No doubt my poetry errs on the side of oddness. It is the vice of distinctiveness to become queer. This vice I cannot have escaped.
--Gerard Manley Hopkins to Robert Bridges, 1879
1. In the cool quiet
Of his study and most private thoughts
He writes the last few lines; blotting the page
He closes and locks the desk drawer.
Raising his hands he studies the stains the black ink
Has left on his long pale fingers; shuddering,
He plunges the besmirched members in the corner
Jug and scrubs and scours until all that is stained is made clean.
2. For a moment he dwells
On a young man's fanciful dreams
Of worldly fame, praise for his verse, the
Inky accolades of heroes and peers in print;
This secular angel is one he knows too well; his brassy wings
Have brushed his face too often in dreams as he grapples
With their owner on the edge of a dizzying height,
Waking in a cold sweat with the itch to write upon him again.
3. Walking out he seeks to cleanse
His mind, he opens himself to the glory
Of all God's pied creation; as the sun breaches
The dappled ranks of the clouds of Wales he prays
For renewal like the soft earth after spring rain;
Enfold me O God in your soft strong arms shore up my
Weakness my fame-hungry idolatry my flawed mortality
And bring this penitent sinner home to God-grandeur, heaven-haven, Amen.
Originally published in Volume 3, Offbeat (August 2004).
Creativity