The Eighth Poem In My Corona On The Psalms

‘The lights of heaven, each a glory in their station’

It seems fitting to post the 8th poem in my corona on The Psalms in this time of Ascensiontude because Psalm 8 is often set as an ‘ascension psalm’. This is because its opening verse: O LORD our Governor, how excellent is thy Name in all the world: thou that hast set thy glory above the heavens! seems so completely fitting for the ascension of the risen christ to the right hand of the father’, and again because the famous 5th verse in which the psalmist reflects on our position as human beings in the scale of creation ‘ a little lower than the angels‘ but nevertheless given responsibility, also seemed to speak of Christ’s descent to us and then in ascension his being crowned with Glory:

For me though, as I came two write this sequence, the most striking thing about this psalm, apart from the sheer beauty of its evocation of the moon and the stars, was the range and scale of its reference: we go in just a few words from the ‘glory above the heavens‘ in verse 1, to Wisdom coming out of the mouths of babes and sucklings in verse 2.

So here is my response to psalm 8, as always you can hear me read it by clicking on the ‘play’ button or title, and you can read the original psalm Here

You can find the other poems in this series by typing ‘psalms’ into the search box

 

VIII Domine, Dominus noster

 Before the splendour of the resurrection

Dawns and transforms the world, I’ll watch the lights

Of heaven, each a glory, in their station,

 

Harbingers of greater heaven, keeping nights

Of watch with us, the moving moon and stars,

His handiwork in which he still delights.

 

And I will listen too: open my ears

To every creature that still speaks his name

From babes and sucklings to those crowned with years,

 

For wisdom laughs and lives in both. The flame

Of love is kindled round the world in old

And young. I’ll seek him too beyond the tame

 

Familiar world, out in the wide and wild,

As much in the steep seas, and mountain heights

As in the startling wisdom of a child.

 

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The Seventh Poem In My Corona On The Psalms

Before the Great Lion in his righteousness

Continuing with my ‘corona’ on the psalms, a series of interwoven responses to the psalter, each poem beginning with the last line of the previous poem and offering its last line to the next, we come to psalm VII, a psalm of complete trust in God but also a psalm about his judgement. This psalm contains the crucial insight that in the end evil is self destructive, that it contains the seeds of its own demise:

He hath graven and digged up a pit: and is fallen on himself into the destruction that he made for other.

For his travail shall come upon his own head: and his wickedness shall fall on his own pate.

This is an insight that Milton expressed very powerfully in Comus, where one of the brothers in that masque says ‘Evil will back recoil upon itself and mix no more with good’ the phrase ‘back recoil upon itself’ was probably an allusion to the way cannons recoil back when they are fired – Milton regarded such weapons as essentially a devilish invention, indeed in Paradise Lost there is a scene in Hell where the devils invent fire arms. The psalm also talks about the evil person as ‘a devouring lion’ another image I pick up in my poem, though I balance it with an allusion to the true Lion, Christ mystically shown in revelation as ‘The Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah”, and of course, for modern readers, to Aslan the Great Lion who is Christ in Narnia. You may like to reread the psalm in Coverdales translation, which is my source text before or after you read my poetic reflection on it. If you are new to this series here are links to the other poems:

V  III and IV  II I 

As always you can hear me read the poem by clicking on the title or the ‘play’ button

VII Domine, Deus meus

Until I recognise his face at last

I’ll trust him in the dark and carry on,

Till these destructive powers fall back to dust

 

Till the devouring lions are fled and gone

Before the Great Lion in his righteousness.

Then every place where some small gleam has shown

 

Will shine within the light of holiness,

And he will prove and make me true of heart,

My lord and God, Dominus deus meus.

 

Evil can only break itself apart

Recoiling back into its own destruction

And digging its own grave. It has no part

 

In the true kingdom. All its desolation

Will fall away to nothing and be gone,

Before the splendour of the resurrection.

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The 6th poem in my corona on the psalms

flinging them back before his growing light

Today’s poem from my new sequence is a response to Psalm 6 from the Book of Common Prayer Psalter. Here are links to the earlier poems in this series: V  III and IV  II I

This is one of the darker psalms, and the psalmist seems at once fearful of God and forgetful of his mercy, so it opens:

1. O LORD, rebuke me not in thine indignation: neither chasten me in thy displeasure.
2. Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak: O Lord, heal me, for my bones are vexed

But the psalmist works through these fears and misgivings and is able to say just before the end of the psalm:

The Lord hath heard my petition: the Lord will receive my prayer.

It is this honesty about difficulty, fear and misgiving which makes the psalter so compelling and gives its moments of joy and recovery their full force and authority. In my own response to this psalm I picked up a phrase from verse 5 that ‘in death no man remembreth thee’ and used it to explore the kind of forgetfulness and amnesia that sometimes darkens our spiritual life. One function both of scripture and of poetry is to re-awaken our good memories of God. You may like to look at the psalm alongside the poem. As always you can hear me read the poem by clicking on the ‘play’ button or the title.

VI Domine, ne in furore

Whose mercy wakes me at the break of day?

I feel my weakness, all my bones are vexed

And all the faith in me seems worn away

 

As though I’ve lost Love’s memory. Perplexed

By false complexities, I mime faith’s part

I keep the book but cannot read the text

 

Unless you come, and write it in my heart,

Unless you help me read it through my tears

And hear me out, and, hearing, heal my hurt.

 

How could I think you punished me? My fears

Just magnified the shadows that I cast

Till you were lost in shadow too. Love hears

 

My cries and clears the shadows of my past

Flinging them back before his growing light

Until I recognise his face at last.

 

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The fifth poem in my ‘corona’ on the psalms

Continuing my new series of poetic reflections and meditations on the psalms, I come to psalm 5, which, rather astonishingly, opens with the words:

1. PONDER my words, O Lord: consider my meditation

It is one thing for us to ponder on the many layers of meaning in the sacred words of scripture, quite another to be told that the Lord ponders on our words with even greater attention. He takes my own tentative voicing of who and how I am and hears it so deeply that he knows more of my heart than I do myself. And that insight was the starting point for this poem. But there were other phrases of the psalm that spoke to me as I prayed it: that I am called into God’s house, a place of healing, where our blood-thirstiness is met with ‘the multitude of his mercies’. This psalm is also special because it gave words to that beautiful anthem ‘Lead me lord, lead me in thy righteousness, make my way plain before my face.’ I loved too that the last word of this psalm is ‘shield’, and as one who is to some extent in this crisis being shielded, I decided to bring that word in at the beginning of my poem. You may like to read psalm 5 in the Coverdale translation, which I am using,  either before or after you read or listen to the poem. As in all this sequence this poem begins with the last line of the previous poem and lends its last line to the next.

Here are links to the earlier poems in this series:   III and IV  II I

As always you can hear me read it by clicking on the title or the ‘play’ button

V Verba mea auribus

Safe in the love of one who’ll never part,

Of one whose kindness is itself a shield

Who understands the deep things of my heart

 

Better than I can ever do, I yield

Myself and my perplexities to him

And in his house of mercy I am healed

 

Healed of this world’s bloodthirstiness, its grim

Deceptions, all its weary wickedness,

The death-speak of its tyrants, as they hymn

 

The idols of their vanity, the emptiness

Of endless purchases, all washed away

Until my sight is cleansed, his righteousness

 

Makes my way plain, and leads me through the play

Of early morning light, to worship him

Whose mercy wakes me at the break of day,

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Two new poems from my ‘corona’ on the psalms

Nestles and settles with you like the dove
In its familiar dovecote

I am continuing to work on my new sequence of poetic reflections on and responses to the psalms during this lockdown. The poetic form of this new work is, appropriately, a corona, an interlacing circlet or crown of poems in which each poem is linked to the next by a shared line,. Each poem is composed of 15 lines divided into five tercets, a reflection of the 150 psalms of the psalter and their traditional division. I thought that today I would share the next two poems in the sequence so that you can see how that link works, though you will also see it if you look back to the poems on psalm 1 and psalm 2. The text of the psalms to which I am responding is Coverdale’s translation in the book of Common Prayer, which also provides the traditional Latin titles I am using, and you might find it useful to read through the psalms yourself and then turn to the poems as an assistance to prayerful response.

This is an enormous undertaking, for which I would value your prayers, but my hope is, eventually to weave a ‘corona’ to honour the saviour, whose prayer life is shown us in the psalms, and who wore for us the corona spina, the crown of thorns, which included the current agonies of our corona crisis, and who is now crowned in glory.

As always you can hear me read the poems by clicking on the ‘play’ button or the title.

III Domine Quid Multiplicati?

That you may find your peace in his good will

Call out to him, and tell him all your fear

For he will hear you from his holy hill

 

He knows how many ills both far and near

Oppress your soul and how they multiply,

These obstacles and problems, how you veer

 

From one side to the other, from one lie

To yet another till there’s nothing true.

Just let it go for now. Don’t even try.

 

Lie down and rest. Let him look after you

And in the morning when you rise again

Then let him lift your head and change your view

 

Replenish, renovate you, and sustain

His long slow blessings in your growing soul,

Till troubles cease and only joys remain.

 

IV Cum invocarem

Till troubles cease and only joys remain

Take refuge in the shelter of his love

Who hears your call and feels with you your pain

 

Who does not keep his distance, high above

But brings his light into your little room

Nestles and settles with you like the dove

 

In its familiar dovecote. From the womb

Of Mary, to her house in Nazareth,

From the upper chamber to the empty tomb

 

He comes to share with you your every breath

And to commune with you. To every heart,

That opens to him he will bring new birth,

 

For every ending offer a new start.

Lie down in peace and trust and take your rest

Safe in the love of one who’ll never part.

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Beatus Vir: a reflection on psalm 1

The Trees by Girton pond, a place I often meditate -photo Liliana Janik

Like many people I have found that lockdown has brought my reading of Scripture to life and especially the Book of Psalms. The psalms form part of our cycle of daily prayer as priests in the Church of England, but that practice is only a late flowering of a much longer tradition. The regular recitation of the psalms reaches deep back into Judaism, forms part if the spiritual life of Christ himself, and was a staple of Christian worship from the earliest times, especially in the emergence of monastic communities almost all of which make the recitation of the entire psalter the very centre of the turning wheel of their prayers.

And we recite the psalms not just as historical texts from ‘out there and back then’ but as inspired words given for our own hearts to sing ‘in here and right now’. For Christians there is the special sense that the psalms prophetically showed forth the coming and the inner life of Jesus. They are also such great poetry and so rich and varied in their imagery, that they feed and nourish the imagination and become a source from which our own original prayers can be formed and enriched. We pray with the psalms not simply by reciting the original text but also by responding freely and creatively to their imagery. So I have begun a new series of short poems, responding freely to the daily psalms, and drawing on their leading images, as a starting point for Christian reflection. My hope is to weave these poems together into a corona, a crown or coronet of poems, the last line of each linking to the first line of the next, a chaplet of praise to garland the head of the one who wore the Corona Spina, the crown of thorns for us, and who suffers with us through this corona pandemic.

So here is the first one, ‘Beatus Vir‘, as our prayer book calls it, ‘Blessed is the man…’ and in this poem I have responded to the central image of pslam one: that the blessed person should be and pray ‘like a tree planted by the waters’:

I Beatus vir

Come to the place, where every breath is praise,

And God is breathing through each passing breeze.

Be planted by the waterside and raise

 

Your arms with Christ beneath these rooted trees,

Who lift their breathing leaves up to the skies.

Be rooted too, as still and strong as these,

 

Open alike to sun and rain. Arise

From meditation by these waters. Bear

The fruits of that deep rootedness. Be wise

 

In the trees’ long wisdom. Learn to share

The secret of their patience. Pass the day

In their green fastness and their quiet air.

 

Slowly discern a life, a truth, a way,

Where simple being flowers in delight.

Then let the chaff of life just blow away.

 

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