There lives the dearest freshness deep down things: Gerard Manely Hopkins

open mountain ©fourteenth

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins 1844–1889

The silence is all white : Ivan Goll

©fourteenth

The temple is all white
The god is all white
The silence is all white

Yet somewhere a dark water breathes
and prays

My body is all white
Yet somewhere my dark blood breathes
And prays

Der Tempel ist ganz weiss
Der Gott ist ganz weiss
Die Stille ist ganz weiss

Nur irgenwo atmet ein dunkles Wasser
und betet

Mein Leib ist ganz weiss
Nur irgendwo atmet mein dunkles Blut
Und betet

Ivan Goll

from the Malayan Love songs

nature abstracts

©fourteenth

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Bee- eaters and a small brush left on a rock.

©fourteenth

The Bee-eaters circle above me. I let my small brush down on the rock.
All I can hear is their call. Will we ever meet again?

The longing of no longing : washed stones

 ©fourteenth

All is sand. The way it touches, mirrors and adheres to skin. Crystals clean as winnowed grain. Hot on the surface, cool in the under-dark. Poems distant on the horizon, belly-dancing in liquid heat. This is the longing of no longing. Hearing the far-off soul’s music, with no desire in my hips.

©Ruth of washed stones

©fourteenth

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