The Nine of the Spirit;
a Cycle of Poems Based on Galatians 6:22

 

Love’s Light

I.

When Father, Son and Spirit communed
in ageless adoration,
they made me their trusted messenger;
for in thought I was one
with them. All virtues joined with us:
Joy reveled at our feast;
Peace hymned us. God spoke and Goodness bent
to fashion star, flower, beast
and guiltless agents of moral choice
(potential mutineers).

And when, in outlying provinces
of Heaven’s hemispheres,
souls revolted, God summoned Patience
and dispatched Kindness, first
emissary to the rebels. King
was God of these accursed
men, but yet he donned Humility
and bade Self-Control stand
at his right hand lest he destroy
his creatures. His command
sent Faith to infiltrate wayward realms.
Where Faith found men contrite,
God showered forgiveness on their hearts
and set me as a light.

II.

I shine as light from a hot star
swathed in gaseous cloud,
known only from the glow it excites
in its surrounding shroud.
I am Love—God’s mystery revealed;
his wisdom I express.
Heaven’s lingua franca am I
and the spruce of angel dress.
The Spirit wears me as a gown,
sprinkled with perfumes;
I am the air of Heaven’s palace,
the scent of spacious rooms.
I am the bread, wine, meat and fruit
of spiritual repast;
the purseless tender of this realm,
unminted and uncast.
The holiest holies hush for me
the courtyards surge with praise;
adoration rises on my wings
to laud the Ancient of Days.

III.

If to name a grace is to know it
then I am vastly known;
my name must ride dandelion silk,
so widely is it blown.
The mealiest crooner sobs of love
above his guitar’s wails;
and with divorce reserved “in case”
brides lisp me through their veils;
in my name bruised children grow old-eyed
and lick the adult wound;
or brats, neglected, are swift ivies
that riot walls unpruned;
shrews hound their husbands to sullenness,
henpecking in my name;
lusty satyrs cheat a dozen trusts
yet plead me without shame.
See mothers tyrannize their wilting sons
hawk-eyed to pounce false moves;
see widows spurn the jubilant day
to wallow in dead loves.
In my name every lust and baseness
with fervency is done—
crimes and sins extolled: the rotten limb
put for the healthy one.

IV.

I am love, the progenetive virtue;
my children number eight;
We are nine of the Spirit. Win us
or live disconsolate.
Pull wide your blinds to my light. Spurn me—
all nine of us you lose;
for, like light through a prism, I fan
into a rainbow’s hues.
My colors are Patience, Goodness and Joy,
Kindness and Self-Control,
Meekness and Faith and Peace. We are nine
who illuminate the soul.

The Paean of Love’s Firstborn

I unbottle the blond sunrise
and emblazon the orange sunset.
I sprint with the trilling meadowlark
and the creatures of Spring call my name.
When the wicked decrease, my heart brims with mirth;
I exult when Christ speaks, filling the earth.
To know me is ecstasy.

Shout with me as I splash in a cold mountain spate.
Drink my wine—it sparkles without making drunk.
Happy, happy was my birth.

I am Joy.
Love’s firstborn am I.

The ungodly pursue me in vain,
their pleasures the decoys of death;
whereas I, I myself, seek out the saints,
though they dwell in thralls of pain.
When, from grave-like dungeons they call,
even there I strike flints in the dark.
The godly are glad with me.
Mary joyed with me, believing Gabriel.
Miriam joined her voice to mine when Pharaoh fell.
With David I danced before the ark,
With Peter exulted to suffer with Christ.

Be merry with me.
Mine is not the nostalgic porridge of bards
which so quickly cools to a savorless gob.
Mine is not the elan of syncopated drums
which wearies to swift revulsion.
My trumpets cannot be subdued:
   in stillness my horns throb,
   in storm my tongue exults.
My voice is the whisper of wind in firs.
My breast is heaving fire.
My hair is the foam of wind-whipped white-caps,
the folded hills my attire.
When love shines, my skin gleams.
My moods are mellow as moonlight,
my whims fierce as frost.
Like a sparkler I stream,
spitting hot, uncatchable motes.
Whoever looks into my eyes
sees sun-stones in jewelled pools.

I shout in sunlight,
frolic in the whirlwind
and sport with pups.
I bathe in salt spray and rinse in rain.
I roar with spouting whales
and gambol with dolphin daughters,
diving deep into viridiscent waters.
With laughter, I fling myself on the beach
to gallop with the wild mustangs,
leaping hillocks, smoking the plain.
Swift as the diving shrike
that shrieks as it takes its prey,
I become a bird, a wisp,
a heat-shimmer haunting the air.
I ensorcle the tower bells;
on notes of carillons I glide down,
descending upon some grime-grey town.

Where foundries blast their steel-blue fumes,
I urge the honest workman to his task,
delighting in white-hot ingots,
in white-hot slabs hammered flat,
in a day’s wage sweated from straining arms.

Where will you find me?
What price would you give?
Retailers don’t package me by the ounce.
I elude my pursuers like diffusive smoke
but, those who follow Christ, I find.
I am Christ’s perfume.
I am a brook upwelling where he stood,
a tree that sprang when he spoke.
The Spirit-quickened taste my quinces
and partake of Christ’s mind.

The Invitation of Peace

Fare with me down shaded walks,
Sharing God’s goodness as we go;
Sink knee-deep in my tender grasses.
Drink the Jasmine-scented breeze.

See, God has prepared a little clearing,
Free of trespass, here in your heart.
Silence the chafing of your soul—
I admit no violence.
Savages will not descend,
Ravaging and mauling the leafage.
Rude men cannot obtrude
Shrewdly though they scheme.

Quietness lies deep as some dappled brook,
Sliding brown and turquoise
Beneath a turquoise sky.
The seethe of hate is stilled;
Only the chirring of cicadas, the
Moaning of doves, the
Lapping of little pools
Chapels the silence here.

Follow undulating paths where trees
Swallow the white gravel like smoke,
Charming the eye with measured line and native tangles,
Harmonizing curve and tumble.
Symmetry twines these placid woods
Trimming their branches;
None strikes discord against its neighbor:
Stone, wood, moss and leaf are nowhere at variance.

Pause with me beneath this leafy oak which
Draws nourishment from the placid soil.
Here, upon this grassy knoll, I’ll guest you—
Clear, cold spring water,
Toasted cakelets,
Roasted grains and wild honey.

Strife has no place here;
Life proceeds calmly despite the world’s
Clashing ideologies, discords, hostilities, torments,
Brash boasts, tumults and agitations.
No insult enters this place.
No assault tears the eye.

Saul fouled the clearing God made him,
Galling his own soul.
Thistles he planted with his own hands,
Bristling at every imagined slight.
Over and over I
Strove to win him,
Offering him sweet-scented clovers,
Proffering honey-cakes.
While my harp played, he fleetingly
Smiled on me; but nothing
Availed for long. His demon returning, he
Assailed me, ripping my robe,
Hurling his spear against the wall in
Churlish rage.

So I found others to befriend,
Showing them my pleasant walks—those
Who, like the Shunamite,
Flew to God even in mortal anguish.

Those nearby cottages,
Whose are they? you ask.
They are homes to the Sons of God,
Ladies and lords of his kingdom, whose
Passions are mastered, for they are
Fashioned in meekness.
Show me fair intent and you will
Know me as they know me.
I am not hasty or testy.
Rivalries I abhor.
Religious quarrels, petty jealousies and
Belligerence disgust me.
Accord and reconciliation dwell with me,
Awarding me joy.

Day and night I walk abroad
Praying men, “Enter and find repose.”
They choose not to hear me.
They bruise their souls,
Taking the peace of armaments
Making the peace of false agreements—
Seeking outside themselves that which
Meekness would make within.

My gardens are in you.
I step through your eyes to make my parks.
Let me widen your lawns,
Setting out rare flowers,
Spreading soft mosses,
Bedding delicate plants.
Then I will raise new cottages
When you introduce others to me.

The Passion of Patience

Who is this blossom, clad in quiet blue,
Who stands in the concourse with bleeding hands
Proffering plaited thorn-crowns to passers-by?
Does megalomania make her murmur:
“How quickly tumble the towers of haste!
How long my hand-hewn cathedrals shall last!”?

Patience need never come incognito.
Few recognize her face or covet her grace.
Some who thought they sought her hurry away,
Averting their eyes to avoid her glance;
But the wise, weighing the worth of her crowns,
Accept her bruising braid upon their brows
And linger to learn where she lives;
For to them she out-matches the moonrise
And is lovelier than lace-lawned ladies.

Hers is the beauty of courage and care,
Not of golden baubles between bare breasts.
She is glimpsed gliding through quivering brakes,
A dappled doe, elusive as yesterday’s dream,
Wraithy as heat-shimmers, shuddering in sunlight.

When Paul praised God in spite of Roman chains;
When Tyndale pored unpaid upon God’s word;
When Abigail shielded her churlish mate
And Joseph trusted God’s justifying hand,
There silent Patience wreathed her spiky crowns.

Alfred met Patience in Athelney’s fens;
Patiently baptized Gudrun’s oath-breaking swarm.
Again and again he mustered Wessex swains,
Breaking sword upon sword in weary strife
As fleet on fleet disgorged its Viking jarls;
And year on year, despite the spoiling Danes,
He strove to lead his unlearned folk to law,
Never sure next dawn would not dash his plans
Or skulking death scud him to his brothers.
The “Thousand Year Reich,” retching smoke and steel,
In twelve years died, but Alfred’s hope endures.

Haste rushes to revolt. Rather than brave
The moment’s misery it tears down bad,
Embraces worse—and brings Hell to earth.
Jehu galloped to Jezreel to hurl
Jezebel down, never deliberating
How he might embrocate his leprous land
But munched his calloused bread among the corpses.
David searched beyond the boundary of death
And glimpsed those truths which themed his lifelong course—
Those truths which weathered wrong for righteousness.
Twice he spared Saul, preferring flight to sin:
Those ships steer straight which fix on distant stars.

It is easier to burn than to build.
What skill is called to scar pieta?
What outflowing of faith to flatten St. Paul’s?
In two prodigious years of ill-paid toil
Michelangelo cast bronze Julius
Then wept to see his creation crushed,
The hated pope having left Bologna.

Worthless fellows, galled by futility,
Waste prodigies in a flash. The weak flee
The formidable prospect of the future,
Despairing in light of likelihoods,
Conceding engagements before they begin.
Patience bears failures, finding them false.
She’s watched transparent water hollow stone,
Seen unseen winds scour mountains down,
Heard intangible prayers shatter strongholds
A thousand years after first utterance.

Patience rises before us in simple array.
She pauses on our path, beseeching us
With silent eyes to share her serried crowns.
To those who’ll hear she pleads, “Let me complete
My work in you, my work of countless days.”

If cellists are not made in chary months
How much less saints? No substance mined from earth
Is half as refractory as man’s soul.
God patiently turns intractable men
On the sharp, Christ-shaping lathe of life.
Come, Patience! Come. Make Christian kings of us.

Kindness to Tabitha

Tabitha, your body lies dead,
Pulseless upon your Joppa bed.
Gladly would I unbar the gate
Of Heaven where your crowns await;
But the Lord bids me, Kindness, say,
“Bide yet a while on Earth.” They pray
(And Peter, joining them pleads)
Your life restored to do good deeds.

Dear child, your holy works are known
In Heaven. We’ve traced each stitch you’ve sewn,
Making garments for the poor;
We’ve watched the beggars leave your door,
Enheartened, raisin cakes in hand,
No poxed, no maimed, no helpless banned.
You keep no snarling dogs, no black
Burly slave to drive strangers back.

Like Elisha, once shown a need,
You alleviate it with a deed.
Even the drunkard lifts his head
From the ditch to bless your passing tread.
Herod and Nero never knew
The mercies obvious to you.

Like Christ you will not crush the spurned
Or quench the flax that smokes half burned.
Your speech is soft. No one has heard
Any but your most gracious word.
Your hand is raised only to bless
Or else impart a kind caress
On some small soul in want of care
Whose chill you warm with new-sewn wear.

Turn back, Gazelle; bound back, dear soul,
To your old abode and console
The heavy hearts you left behind.
Turn back to further deeds more kind.
The Earth needs you yet a while,
Dear Heart! Ah, sob, but bravely smile
And turn to pass through death again,
Bearing, like Christ, the world of pain.

And God Said, “It Is Good.”

And God said, “It is good,”
Surveying the world
His hands had freshly formed.
Through space its volume hurled,
Half-shadowed, half sun-warmed.

God breathed in man his breath.
And God said, “It is good.”
He gave men foods to eat
(Though one tree carried death)
Herbs, grains, roots and meat.

Man shut his ears to God
And chose a bitter fruit.
And man said, “It is good.”
Thus man became self-flawed—
Less Godlike, more a brute.

God looked upon the earth,
That rebel province, bent
To lust, war and false worth;
And said, “Not one is good;
My gifts are all misspent.”

God came to earth to live,
Humbly dressed, humbly born,
To teach, heal and forgive.
Men heaped his head with scorn,
No longer knowing good,
Nor recognizing good.

The Face of Faith

Hear Dullwit drone and yammer, parsing faith—
Old Dullwit who never took a daring plunge
All life, but kept the sober track of advancement
With fringe benefits. “Faith is being sure
Of what we hope for; certain of what we
Cannot see; It is loyalty to God...”
He spills tired cliches of trusting girls
Who leap into the hidden arms of dads
Secured by threads of voice.

                                          How stale the air!
How gray the chalkboard with half-wiped sums;
How suffocating these block walls that cube
His class, twelve by twelve by twelve. History
Roams like the Autumn wind that bends the trees
Outside our cage, erupting where it will
To toss its scattered leaves of faith.

                                                    By faith
Pope Gregory devised a paradigm
For church and state; by faith St. Patrick spread
The gospel to his captors; and by faith
King Alfred baptized Danish waves in blood
While petty rulers fled. By faith Jan Hus
Met martyrdom; by faith learned Tyndale turned
Dead Latin to our tongue; by faith old Bach
Ennobled notes to convey Christ; by faith
Deep-probing Boyle devised techniques to test
The laws of gas; by faith stout Jenner stood
Against fixed minds to rid the world of pox;
By faith George Mueller brought lost orphans in
To love; by faith Ten Boom defied Hell’s gates
To save a few rejected Jews. By faith
These were God’s hands to mediate his love
To men.

            Faith comes unheralded by horns,
Not dressed in vermillion and gold but shod
In boots and dungarees. God’s servants did
What lay at hand, some useful task
That suited their training and temperament
And when they lost themselves, eternity
Revealed itself through their five-minute spans
And peeped through their natural interests.

I have heard the wind’s waves in the treetops
Like Spirit whispers; I have seen a ray
Stab a single chiaroscuro shaft
In dark glades, authenticating the sun;
I have savored the smell of rich mincemeats
By open doors and known food was near;
I have walked the universe in my mind
And felt I stood on a kingdom’s threshold:
Fulfill in me your purposes, O Lord.

Humility’s Hearthside

I met Humility in a back field
On a muddy path by a sheepfold
Among corn ricks and haystacks.
He stooped under a bundle of sticks,
Fuel for some parish crone,
Carried more lightly than a crown.

The day was dull,
Brown as the spikes of seeded dill.
The khaki grasses swayed and sighed
When breezes smoothed the sod.
Dry cornstalks clicked and stirred
Their pale cobs plucked and stored
And the oaks clutched a few rusty leaves
Like tokens of past loves.

“Good morrow, Neighbor,” said he and kicked
Manure from his boots where it had caked.
“Are you from these parts?
Or do you come from farther ports?”

I named my town of birth and asked him
In turn, was this farm his home?

“Peace and Joy own these fields;
I weed their gardens, muck their folds,
Deliver their lambs
And tend their looms.

“But come. Come home with me and share
The fruits of our happy shire;
Meekness, my wife, has made
Brown bread and sweet mead.”

As we trudged to our evening meat
He greeted the plain folk we met.
They were a sturdy race who might
Have seemed poverty’s spawn,
Dressed in homespun;
Yet their dearth was nothing to mock:
Pious, unassuming and meek,
They often ate the modest crust
To spare small pence for Christ.

Humility’s hut, seamed with pitch,
Sat in a withered potato patch.
His wife offered us sprouts and greens
Tossed with vinegar and split grains.
On table she set churned butter, brown bread
And mead wholesomely brewed.

Their daughter, Simplicity, knelt aside and prayed,
Beseeching God to cut down the proud;
For her son, bullied and cut,
Lay in a corner on a cot.
Shame, my host’s sometimes serving wench, filled
Our cups and kept the fire fueled.

We sat at Humility’s rough hewn board.
He spoke with the voice of an ancient bard,
And told of Pharaoh hardening his heart;
Of Lamech pursuing vengeance to his own hurt;
Of the modern world rushing to doom,
Its leaders stricken dumb.
He spoke of folk who skirt one pitfall
Only to plunge into pride more foul.
Truth has not changed, said he, nor have men.
How seldom we witness the humble mien!
Who heeds the widow’s mite?
Who sends servants to meet
Christ—to ask for mercy from afar,
Sharing the Centurion’s holy fear?
Instead, men slop over with gall,
Boastfulness, arrogance and guile.

Dinner done, we sang a hymn
And our simple melodies filled the home.
I remember four lines of the song
Our little company sang:

Faith serves God in quiet ways:
It seeks his praise, not man’s;
And joys to find when it obeys
God always makes the means.

We mused by the fire a while,
My host pressing, “Lodge here if you will.”
At his urging I almost stayed
But chose to reach town instead.

As I slogged the sunless mire
A warm rain watered the moor.
Heedless that my toes stubbed clods,
I turned my cheeks to the clouds,
Letting rivulets course from my face.
The rain washed me like Christ’s sacrifice
And it seemed that my soul was knit
With a luminosity transcending night.

A Measure of Temperance

   A mighty Lord, an emperor am I,
A ruler of regions no merchants ply;
My kingdom lies uncharted on your maps,
Not edged by seas or bound by snowy caps.
Across my steppes no guided tour rolls,
For my domain consists of human souls.
My subjects make submission from free choice;
I see their abnegation and rejoice:
For those who swear allegiance to my crown
Make greater gains than those who loot a town.

   Since sands first fused to rock and rock dissolved to sands,
I’ve watched mankind mishandle lust’s demands.
The aeons show but one self-mastered man,
Undeviant from God’s perfect plan;
One man who played each role with controlled grace
Gave God full due, yet nurtured man’s cursed race;
One man as strong in prayer as in his actions sure;
As firm with foes as he was mild with those he’d cure.
With self-restraint his smallest acts were graced.
Some ease he took, but never pleasure chased.

   Men pet small lusts (soon grown importunate)
‘Til hungry lust, enlarged, insatiate,
Gnaws on the air and gnashes emptiness
And spawns atrocities in fierce excess.
Vile passions scald like caustic; and stored hate
Like acid boils within the reprobate.

   Through vengeance life’s most obvious scourges come
When Hitlers find pretexts to pound war’s drum.
Aggrieved, they cite enduring wounds they’ve bourne
To rouse resentments which noble minds scorn;
Or stir the envious eyes of foolish men
To covet lands and powers they might win;
Or hatch imaginary foes and stoke
Unreasoned fears; and screened within fear’s smoke
Contrive to fix your necks within a yoke.

   Raw greed is equally a source of pain
For shysters course like hounds when sniffing gain.
If God, through Solons, wise decisions sends,
Perverted justice, favoring false ends,
Soon warps the law against its first intent
And wields its writ as an oppressive instrument.

   Let gurus, shamans, mages once appear,
Men spurn God’s gate and flock to fraud and seer.
No truth is sacrosanct to charlatans
Who traffic priceless souls for paltry gains.
Hell’s crowded with devotees of the creeds
That sprout upon our walks like noxious weeds.

   These are three evils patent to the eye,
To shock the shrinking soul and horrify.
But godless homes are men’s most grievous blight.
There purses snap on coins of petty spite;
There pestilences of the spirit breed
And bitterness poisons the very feed.
Proximity increases force of ill
And aggravates the bruises of ill-will.

   O, Happy men! Kiss scorpions if you must!
But don’t ask me—I jeer such joys to dust.
“He comes with chains of steel,” (State your complaint);
“He stunts our growth by urging cruel restraint.”
But see—my chains make free, my curbs bring peace;
My pruning’s done to make your fruit increase.

   My lore out-dates the oldest hills timeworn
And will outlast the latest follies born.
Like pupae maturated in silk shroud
My wisdom splits its husk and spills aloud:
Hear if you will or plug ears if you won’t;
The wise take heed—foul lusts take those who don’t.

   Encapsulated, this is my advice:
Be self-controlled, yet quick to sacrifice.
Like plague avoid voluptuary ease
But likewise shun ascetic miseries;
Fill cups a little short of what you crave
And curb each lust before you fall its slave.
Above all, prune and cultivate your soul
And reap the pleasing fruits of self-control.

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