Hyacinths

Hyacinths
(Click on photo to view full-sized.)

If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft,
And of thy store two loaves are left,
Sell one, and with the dole,
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.

- Saadi (medieval Persian poet)
You will find many versions and translations of this poem. This is the version I remember by heart.

Into Light

Out of darkness
Into light






Glimpse of porch and Alabama River

(Click on image to view full-sized.)

Comfort of the Resurrection

Dandelion against Blue Sky
(Click photo to view full-sized.)

That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire

and of the

Comfort of the Resurrection

CLOUD-PUFFBALL, torn tufts, tossed pillows ' flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-

built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs ' they throng; they glitter in marches.

Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ' wherever an elm arches,

Shivelights and shadowtackle in long ' lashes lace, lance, and pair.

Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ' ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare

Of yestertempest’s creases; in pool and rut peel parches

Squandering ooze to squeezed ' dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches

Squadroned masks and manmarks ' treadmire toil there

Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, ' nature’s bonfire burns on.

But quench her bonniest, dearest ' to her, her clearest-selvèd spark

Man, how fast his firedint, ' his mark on mind, is gone!

Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark

Drowned. O pity and indig ' nation! Manshape, that shone

Sheer off, disseveral, a star, ' death blots black out; nor mark

Is any of him at all so stark

But vastness blurs and time ' beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,

A heart’s-clarion! Away grief’s gasping, ' joyless days, dejection.

Across my foundering deck shone

A beacon, an eternal beam. ' Flesh fade, and mortal trash

Fall to the residuary worm; ' world’s wildfire, leave but ash:

In a flash, at a trumpet crash,

I am all at once what Christ is, ' since he was what I am, and

This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ' patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,

Is immortal diamond.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins

Foolishness of the Cross

(Click on photo to view full size
and to more easily read the text.)

For God’s foolishness

is wiser than human wisdom,

and God’s weakness

is stronger than human strength.

(1 Corinthians 1:25)