

And all things shake loose

Our words, brimming to

Being, and sow us

Speechless with wonder.

“Home is where we start from.”

We scanned the stars, but found in them

Scarce food for such a hunger. In our pools

They were no nearer, but they were pure

And so satisfied, for a while, our thirst

For the bright eternal. By day our visions

Mocked us: they had not the gentle tangibility

Of roses, or goblets, or our roofs

At evening when the patterned infinite

Untouchable troubled our souls.
*

This star was different. We followed,

Did not dare to hope—knew not what to hope

Or if the restless dream was more

Than our own inescapable interstices.

When we arrived, after long doubt

And journeying and sunrises

We wanted to think of as meaningful,

We only recognized the end of the journey

When we felt we had reached its beginning.

The common forms which at home had been

A dull ache without revelation, now broke us with joy

As we read the galaxies in his impossible eyes

And worshipped the bodily God.

**********************************
It's Advent--one of my favorite times of the year. Every day and every night takes on a new meaning, for it is one day and one night Closer; not just to a revelation but to The Revelation. Today, as illustrated--if feebly--by the above, I have been especially struck by the need for Incarnation. I have always been in awe of simple Being--of leaves and tree branches and the edges of things, but while things are in themselves beautiful they stir me also with an inexpressible longing. Every leaf is a revelation and an ache. For there must be in the ultimate stuff of things something deeply personal and particular; yet joined also with this is the need for eternity, infinity, purity, the glory of the perfect Form unconstrained by the physical. The Greeks and Romans felt that need for the incarnate god--but never could fashion for themselves gods quite worthy of their worship. Virgil cries out that there are "tears in things," and from the depths of human memory come the tragically frivolous gods of the disconsolate Homer. We all desire nothing more than to worship, utterly and with the whole passion of our being, something not only beatiful but bodily. Someone not only perfect, but as tangible as our hands and our faces and the dirty, frozen paths that we wander in the frigid December.
TS Eliot said, "home is where we start from." These familiar, physical things, so dear and yet somehow so insufficient, are where we start from. And at the end of the journey may we find at last that our hearts, as well as our minds, have been correct, and Truth has a Face which looks on us--and loves.

If I have seen anything, and if I have communicated anything of the vision, it is by His grace.
Joy and peace to all.

Odyssey

I want the spring again, but not this falling.

Or rather both, without the return: each season

Shows us not enough, birth ending

In death, hearts renewed and dried

And restless in the chill October—

Seeking in vain to be shattered

Finally

Into joy.

Feet wander under a cerulean sky, alone.

Vermillion hands caress the wind with whispers

Of some fierce and homely thing, so near

That our hearts break for proximity

But cannot remember. What is its name? Do we

Have names?

We cannot see behind the clouds, nor catch

The singing of the trees at dawn. Their leaves are

Drifting. Our hearts fall with them, fluttering

With crimson desire.

Will the wandering lead us home?

And who shall brave for us

The quiet winter

And who shall clothe these thunderings

With words

And who shall grace us

With fire

********************************

Advent

The old ways surrender

To the unity of snow,

Forgotten. This at last

Is the soul of their pattern.

What mystery troubles the air

With peace? What purity

Glints on the lamp-lit world

And makes it small?

Night is swaddled in stillness and stars,

And everything waits—without

The restlessness of summer,

Or the pang of autumn, or the sudden

Comfort of spring; and patience

Dances at midnight

With joy.

It is the heart of winter

The silent benediction

Soothing daffodils and dead leaves,

Birth and death and aching

Desire—

Silent waiting for a Coming,

Silent knowledge that it has already come,

And the second coming will justify

The schism of the seasons.

I am like a veritable Jack Bauer. ...except I haven't been saving America every ten minutes. Details.
Speaking of which. Tony. What are you doing, man. Don't do this to me. I thought you were on our side.
ANYWAY
I have been very pleased by things today. Here they are.
There were strawberries at dinner. Real, whole, ripe strawberries with delicious, serious chocolate dip stuff. Sooo delicious!
Dr. Freeh, my cheerful Italian English teacher, took us all the way down to the Arb for class today, and it was lovely.
The grass is getting very green and thick. Yay, spring! And there are daffodills coming out, and there were SUCH lovely clouds hustling by today. It was a little cool but after FINALLY turning my paper in I laid under a tree for about 20 minutes. Trees are so EXCITING from that angle! (I mean they are from every angle, but we are rather desensitized from the vertical position). They're so preposterously bristly, strange stiff living things that have shot out of the earth...and all of them have branches, little particular ones against the blue sky and the clouds. And pleasingly patterned bark sticking off at all angles. Things are so beautiful.
Pipe band was good tonight. We played some hard stuff and Iain was happy--those two don't often go together :). And every now and then I just get really pleased that I know how to play the bagpipes, because it seems like something that I should always want to do and never get to, but....I do. What are the chances.
Oh, and I got to go for a wee sunrise walk around 7 this morning, seems how I was awake...
I think the occasional all-nighter is good for one. At least the day of. I've been much more attentive to things just being--good. All the things that usually I'm too awake and busy to notice. There are so many small, beautiful things in this world.
So. I'm feeling a little giddy and in need of sleep, so I better take a whack at my Greek homework and then call it a night.
Exciting news though: Centralhallapalooza (big tent, student bands, blow-up obstacle courses and bouncy things, cotton candy, you know the sort of shindig I mean) is happening on Saturday and THERE IS GOING TO BE AN ELEPHANT. I DON'T KNOW WHY THERE IS GOING TO BE AN ELEPHANT. ONE DOES NOT QUESTION INEXPLICABLE ELEPHANTS. BUT WE CAN RIDE THE ELEPHANT. AND I'm VERY EXCITED! ^_^
 

I just walked back through one campus and it was possibly the most beautiful I have ever seen it. 3am, early April, and four inches of (still falling) wet, flaky snow that has clung to everything. Every twig, every branch, the bark and the lamps, everything—covered in inches of snow. Everything filled out, made larger, made new and mysterious; and for the first time I saw the lamps dotting campus for what they really are. They are the lights of faerie. They are not the dull orange lamps of the rest of the year; they are the bright eyes of another realm filling the alabaster world with their cheerful, cold, living glow. Trees and bushes bend beneath the weight of the snow, sometimes rustle beautifully in the wind, dropping chunks of their burden (silvae laborantes!); it is faerie. Campus is literally different tonight. There is reality out there, in the snow carefully clinging to every point of the eagles’ wings, and the shining seldom-revealed lights and the tall white enrobed trees; reality that only now and then—perhaps only today, only today out of all eternity—has shown itself to the mortal eyes of a few students, stumbling to their dorms through grace and wonder and falling snow.  
I wish you were all here to see it :)

A walk back from late night Latin studying, and a new world of fresh fluffy snow to walk through: half an hour's scribbling later, and here we are. Just thoughts, scattered and free as the snow though considerably less delicate and tragically less graceful. Perhaps I shall someday harmonize them into poetry. perhaps not.
*** 

The ways that had become familiar

Collide softly with the less known

Campus bisected and defined by circuitous paths

Becomes a mysterious unity of whiteness

Shapes usually large and imposing in the daily air

Shrink before the simple monstrosity of purity

 .

All thoughts are suspended, all daily life

(which should have this at its heart, which should

Through the paths remember the whole

And remember the waiting which our patterns

Are meant to enfold, to reveal) is swaddled in stillness

And everything waits: without the restlessness

Of summer twilight, without the vague dissatisfaction

Of autumn or the sudden comfort of spring, waits

And patience is indissoluble from joy 
 .

In the stillness, between the bleary awe of finals-weary students,

The snow angels cheerfully emblazoned by the more industrious, and

Cloudcover and covered paths and yellow lights of Fairie—

Silent waiting for a Coming, silent knowledge that it has already come

And the second fulfillment will justify the schism of the seasons
***
Joy and peace to all
And to all a good night...that 8am Latin final is looking less and less agreeable...

The world hangs gently

Between the stars’ bright eyes

And your dragon breath

On the winter air

Walk softly, lest you wake

Our Savior, coming now with the frost

Sparkling hard on the fall ground

(your heart too frosted, and beautiful

In its breaking, His breaking, and

Rising again)

Through these half-fallen leaves

And branches bare in the restless crisp

Of darkness, walk softly

(at the edges of things, where hope is sharp

And souls are sleeping);

Somewhere behind these trees,

Behind your soul—more bare than they—

One is moving with the deep thrill

Of winter wind

And trees leaf-fallen and fallen heart

Will birth to life again