Fr. Louis (Thomas Merton) was such a prolific and moving poet that it's hard to decide which poem to share today. "Death" is a piercing one -- it jolts us (Take time to tremble lest you come without reflection / To feel the furious mercies of my friendship, / (Says death) because I come as quick as intuition) but ends with the infinite hope of a tiny act of faith.
Read the whole poem here.
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Heidi Mordhorst has the round up this week at My Juicy Little Universe. She's also sharing details about her kick-off of Irene Latham's annual Progressive Poem
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April is National Poetry Month. For a jam-packed post full of every Kidlitosphere event you can imagine, visit Jama Rattigan at Jama's Alphabet Soup.
5 comments:
Great choice for Good Friday! Thank you!
Hi, Karen--
I really loved this, full of muscular, surprising strokes of Death's glance, right up until the last couplet. The Hail Mary, the waxen candle do have power, but the lines don't. I wonder what Fr. Louis was thinking when he wrote those.
Happy Easter to you!
Thanks, Ruth! Glad you enjoyed it. Have a wonderful Easter!
Hi, Heidi --
That's so interesting. When I first encountered this poem, I had a similar reaction to the final couplet. Those lines were really a bit of a letdown, compared, as you so accurately put it, to the muscular, surprising lead-up. But over the years, as I have reread it, I have seen the letdown as a deliberate device. I could be totally off-base, or this could be wishful thinking (springing from my hope that Merton was always deliberate and not lazy with his poetry), but I think of the last two lines as so disarmingly simple, almost sentimental, because that's the way death is disarmed -- by simple but devout acts that are outwardly bland or even seen as silly, but that pack a punch so powerful that death is conquered.
Happy Easter to you, too!
Beautiful poem! Thanks for sharing.
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