Oh, Reader. Are you here at all? I’m not. Hardly ever, anyway. Not writing blog posts and scarcely reading them these days.
I could offer up explanations and excuses, could go into what kind of writing I am doing these days or what I’m thinking about writing, anyway. I could tell you the story of my children and their Easter baskets and how several of them have been Voluntarily Flossing their Teeth, or I could go on about the Amazing Suddenness of spring here in Durham and how Everything is Blooming All At Once.
But alas, I haven’t got it in me, and this puzzles, vexes and saddens me by turns, but there it is. Neither (and this may be the crux of it, but I don’t know) have I time to say it well.
Still, Easter has come, hasn’t it? And with it all the amazement of what Easter is and my amazement at my capacity to become accustomed to things, even This Thing– the Resurrection– that changes forever Everything Else.
And today I met a poem, one that you may already know. If you do, then no doubt you’ll want to read it again. And if you don’t, why then here you are, a poem from Gerard Manley Hopkins, who wrestled with language as one might wrestle with a God, and who had so much to show for it.
I think you should read it aloud.
“That Nature is a Heraclitean fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection”
Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows ‘ flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs ‘ they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ‘ wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long ‘ lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ‘ ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest’s creases; in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed ‘ dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks ‘ treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, ‘ nature’s bonfire burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest ‘ to her, her clearest-selvèd spark
Man, how fast his firedint, ‘ his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indig ‘ nation! Manshape, that shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, ‘ death blots black out; nor mark
Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time ‘beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart’s-clarion! Away grief’s gasping, ‘ joyless days, dejection.
Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. ‘ Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; ‘ world’s wildfire, leave but ash:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, ‘ since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ‘ patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.
