Happy Feast of the Chair of St. Peter!
Yes, more poetry.
However, I’m glad to let you know that John Jakubisin (our expert on Cleveland, red Toyota Corollas, and recently-shaved-mustaches) will be publishing an article soon on the topic of…(shh)…silence. Vague? Yes, it is, but we know it’ll keep you waiting and wondering in agonizing anticipation. Look forward to his email in the following week!
That said, the following work sounds like it’s straight out of the Romantic period, if I may say so myself, but I guess I should now admit, if you haven’t been able to tell from my other poetry, that I’m a bit of a Romanticist myself. I hope you enjoy the included pantheon of pagan gods, the lack of a rhyme scheme, and the flagrant allusion to the legendary T.S. Eliot.
Oh, fever of Winter,
Purging fire that melts the icy grip of Aquilo
And begins the bitter banishment of Qebui;
Oh, Dusk of Darkness,
Eve of Spring,
You are half-free in expectation of renewal
— Yet
Half-chained by the abating breaths of Boreas,
Who covets to maintain his callid control;
He who sardonically sends the hound of April
— The cruelest month
To deflower your blissful abandon to the serenities of Spring.
Forsake his gelid grip, dear February!
Pass on the baton of hope unto March,
So that we too
— We, the Easter People!
May be freed from the shackles of his brisk baronies of icy indifference,
This, his petrifying prison now passing
— Passing under the approaching Pillar of Fire prophesized,
He with the baton of hope,
He with the hyssop and the tree.
“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”
~ Ecclesiastes 3: 1-11
Great imagery here:
Oh, Dusk of Darkness,
Eve of Spring,
You are half-free in expectation of renewal