This is a poem I wrote for my wife for Christmas 2021. It’s inspired by Charles Williams’ Arthuriad, and some lines from a cookbook by Robert Farrar Capon.
Blake to Leah: on Farming
I walked a long path, alone,
By turns hot and cold,
Through night to find my place.
A diagram of fertile land before my eyes
I had by gift of Heaven -
A goodly land, accepting of a lord,
Where all things give, and all receive,
By the Way of exchange.
The Eye of Heaven, the Sun: gives light,
Thus vision - seeing and knowing - illumines
Patterns of act and fact and meaning,
Warms the airs and earth,
Makes grass to grow.
The Grass, and Trees and Vines: clothe earth
As raiment, a covering of glory
For humble dust. Roots for soil;
Soil for roots; both for teeming microbes
And fruits. Grass feeds cattle.
Grain feeds the mill
And gives bread its substance.
Blest be that pasture and field
That keeps a father’s table filled
With bread and wine.
The Cattle: cow and fowl, bee and Cross-bearing donkey
Which carried the Maiden Mother -
Live the death of grass, die the life of Man.
Unpoetical manure they trod into the earth,
Food for worms.
Poetical blood they spill on earth,
Meat for men sacrificed, transfigured in fire
Of oven or altar. Skin of one made
Skin of another.
The Land: flows with milk and honey,
Through and to and in and on
A web of exchange. Energies pass
Hither and yon, gifts of life and communion.
Earth, a womb, bears children, breasts, feeds them,
Hands, yields them to her husbandman,
Face, smiles to him her bountiful beauty.
This place - my own: for work and rest,
To see and know and learn and love.
The Farmer: keeps the doctrine of exchange,
Law and grace sweetly complying,
Priestly watch maintaining, lest heresy, mechanical or chemical,
Contracept communion, or convenience swallow exchange.
He - warrior, king, and midwife - wields scythe as sword
Against thorns and tenderly delivers lambs, enduring
The necessary letting of life and life-blood.
He - I hope myself - sees and knows
The Sun-brightened patterns
Of meaning and fact and Act.
Yet…
It is not good for Man to be alone.
This I felt in my flesh and in my bone.
And so Heaven another gift, another diagram,
Another exchange offered; yet the same.
“Sleep now death’s deep sleep, thy heart and side
To open and bleed; thy substance given to Another.
Awaken, and receive that Other.”
What shoot had sprung up from the bleeding seed
Of my heart? I thought myself blinded,
Seeing only one as a tree, walking.
Then the Sun rose and I was blest
With double vision to see
The goddess and the silly girl,
Forms co-inhering, tensing, twining,
Dancing for her Adam.
Meaning: the Archetype; Venus and Earth-Mother;
Immortal; the bodily site of exchange;
Land-made-flesh; womb and breasts and hands
Are the pastures and gardens worked by Adam’s sons;
Milk and blood, growth and life-from-decay,
Changes, cycles, seasons - Eve, mother of all living.
Fact: the Ectype; earthly wife and mother;
First, daughter; a girl who laughs, sometimes
Because she cannot help herself; baker;
Lover; friend; and sister - she loves well,
And sings, sometimes cries; her son vexes
And cheers her; her northern-sky-eyes
Enchant me; she feels her frail, mortal frame
But hopes and uses it well; my comfort;
My glory; matter of home - Leah, mother of my children.
Act: the Union of Archetype and Ectype;
The work of union and identity,
Where we play the patterns of meaning and fact:
Your hands the bread to make.
My hands the bread to break.
You my Levite, I your priest,
Guard the house and keep the feast,
Welcoming who will to read the diagrams
Of exchange in field and home,
Believing the doctrine of Kingdom come.
I pray: Let us be planted here, as Farmer and Wife,
To keep house and land well,
For father’s honor and children’s joy.
I survey the land: seeing the streams, the pond, the fields, and trees,
knowing the smile of the Spirit in the hills.
The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places.
A Pilgrim's Missives 