I don’t know what he is talking about
when he calls everyone ‘evil’
it seems to me you see the world
through the lens you are
the world is the world
it becomes, for you,
what you are
looking through
* you say it
you become it
I don’t know what he is talking about
when he calls everyone ‘evil’
it seems to me you see the world
through the lens you are
the world is the world
it becomes, for you,
what you are
looking through
* you say it
you become it
old monk walks mountain
hot July day, little water in brook
every step a prayer, each breath
brings earth through slow body
When I first read Robert Haas, I came across his 1979 book of poems “Praise.”
He stopped me cold with his epigraph.
When I think of what is happening today with the current force emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I see how prescient and applicable the epigraph was and is.
We asked the captain what course
of action he proposed to take toward
a beast so large, terrifying, and
unpredictable. He hesitated to
answer, and then said judiciously:
“I think I shall praise it.”
(Robert Haas. Epigraph to his second book of poems, Praise: 1979)
Members of the Legislative branch, University presidents, Media companies, Law firms, Supreme Court, Tech companies, Investment firms, Banks, Churches, Government programs, visitors and residents from away, and anyone else you can think of -- all have taken to cowering behind utterances of praise and physical kowtows to the large, terrifying, and unpredictable chief executive and commander in chief of the United States.
Praise.
Praise?
No admiration or adulation based on merit or effective mentorship -- but fear and apprehension, cowering nervousness based on chaotic and vengeful bullying toward anyone not a sycophant or lemming.
Later, Haas wrote this poem.
You can listen to Robert Haas reading the poem here:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48851/faint-music
Faint Music
by Robert Haas
Maybe you need to write a poem about grace.
When everything broken is broken,and everything dead is dead,and the hero has looked into the mirror with complete contempt,and the heroine has studied her face and its defectsremorselessly, and the pain they thought might,as a token of their earnestness, release them from themselveshas lost its novelty and not released them,and they have begun to think, kindly and distantly,watching the others go about their days—likes and dislikes, reasons, habits, fears—that self-love is the one weedy stalkof every human blossoming, and understood,therefore, why they had been, all their lives,in such a fury to defend it, and that no one—except some almost inconceivable saint in his poolof poverty and silence—can escape this violent, automaticlife’s companion ever, maybe then, ordinary light,faint music under things, a hovering like grace appears.As in the story a friend told once about the timehe tried to kill himself. His girl had left him.Bees in the heart, then scorpions, maggots, and then ash.He climbed onto the jumping girder of the bridge,the bay side, a blue, lucid afternoon.And in the salt air he thought about the word “seafood,”that there was something faintly ridiculous about it.No one said “landfood.” He thought it was degrading to the rainbow perchhe’d reeled in gleaming from the cliffs, the black rockbass,scales like polished carbon, in beds of kelpalong the coast—and he realized that the reason for the wordwas crabs, or mussels, clams. Otherwisethe restaurants could just put “fish” up on their signs,and when he woke—he’d slept for hours, curled upon the girder like a child—the sun was going downand he felt a little better, and afraid. He put on the jackethe’d used for a pillow, climbed over the railingcarefully, and drove home to an empty house.There was a pair of her lemon yellow pantieshanging on a doorknob. He studied them. Much-washed.A faint russet in the crotch that made him sickwith rage and grief. He knew more or lesswhere she was. A flat somewhere on Russian Hill.They’d have just finished making love. She’d have tearsin her eyes and touch his jawbone gratefully. “God,”she’d say, “you are so good for me.” Winking lights,a foggy view downhill toward the harbor and the bay.“You’re sad,” he’d say. “Yes.” “Thinking about Nick?”“Yes,” she’d say and cry. “I tried so hard,” sobbing now,“I really tried so hard.” And then he’d hold her for a while—Guatemalan weavings from his fieldwork on the wall—and then they’d fuck again, and she would cry some more,and go to sleep.And he, he would play that sceneonce only, once and a half, and tell himselfthat he was going to carry it for a very long timeand that there was nothing he could dobut carry it. He went out onto the porch, and listenedto the forest in the summer dark, madrone barkcracking and curling as the cold came up.It’s not the story though, not the friendleaning toward you, saying “And then I realized—,”which is the part of stories one never quite believes.I had the idea that the world’s so full of painit must sometimes make a kind of singing.And that the sequence helps, as much as order helps—First an ego, and then pain, and then the singing.
(Poem by Robert Hass, “Faint Music” from Sun Under Wood. Copyright © 1996 by Robert Hass.)
Haas, like Leonard Cohen, has a cold-eyed appreciation of praise, gratitude, hallelujas, and grace.
It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it does rivit attention.
Bonaventure, today
the Franciscan seraphic doctor
σεραφικός, αγγελικός
. . .
Dómine, lábia mea apéries.
O Lord, open thou my lips.
Et os meum annuntiábit laudem tuam.
And my mouth shall declare thy praise.
Dómine, lábia mea apéries.
O Lord, open thou my lips
Et os meum annuntiábit laudem tuam.
And my mouth shall declare thy praise.
Dómine, lábia mea apéries.
O Lord, open thou my lips.
Et os meum annuntiábit laudem tuam.
And my mouth shall declare thy praise.
St. Bonaventure, known as “the seraphic doctor,” was born at Bagnoregio, in 1221. He received the name of Bonaventure in consequence of an exclamation of St. Francis of Assisi, when, in response to the pleading of the child’s mother, the saint prayed for John’s recovery from a dangerous illness, and, foreseeing the future greatness of the little John, cried out “O Buona ventura”-O good fortune!
At the age of twenty-two St. Bonaventure entered the Franciscan Order. Having made his vows, he was sent to Paris to complete his studies under the celebrated doctor Alexander of Hales, an Englishman and a Franciscan. After the latter’s death he continued his course under his successor, John of Rochelle. In Paris he became the intimate friend of the great St. Thomas Aquinas. He received the degree of Doctor, together with St. Thomas Aquinas, ceding to his friend against the latter’s inclination, the honor of having it first conferred upon him. Like St. Thomas Aquinas, he enjoyed the friendship of the holy King, St. Louis.
At the age of thirty-five he was chosen General of his Order and restored a perfect calm where peace had been disturbed by internal dissensions. He did much for his Order and composed The Life of St. Francis. He also assisted at the translation of the relics of St. Anthony of Padua. He was nominated Archbishop of York by Pope Clement IV, but he begged not to be forced to accept that dignity. Gregory X obliged him to take upon himself a greater one, that of Cardinal and Bishop of Albano, one of the six suffragan Sees of Rome. Before his death he abdicated his office of General of the Franciscan Order. He died while he was assisting at the Second Council of Lyons, on July 15, 1274.
Saint Bonaventure was canonized and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1482, the 300th anniversary of Saint Francis’ birth.
https://franciscanfriars.org/2024/07/15/st-bonaventure-feast-day-july-15/
But for finishing up at The Catholic University of America, Wash DC, I would have gotten my BA from St. Bonaventure University, of which my Franciscan college was affiliated.
We played basketball with Orrie Jerele of the terrific St. Bona’a 1960-61 team. He was one of those amazing guards who would hit you in the back of the head with a fast break pass if you weren’t alert. We were a fine team out of Callicoon NY.
Never been to Olean NY.
I was barely ever where I was.
But I could rebound pretty good and throw a strong outlet pass.
The medieval Franciscan once said:
“Since happiness is nothing else than the enjoyment of the Supreme Good, and the Supreme Good is above us, no one can enjoy happiness unless he rises above himself.”
― Saint Bonaventure, The Journey of the Mind into God
Or, in today’s relocative quantum spatiality, “unless he dives deep within the reality of what-is."
Good for him!
Good for us!
Good for everyone!