Canticle for the Sparrowhawk
XII
Behold I will close their wounds and give them health, and I will cure them:
And I will reveal to them the prayer of peace and truth.
Living with four teeth missing is unpleasant as ever considered,
Sockets of terrible burning, and worsened by fluids and eating
Makes it so pleasures in answering hunger and thirst are embittered
Though for the moment the two needs make it unworthy of treating
Given the urgency hunger and thirst have acquainted and rendered,
Even in darkening day I returned to the well as a lover
Needful of drink from the cusp of the stone well, modestly splendored;
What is it worth if I ever could need one thing or another
That in the end in receiving the good I had known disappointment
Lest it were granted as grace by my God for a mortified station,
Bringing to ruin the needful and proverbial fly in the ointment,
Folly in faith for the world and its goods, but in new explication,
Not for a further allotment in good things furthering living,
Rather in seeing the higher and greater in marvelous measure,
Raised in existence its own good worthy of ev’ry misgiving,
This is the sake of ordering life, not simply for pleasure,
God had sustained man that in his action he might be acquainted,
Friends of the Most High, down on the earth in its cruel disposition,
Even a vessel for drink is so precious, its tender is sainted
Giving the thirsting relief as a mercy in earthly fruition,
Thus in the cold of the world is the warmth of affection perfected,
Grisly as evil can manifest, good overcomes by existing
Merely in presence, the light in the darkness dispels unaffected,
Much as the gripping reality pressed by my needs were desisting
Such as if needs were unreal, or at least were a thing I imagined;
When I had sated my longings I soon felt able for sleeping,
Finally restful in spirit as now I was not so impassioned,
Eager to flee from the snares of the grave with the soul it was keeping,
Laid on my side, on my left side, one with the better condition,
Leaving my right with its maimed and disfigured appearance to star-gaze,
Even in relative safety it ached and it screamed as perdition,
Deepening worse in the quiet of dark dulled silent by hard days,
Lasting in earnest until I had passed to the south of the Salt Sea,
Coming to see in the mountains the path I accustomed in knowing
Rounding the flats to the south and, appearing so treacherous falsely,
Leads to the rise of obscured slopes holding the vale I was going,
West of the town Kir-Hareseth, fortified soundly,
Only a walk of a day to the King’s High-Way in the high-lands;
Fed by the falls on a hill well-hidden in heights by the Israel boundary
Sealing it off from the west Salt Sea and the east with its dry sands,
Here in the valley oasis I ended in peace and for respite
Guided by stars and the curves of the holiest land to its borders,
Crook in the hills laid bare by a salt rain, never to best it,
Struck from the rock by the waters of war on Jehoshaphat’s orders,
Lost by the sons of rebellion, lot for the sons of the battle,
Made from the hands of our Lord and bequeathed for the rights to its mountain;
Found to be rich in its soil but suitable not for the cattle,
Fed by a rock God struck to produce falls sprung from a fountain
Opened in the maw of the highest of hills for the man of decision,
One of decided allotment for Judah and never retaken,
Kept in the hands of his children, a struggle-attested tradition
Now has regressed to its worst-wished element, almost forsaken,
Broken in blood-line, left to a daughter and widow discarded,
Wed and bereaved of her husband without one female or male heir;
Distant in both land-measure and family, left disregarded:
Littered in stubble, untilled dry furrows, and rows of prevailed tare,
Counting myself as another of these, an inhabitant unsanctioned,
Counting the stars in the perilous skies, I searched for no idol,
Trying to find some luckiest star to be putting my thanks in;
Must it be God all alone has ordained my continued survival,
Though it is seeming presumptuous keeping our God at attention,
Even the limitless mind of our God, who cannot be depleted;
This as a shard of eternity greatly exceeds my retention,
What is my lowly estate to the Lord to have seen all I needed,
Ministered man by his mortal request for his troubles continued,
Under the depth of the stars held weightless above by assignment,
Those black heavens a grasp of eternity firmament-issued
Causes my heart to be filled with a trembling whelm of confinement
Fully aware of my smallness in spirit and size in an old world,
Knowing the Maker of stars and beyond has acknowledged my sorrows,
Fashioning good from the evils I suffered for ends He will hold furled,
Wrapped in the parcels of time for the end of our endless tomorrows,
Shared with His children as justice He sought as a righteous endeavor
Showing as fact that evils were never sustained for its own sake;
Might it be this were the phantom of futures proceeding forever,
Presence of good will express as to what is akin to or shown fake,
Such as the leaven of good or of evil is chanced for its proving:
Good is unbowed in the face of its agony, even increasing;
Evil responds as it hardens, its potency slowly removing;
What is the difference? prayer perhaps, thoughts raised and unceasing,
Raising a soul to the lowest foundations of heavenly mansions
Quartering choirs of angels delivering more than a message;
Prayers are songs in the heavenly corridors, rounding its stanchions,
Wonder I might in the process, a prayer becoming a presage
Reaching the tops of the columns and soon disinterred in the marble,
Found by attendants of God who examine and carry it higher;
Language and terms are irrelevant, even reduced to a garble,
All are alike on the altar in heaven with holiest fire
Bringing the prayer to ashes the angels deliver in kind flight,
Shortly returning to men in ever-betiding descension,
Herein returned them swelling of virtues so vital to find light:
Charity built in the heart by their prayer for those of intention;
Hope for the answer of prayer abiding in time for fulfillment;
Faith as the motive, the grace we require to pray in the first place;
Each of the virtues of sanctified flesh and a spirit’s distillment
Call on regenerate men from the famines and various earthquakes
Splitting the earth and obtaining for heaven its saints, who belong there;
Heaven who waters the falls of unsourced goods, many to mention,
Waters my heart for a penance I owe to the widow with long hair,
Loveliest form, and a heart for the Lord, I have prayed her redemption,
Seeing her eyes with a darkness of wine and unblemished complexion
Brought to the fore steeped-deeply regrets of my hollow condition;
Worst of the changes is losing my sight and my hand, my abjection,
Constant reminders of which I encounter in woeful admission:
Reaching with that hand missing or forcing a wink in my right eye,
Dolorous cries have escaped in the sharp realization of bare fact
Permanence bears down harshly as sea-dull lights of the bright sky;
This is my life now, this the immutable state of affairs racked,
Struggle I might in the rivers of circumstance coursing in deafness,
Neither a word nor an act redirects it beneficent, never;
Only accepting its flow, high-hoped for the substantive precious,
Burdens the agonized man with a grief-gaussed spirit, forever;
Here I begin understanding the power in prayer for man-kind,
Knowing the river can flow back toward the source by a mere word,
Asking in faith with the comfort a small thing pleases a grand mind;
Not as it seems, an illusory thing for these to appear heard;
Yes, an impossible thing can be given to those with persistence,
Known and believed as impossible, prayed in the midst of my terror
After I rose from the grave, and before I returned to existence,
Asked by an angel in dream to remain in the shade of my prayer
Lasting until I was freed from the snares of the grave and its keeper,
Wandered and wayward in She’ol, I fell down, seeming to miss it;
Now I will pray for the truly impossible, hurtling deeper,
Want for regenerate arm, eye, teeth – and indeed I solicit,
Not on a basis unwarranted, not for a vanity’s vengeance,
Seeking instead for a sort of redemption, an end to my grieving,
Showing in kind God’s glory in subtle creative engines;
What we refuse to believe is deserving the most of believing,
Living in crueler reality, truth as the always-insistent,
Knowing the truth in its stubborn and bare face – moving, declaiming –
Prayer reclaims one’s truth for oneself in the almost-existent,
Saying to God to permit it to be as He pleases acclaiming,
Adding the caveat “also” to this as a frame for the future,
Man can accept his reality, “also” requesting it changes,
Moving the stars with a word, man rending the sky at its suture
Filling the seas with the broad-backed bodies of mountainous ranges,
Taking it back from the clutches of pure resignation’s debasement;
Base in the sense it is utter confusion admitted and tired
Meant to abstain and participate not, as to plead for effacement
Since he believes he will always be shorted of what he desired,
Man will accept with withdrawal from greater existence in weakness,
Lest he begins to explore for himself the impossible dreaming;
These are the thoughts, I admit, of a man in his cradle so sleepless
Gazing at stars and a moon of familiar terror and seeming,
Riddled by pain in my bones and a weariness-burdened condition
Laying beneath grand heaven with finally chance for composure,
Tired enough to repose and sufficiently made in position,
Only my mind has resolved to awaken and rummage for closure,
Fervently racing from one thought toward another, remorseful –
Fixated, truthfully – that in my prayers I find the auspicious,
Find some sign of the future and whether I might be restored full,
Hoping I hope for the providence promised as never capricious
Falls from the skies of the future and someday repairs all my broken;
Lord, o my God, I will say on the day I am healed it was fair trade:
God, take captive my heart, for I wallow in sorrows unspoken,
Wandering still, and until I am taken by Thee or despair’s blade,
Wander I will in a vale of uncertainty, shading the serpent;
Lest I succumb to the worm and the fire of ageless destruction,
Know my condition and show this mercy, my God, to Thy servant
One who has strayed not far from Thy paths, nor from proper instruction,
What was removed can be made whole, what was dismembered, remembered –
What of myself is afar in a desert beyond can be mended,
Brought to attach to the sockets as once Thy intent had engendered,
Sooner fulfilled so my sufferings lift and my grief can be ended
Knowing my limbs have preceded my soul in the coldest of slumber
Snared by the Pit, to descend in the grave as the first I presented,
Token of what will return in a day of unknowable number;
God has allowed dead men resurrection, or even intended,
Please, God, grant as a favor of lesser degree to a raised man;
Thou, the unwatered and glorious falls who has flowed with no spring-well,
Nothing has crafted the crafter of Earth and His course to the graced land
Running with waters of healing abundantly, spate as an inkwell,
Tainted with colors of wine from the flux of the sacrificed live-stock,
Swelling the wadis in fall with a rose of abrupt restoration
Blooming for every creature, the earth-bound asp to the high hawk,
Even humanity drinks, and as God rules all His creation,
Man has a custody oath to the bountiful garden unspeaking,
Only estranged for a time, and his body as well, for a time brief,
Once the design has returned to the state the Designer was seeking,
Man is invited to rule it again from his stymied sublime grief
Much as I fell back toward a vale in the land of His promise,
Made to return to a garden I tend with the care of its Maker,
Chirping with things that creep and alive with tyrannical calmness
Louder than thought, its ecstatic cacophonies ringing the greater;
Solid a bed made out of the dust on the floor of the valley,
Loamy and lumped but a welcome improvement compared to the last one,
Making it easy to drift into sleep in the following tally,
Tallied in weeks by the evenings beneath the immortal and vast sun,
Laying myself for the end of a ruthless and naked occurrence
Proving the cruelest intent of the spirits of air, in the desert,
Struck by ordeal for denying my own dear spirit’s transference
Causing a lingering sharp pain brasher than ever I measured,
Now I forgot how it felt to be not in distressed perturbation,
Lacking the agony crying in needles and pins for attention –
Slowly I drift into sleep and forget of the fierce amputation,
Yes, I forget for a time, but I fail to forget with prehension,
Beating in tune with my heart as the throbbing of phantoms continues,
Stabbing repeatedly throngs of awareness-demanding vibrations
Crawling upon the abyss of my right arm, torn by the sinews,
Cut in my jaw and my right eye socket akin to starvation
Such as it knocks on the door of my mind with increasing insistence;
Even with terrible pangs of severe pain, worst is the knowing,
Rather, the not-known-yet of the mystery brought to existence,
What is expected, if real or imagined, in how it is going,
What will become of the injury, whether it heralds disaster,
Leaving behind an infected and life-long burden to shoulder,
Leading to one’s death even, progressively withering faster,
Burning, but slowly it fades, and by cold death, comes to a smolder
This is the lingering thing I am fearful of most of occurring,
That if the grief of my loss is enough, it can heal and to move on,
Just to be done with worry, and though it is far from a thought reassuring,
Losing a part of myself is preferred if I witness the new dawn
Than for the same new dawn to behold my remains unrequited;
Tallying dawns by their nights and its soundless repose as I pondered,
Wherefore the time had escaped in the service for penance committed,
Faster had days in Paran had resolved, in the desert I wandered,
Such were the weeks in the garden the widow had given for night’s rest,
Now as the days slowed pace I had noticed of where I by day dwell,
Even in night and a new moon, never a valley so light-blessed
Which for a man as myself, I had come to accept to have bade well,
That in the darkest of winds is a coldest of lights persevering,
Darkness can never exclude all the light from the eyes of a just man,
Thus for a man as myself who has strayed into day disappearing
Wonderful rays with its delicate might can return for robust span
Lasting as much as the God who preceded it meant to interpret,
Javelin beams with a scale undetermined, no matter how one tries;
After a measure of weeks, as I mentioned, concluded its circuit,
Drawing with one hand water for drink in the crest of a sun-rise,
Also to water the garden, and wisely it shifts in its color,
Verdant from black, as expected but gracious no less in revival
That I return reminiscent a bounty akin to no other,
Life in renewal, as given to me, in the summer arrival
Waiting on rains of the season to fall in the direst of places
Over a valley unlike such one on the Earth or imagined,
Flooding the Salt Sea, striking its clouds on its mountainous faces
Turning its cup, tipped over in anger and thunder impassioned
Roars as a day-light sky fades gray and its flashes of light blink,
Bringing the land of our fathers relief as the firmament sunders;
Summer indeed seems never as long nor as hard as I might think,
Swift denouement in dramatic displays of virulent thunders
Judges in season and season again, man’s yearly improvement:
Diligence, pride of the male spar-hawk, the chrysanthemum-kissed bird,
Spreading its wings on the winds of the east, and I follow its movement,
Turning my eyes to the languished horizon, without a remiss word
Under the heavens unwatered and high, and beginning to well up –
Further beyond, more west than west, and at which set suns stand,
Thither I stare in the morn, and so ghastly a hope I develop
Working with one arm missing, and learning to pray with my one hand.
sleeping in the garden • accepting a maimed condition
praying to be healed • working in the fields for weeks
changing of season • hope flies like that spar-hawk