Seven Small Experiments with Language and Faith

Poem by Dana Littlepage Smith

For Brian Ashley of Shetland Meeting, who calls for a generosity of spirit to embrace diverse ways of expressing our experience (Letters, 28 May).

1. Omega and Alpha sit squat on Skull Hill.
As Christ dies, the dark night
of language splits like a fig.
Faith, like dawn’s yolk gutters
gold across unspoken horizons.

2. As the widow’s mite falls
into the dark matter of language
something resounds…
Unheard, undetected, a universe away
Faith? In the heart’s chamber? (who can say)

3. Language and faith
like the ark to wide water,
the bark that trespasses
the wine dark sea
only useful in extremis
when deep calls to deep.

4. Language kisses faith on both cheeks.
Or was that faith embracing language?
Or some buried creed offering
the other cheek to scoffers
as love rumbles like a gospel
of thunder: Om Shanti
My peace I give to you,
My peace.

5. The word made flesh is still warm
in the mind where mountains
are sometimes moved by language.
I see in you; you see in me…
a word fleshed into old Blue Ridge…
Himalaya’s rose peaks.

6. will not do for our enlightened age
will not do
will
    not
    my will
will do

7. Faith is that field of great price
which the little pearls of language
can never buy.
Still we dig… we mumble.
Sometimes we sing.

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Comments

A lovely rebutall of the idea that ” faith will not do for our enlightened age ” -carefully crafted . Wonderful ,and gentle . Thank you .

By Neil M on 10th June 2021 - 11:27

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The last stanza is, for me,  an evocation of R.S. Thomas’s wonderful poem ” The Bright Field ” -also highly recommended to those stuck in our so called ,“Enlightened” Age , which Thomas points out is for him actually darkened ,and diminished . Blake would also have said as much from his own human perspective .

By Neil M on 10th June 2021 - 11:57

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