POEM #13: The Window

Another riff on the transcendent banal

“What is knowledge?—the feeling of eternal life.

And what is eternal life?—feeling everything in God.”

— Saint Isaac of Nineveh

Hi!

So in the notes leading up to my last poem, Ascension, I mentioned wanting for some time to write a poem with the lines “totalitarian vinyl siding / empty of mythological content”—and now, finally, I have a poem for you that is almost that poem, though milder—it’s another riff, like Ascension was, on what I might call “the transcendent banal”; I hope you like it—I do!

For the next poem, I’ll return to my work on new versions of the Hebrew psalms, with vast audio landscapes—and if you’re new to Sabbath Empire & don’t know what I’m talking about: First of all, thank you for joining us. Secondly, check out what I did with Psalm 24, The Earth Is Yah’s or Psalm 90, Before You Danced Forth the Earth— that’s what I’m talking about!

In the meantime, here’s The Window, which I offer you very tired and very grateful for a week of working on the forest cabin with my father, every night dreaming of pine boards and gleaming nail-heads and the ringing of the hammer and nails and boards and pine, the slinging of the hammer, ringing and ringing and ringing—elemental things: the joy of building a home for my three little darlings and their darling mother, the joy of solving just basic animal problems of sun, rain, wind, quiet, warmth, belonging. I don’t think I could ever get tired of that!—and so holy carpenter, Mary’s son, for hands, hand-tools, and the fragrance of fresh cut pine: thank you for all these things, and may you remember them in your kingdom, also.

love,

graham

(Poem, a little one—it rhymes, even!—below the paywall)