Taverner (Hmv 8) Poem by johannes lewinsky

1)
Myself
I cannot look
Into the light
This face, these eyes
Dazzled gaze
Into the light gaze
Dazzled

By death trampled
By the dead and upon
By all bestowing life
And cannot look
(these eyes beyond)

where once
your heart spake



2)
Prayers have gone up repeatedly
For a whole multitude
Of souls who shared
Not bread
But each other

Who shared
As at the first supper
(where bread was not broken but scoffed)
a single illumination
which enticed our minds
effortlessly above
this earth, this man
this century of mud



3)
inside out I know
and my eyes only
as witness
to these devils, demons
throng
at my monastic altar
something here to do
is unaffected yet
by Christ Jesus
who will not
have mercy

Poor Jenny
Poor Jenny Jones
Is dead
Is dead



4)
Minute by minute
Person to person
The injunction is upon us

For we can only be
As at dawn's first light
Alone and undaunted
When all has been

All the heavy days
The vacant days
The not-to-be-remembered days
Reckoned up

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust
If God won't have you the Devil must


5)
Old earthquakes heave
Force us
To think like this
Force us
To seek out stars and origins and limits
Rediscover
The power that's trapped within
A shattered life

For behold
Above the wind and the waters' roar
The Bridegroom cometh


6)
Mary had a little lamb
Her father shot it dead
And now it goes to school with nought
But grief and crusts of bread

7)
Months without
I entered and stayed
And found myself
Compelled to embrace
The puritanical ethics
Of work for its own sake

Months without
I entered and stayed
But in truth
There was no compulsion


8)
Guilty of dust and of sin immemorial
My soul drew back
As from the depths
Of a guilty passion
Drew back
And would not
Confront the ikon


9)
Stillness lives within
and may not be
by thought or by the constant
to-ing and fro-ing
of the inconsequential
weighed down

stillness
is given
and not to be
either in this life
or the next
rescinded



10)
He that has once seen the Bridegroom
Must submit
To a love and a life
That is complete only
Where couples dance uninhibitedly
And where the thief that comes at night
Is denied entrance


11)
Almost wholly
In the presence of light
He appears transfigured
A step beyond

The voices voices
Amen voices insolent voices
Ingratiating voices
That flatter and beguile

A step beyond
The sty's perennial
Stench and swill



12)
Myself
I cannot look
Into the light
This face, these eyes
Dazzled gaze
Into the light gaze
Dazzled

By death trampled
By the dead and upon
By all bestowing life
And cannot look
(these eyes beyond)

where once
your heart spake