‘Poetry’ Category

Finitude
With confining hues
Paints us in a corner.

But was it not
The angle of Geneva
That coloured a hemisphere?

Michael A.G. Haykin©2009.

From the infinity of time
And reality’s sturdy fabric,
Your inconsequential eros
Is seen as gossamer-thin:
O for an Eros transcendent,
Giving reasoned passion, and
That fair City—firm and holy—
The home of all true saints.

Michael A.G. Haykin©2009.

For some, Christmas is
The toughest time—
Where joy should be,
Only sadness and weeping.

Is that why
The infants dying at Bethlehem
And Simeon’s prophecy
Of a dagger through the heart?

And now all who call Jesus Lord
Should know the cost:
There are tears—gut-wrenching groans—
Before that joyous trump shall sound.

Michael A.G. Haykin©2008.

My love for poetry grows as I grow older, for there are some things about this world that can only be expressed in poetic form.

Recently I came across another fabulous line in T.S. Eliot’s poem “East Coker”, which is part of my favourite work of his, The Four Quartets: “Old men ought to be explorers.”

How true!

In a recent book, Tom Paulin—The Secret Life of Poems: A Poetry Primer (London: Faber and Faber, 2008)—discusses John Bunyan’s “He who would valiant be” (pages 31-35) in terms of its poetic merit, its thought and its historical context.

Paulin judges it to be “one of the finest English hymns” (p.31-32), a “simple and austere puritan lyric,” that is deeply indebted to Shakespeare in spots (p.32). The phrase “come hither,” for example, Paulin reckons to be taken from the Stratford bard’s As You Like It (p.32-33).

Paulin relates portions of the hymn to Bunyan’s own writings, especially The Pilgrim’s Progress and the vicious historical context of the persecution by the Stuart regime. He notes that 8,000 Dissenters died as a result of goal fever in this time. I do not recall having seen such a figure. Nor does Paulin give his source for it. But it drives home the difficulties of that day.

In sum, Paulin writes that “this short, beautiful lyric is packed with great historical and personal suffering—and with unyielding courage and conviction” (p.35)—high praise indeed.

P.S. Incidentally, at the 2nd annual Andrew Fuller Center conference, held this past week at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, a number of papers dealt with this theme of persecution: the plenary session by Austin Walker on Benjamin Keach, and two parallel sessions on Abraham Cheare and Thomas Hardcastle by Jeff Robinson and Peter Beck respectively.

For the audio of these, see The English Baptists of the 17th Century, August 25-26, 2008.

It is noteworthy that when Andrew Fuller was deeply moved, he would recite out loud lines of poetry that expressed the deep emotions he was feeling.

Poetry, though, has largely fallen out of favour with many Christian thinkers and theologians since then. This is a real shame. There are some things that poetry can better express than theological discourse.

Like so much of life, there is a giftedness to poetry. To be sure, there is toil involved—the testing of word and rhythm—but, in the final analysis, a poem is a gift. What is there, that we have not received.

Epiphanies happen.
Where roads cross and
Speech, passing through frail,
Though coal-fired, lip
Compresses an open heart,
Once iron, but now wrought
With textures elastic and fine.

There:
The Visible is seen,
A Voice is heeded,
And Joy is given.

Michael A.G. Haykin©2008.

Our faces—by pixel spread,
For a globe to gaze—
This, standard fare for
A techno-crafty day:
Yet, a tornado strike
Or turbulent snow
Would render such
Fading and illusory.

And whence our persons then?
And what glory in all of this?
It’s all so docetic!

Michael A.G. Haykin©2008.

How fragile urban steel and stone
The fabrics that shore up city and clan
If water, essence of all wealth, dry up:
If these reservoirs of liquid
Turn to moisture and air
Or be spilled to soak into earthen soil—
Where then our civic strength and pride?

But O! what greater loss if soul
Be of supernal Sea deprived,
If heaven’s clouds pass by
Without drop or shower—
O! for thunder and the light,
The storm and those drenching rains
Pantycelyn and Griffiths knew,
And that kept them thirsting for more.

Michael A.G. Haykin©2008.