Byrnesys Blabberings

Abraham Piper is asking to read his readers favourite poems as part of National Poetry Month (in the US), so I submitted a couple that I have featured on this blog before that have an impact on me.

the cross by Stewart Henderson:

Strange Way to watch for stormy weather,

Strange Way to disprove gravity,

Strange Way to go round fundraising Strange Way to sing out liberty.

Strange Way to reassure your mother,

Strange Way to finish you World tour,

Strange Way to pose for all those paintings,

Strange Way to gather the poor.

Strange dissident of meekness,

And nurse of tangled souls.

It’s so unlike the holy, To end up full of Holes.

As Kingfishers Catch Fire – Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
As king fishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.
I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is –
Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

(emphasis mine)