Michael Shepherd Light Poems

Gertrude Stein was on her dying bed;
(i.e. she was dying, not the bed) :
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Here’s a painting by Rembrandt van Rijn –
mark how he bestows the light…

the light of Rembrandt’s conscious painted scenes
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The eyes, it's said, are windows of the soul;
and when I see your eyes so sparkling bright,
I see there beauty, truth and goodness; all
as one; the radiance of an inner light.
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When I was young
and had nothing to say
I thought I was no-one;
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Somehow, the words of Hesychius
have reached us after more than a thousand years
and from a desert place, Mount Sinai;
where he was famed for ‘breathing Jesus’
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You – whose inner strength, I always think
to be the greater than my fluctuating own –
ask, only half humorously, as
business, family support, collapses all around,
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He was the pride,
sometimes the envy, of the village:

no wealth of jewels, but
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