"A Widow in Black"

A widow in black - the crying fall
Covers all hearts with a depressing cloud...
While her man's words are clearly recalled,
She will not stop her lamentations loud.
It will be so, until the snow puff
Will give a mercy to the pined and tired.
Forgetfulness of suffering and love -
Though paid by life - what more could be desired?

A poem by Anna Akhmatova.

"The Smoke Upon Your Altar Dies"

"The smoke upon your Altar dies,
The flowers decay,
The Goddess of your sacrifice
Has flown away.
What profit, then, to sing or slay
The sacrifice from day to day?

"We know the Shrine is void," they said,
"The Goddess flown -
Yet wreaths are on the Altar laid -
The Altar-Stone
Is black with fumes of sacrifice,
Albeit She has fled our eyes.

"For it may be, if still we sing
And tend the Shrine,
Some Deity on wandering wing
May there incline;
And, finding all in order meet,
Stay while we worship at Her feet."

A poem by Rudyard Kipling.

"The Shadow on the Stone"

I went by the Druid stone
That broods in the garden white and lone,
And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows
That at some moments fall thereon
From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing,
And they shaped in my imagining
To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders
Threw there when she was gardening.

I thought her behind my back,
Yea, her I long had learned to lack,
And I said: ‘I am sure you are standing behind me,
Though how do you get into this old track?’
And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf
As a sad response; and to keep down grief
I would not turn my head to discover
That there was nothing in my belief.

Yet I wanted to look and see
That nobody stood at the back of me;
But I thought once more: ‘Nay, I’ll not unvision
A shape which, somehow, there may be.’
So I went on softly from the glade,
And left her behind me throwing her shade,
As she were indeed an apparition -
My head unturned lest my dream should fade.

A poem by Thomas Hardy. Pictured is one of the haunting sculptures from the Holocaust Memorial in Washington Park, Portland.

Quote of the Day: Fr. Alexander Elchaninov

"In our present life everything is so uncertain, insecure, painful, almost intolerable, that death in no way appears as something terrifying. I often think of death as a calm and luminous haven, where there is no sickness, no sadness and, in particular, no parting. When, during morning and evening prayers, I pray for my loved ones in minutes of sadness, I am almost glad to think that I will soon be with them, and their life seems more certain than our phantom existence."

From page 117 of "The Diary of a Russian Priest," a posthumous compilation of the notes of Fr. Alexander Elchaninov, a Russian Orthodox priest who served in the south of France after the Bolshevik Revolution.

"Swallows Travel To and Fro"

Swallows travel to and fro,
And the great winds come and go,
And the steady breezes blow,
Bearing perfume, bearing love.
Breezes hasten, swallows fly,
Towered clouds forever ply,
And at noonday, you and I
See the same sunshine above.

Dew and rain fall everywhere,
Harvests ripen, flowers are fair,
And the whole round earth is bare
To the moonshine and the sun;
And the live air, fanned with wings,
Bright with breeze and sunshine, brings
Into contact distant things,
And makes all the countries one.

Let us wander where we will,
Something kindred greets us still;
Something seen on vale or hill
Falls familiar on the heart;
So, at scent or sound or sight,
Severed souls by day and night
Tremble with the same delight -
Tremble, half the world apart.

By Robert Louis Stevenson.

"A Heart Divided"

He so spares himself

He so fears the coverings

The sky’s blue coverlet

And pillows of cloud

He is ill-clothed by his faith

He is so afraid of steps that go awry

And streets chipped in the ice

He is too tiny for winter

He so fears the cold

He is transparent in his mirror

He is so hazy he loses himself

Time rolls him under its waves

At moments his blood flows the wrong way

And his tears stain the linen

His hand gathers green trees

And nosegays of seaweed from the strand

His faith is a thorn bush

His hands bleed against his heart

His eyes have lost their glow

And his feet trail over the sea

Like the dead arms of devil-fish

He is lost in the universe

He stumbles against cities

Against himself and his own failings

Then pray that the Lord

Erase even the memory

Of this man from His mind.

A poem by Pierre Reverdy, a Cubist poet who later became a monk at the Solesmes Monastery (pictured above) in France.

"Peace"

When will you ever, Peace, wild wood dove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I'll not play hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?

O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu
Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite.
That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,
He comes to brood and sit.

This and more by Gerard Manley Hopkins can be found here.

"26 May 1828" by A.S. Pushkin

Gift haphazard, unavailing,
Life, why were thou given me?
Why are thou to death unfailing
Sentenced by dark destiny?

Who in harsh despotic fashion
Once from nothing called me out,
Filled my soul with burning passion
Vexed and shook my mind with doubt?

I can see no goal before me;
Empty heart and idle mind.
Life monotonously o'er me
Roars, and leaves a wound behind.