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Holy Sonnets 14 through 20

Holy Sonnets 14 through 20

Last updated on: January 30, 2024 at 1:10 pm by Clark Elder Morrow

Holy Sonnets 14 through 20 2024-01-30T13:10:37-08:00 Clark Elder Morrow

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XIV

We have strong joy because His joy is stronger

And more robust, fuller, heartier than all those

Little firework-squibs and faint sparklers – those

Sporadic spurts of celebration we manage to find in

Our seas of steadfast gray. Out of the ennui endlessly

Lulling comes on occasion the lighthouse-beam

Needling a line of light through the night, the un-

Ending night of the long march. Here we have joy

Infused and fed to us unendingly, even in the waiting

Room, where cries can be heard down the corridor.

Here is joy foundationing everything else, like

The concrete slab beneath the bungalow. Here

Joy settles souls by being a pavement under

Pounding dog-howling funnelspouting gales.

The Lord is the mothership of all our ecstasies

From Whom we finetune by faith those frequencies

That underlie the day-to-day din, screed and screech

Of life’s static. Thus while we mourn with the mourning

There is, under all, the unremovable pavingstone, the

Permanent plinth of joy beneath (beneath are

The everlasting arms and the scarce relenting cheers

That echo round the town square of the cosmos.

The heart of happiness lies between the city limits of

All There Is. It throbs the heartsblood of hope

Into billions throughout history, and heaven is

Foretasted on nonpalpable palates in

Numberless souls (while they pray, while they childbirth,

While they doubt their breathing will outlast evening).

XVI

But the rhapsodic cantus firmus under the anguish

Continues, can be heard, as presumptuous pain

Is prowling about the loutish body, or haunting the

Skull-house in which Mind finds itself a dubious

Master. In all our worry and thunder-weather we can

Resort to the Rescuer – the supplier of a surreptitious

Calm that Understanding understands not, and which

Ratiocination can only reconnoiter with doubt

And clouding confusion. Thrown into a spotlight

Both numinous and supernova-ing, the sceptic will

Revert to denial (“There must be a reason for this

Beyond my poor power to grasp, penetrate, and to

Explicate”). Yet a slow-growing taste for awe

Will awaken, and the phantasmal grow familiar.

XVII

Keep me on a short leash, O Lord my God, and let me

Not slouch off to those poisonous fields I am prone

To find pleasure in. Yank the leash, snap back my face

To face you once again, and again, so that ever again

I am eye to eye with your preconsciously-loved icon

Of a countenance – the face I knew in pre-uterine, pre-

Zygotic gnosis, which I will see and know when

All veils are dropped, the glass no longer darkened,

And there is nothing, utterly nothing, but Presence.

Keep my lanyard so short Lord that even now I know

Presence (though audaciously adulterated, though

Being by your side is not enough, is not your face, is not

The awareness by eyesight that is Life to me: in your

Eyes is my homecoming, my harbor at dusk, my home).

XVIII

My greatest fear, Father of fortitude, is not death

Nor the foul composting of decomposition, but

The sudden shock of a multisensory scene

Sucking from my spirit any semblance of breath. Who

Can conceive the scale of that adjustment, when

There will be no time for adjusting? when the soul

Is overcome, near to annihilation, by something

Utterly unknown: all the after-life thrown at one

At once – without preparation, without the harrow or

The slicing plow to prepare the soil of my senses

For the most vast and vivid of amphitheaters,

Extravaganzas? It will burst on my unburrowed brain

Like a fortissimo blast of blaring crashing brass.

Forgive my dread of showmanship on such a scale!

XIX

Of course it was not mere technicolor spectacle that

The Most High Host Commander dazzled His saints

With, for all those innumerable eons. He is not

A ringmaster reigning over a menagerie of hoop-

Jumping miracles, and kaleidoscopic cures. “Eye

Has not seen; Mind has not imagined”, what waits

Behind the scrim of seeming oblivion. There

There will be fullness of life so full that silly frights

Will flare up and then fade instantaneously – fall

Away like filthy robes. Then is the joy of seeing

Every passion-jewel placed in a perfect setting, your

Desires replaced with placidity, and heartache

Holding hands with what it wanted all along, Then

Is an unrelenting recess. Deeply relieved, you will see

There is nothing then to hurt or hold back our Playtime.

I, I primarily, pose the prime threat and affront to

My own faith. Divinity delivers its vision all

Day long, through night into fresh mercies in

The morning, as dependable as the dawn itself.

The Numen is not the problem, nor is the archangelic

Absent without leave. Miracles still manifest and

Pass untrumpeted and unmarked – even the most

Eventful and enormous. But I and I alone find

Sin-leaven still leeching life from my interspatial

Sense of Him, my sodality, my comradeship with

The Christal Spirit. Where is all my growth – the kind

That only rarely grieves the Comforting Counsellor?

Where is my sanctification? Not wholly reborn, my

Own evil erodes more faith than any other wrong.

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