sw00799sem-7.FeastofSaintAgnes

Seminary



 On the Feast of Saint Agnes


The dawn arose enrobed in ruby-red;
Above the winter scene her mantle spread.
Relentless as undaunted forest flames
This glowing garb of dawn exclaims
Her youthful joy more racily
Today than when it first burned readily
As if to char that purity of day
Which stood with uncontested sway
O'er frozen mounds of clayey earth
That yet lay hard beneath that hearth
Of awing love, the mystic Orient
Wherein a new Aurora wisely spent
Herself, while frozen earth and barren trees
And heavy clouds looked on.  From there,
inanimates of dead despair,
No praising but their stoic presence there.
Alone, this humble dawn did dare arise
To day which never end espies,
But for the sun which was her life
And came to strengthen her in strife
Of nature born as would consume itself,
Like giant fires that soon become an elf
Of light.  So, strong, she stood amid the blaze
Ascending round; her heart did raise,
Another dawn, partaking full
Of that same heat which would to heaven pull
Both dawn and heart.  Appearing then apart,
Although warm glowed the Father's art
To prove it otherwise, this dawn 
Proceeding heavenward was drawn
By Yahweh's stalwart sun to strive to melt
The ice within the ground but found it felt
No heat, whatever its intensity,
But rather that proximity
Of such resplendent beauty froze
The more the frozen earth, for Satan chose
To harden it with his Dantean berg.
The barren trees, their web-like hands
Outstretched to break the rolling lands'
Horizons, bent aback the flow
Of rufous hues on dawning's robe to show
Indignant hate and pride that did abide
Within these knotty nets wherein would hide
Decay.  The heavy clouds hung high
As yet, reflecting, 'cross the sky
A glory that could never die, though death
They willed this dawn to meet.  Her final breath
She'd soon complete when down would run
Those leopard clouds, eclipse her Sun
Towards whom she fled, and watch dawn die
Till time no more its rhythm could sustain
And all was naught but that which felt of pain.
Enduring all, Saint Agnes, all did gain.


                                    Jan. 20, 1962     Brian Salchert, N.S.J.




-
Brian A. J. Salchert 

sw00704sem-6.odetothemidmonth

[ Note: Don't ask. ]


Seminary



 Ode to the Mid-month


A stream of light,
A river of delight
      Was I
   As I ran and tumbled
   While the Mid-month mumbled
      Through its billowing green,
         Through its shimmering sky.
Then shot like a dart
Past the eye of my heart
   An air-flung mite
      In song,
      A scarlet blur
   Like inward sight:
Heavy on the dusky marsh of thought,
Light on the clarion knoll of sense;
   Wound in the soft and strong.

Soon I spread
The brambles ahead
   Unto a humble view,
      A grass-gay room
      Within the woods:
   There a myriad warblers played--
      Flittering iterations,
      Rainbows in the shade;
   There entwined in quaint seclusion,
      Softer than the summer air
   Wrapped in mists of noon delusion,
      Hid a voice of glad despair
         Lost in lilting,
            Lost in dream,
               Lonely as a dying stream;
   There would wing
      On pinions graceful
   Heaven's bird of truth in art,
      Sometimes diving,
         Sometimes rising,
Ever,
Never,
   To depart.

Under the cleft
Of the lime-jut left
   A swallow swung for life
While over the haze
The sun ablaze
   Caught close the lofting hawk
      And yet beneath
      The elm-high wreath
         A fearful bobcat stalked.
   So moved,
      My step unwavered sped
      Across the floor
         Of the woodland room;
      Beyond the door,
      By joy and sorrow fed.
   So strife
      Now neither, nor its foe
   Could harm this poet's way,
For the glory I found
In the Mid-month sound
   Flows on:
      A brook,
      A ray.


                           1962



-
Brian A. J. Salchert                   

sw00693sem-5.untaintedewe

Seminary



 Untainted Ewe


   Untainted Ewe to mother lambs
Within the world-derided fold;
To intercede for every sheep
Imperiled now by night and cold,
Of you the story great is told:

   A nigrous night, the wicked world,
Was round, and wound and bound
The sordid orb with serpent skin,
A shedding minding men of sin;
The heavy darkness built
A blacker monument to win
For Hell, where liquid fires spilt,
An earth already devil-downed.
   Then, when the time of fullness came,
Dappled dawn defeated shame
That conquered centuries did claim,
And turquoise day broke free
Above the mountain, marsh, and lea;
Unbound, in peace a newer name
Was echoed through the blue
Gold-effusèd sky:    Mary,
   A simple psalm so sweetly sung
From whence the world's Glory sprung
To kiss a cedar cross and die.
   In childhood, O Mary pure,
You grew in grace beneath the eye
Of providential vigilance:
In humble silence, abundance-filled;
In patience did your soul o'erflow
That only you could ever know
A motherhood
Unparalleled in final good
Or in beginning love.  Thus through
Your bosom all creatures were remade,
Recharged with love, swayed
From above; whole-holied, Untainted Ewe.
Immaculate you ever were;
No sinful stain your soul to blur
Was found to be within:
Virgin-white, transparent-thin,
Alofted air-borne snow, new-grown
Merino fleece, thistle down wind-blown,
A solitary star of Sirius's mould
Transpierced and permeated bold
That being bent by God's will told,
As if no angel need appear
To whisper it in Mary's ear:
A child shall your womb soon bear,
God's only Son placed in your care;
Fear not, O Virgin full of grace;
From lo the Spirit shall this take place,
Namèd Jesus to save the human race.
Yet Gabriel this message brought
To speak what Mary never thought.

   Upon the meadow knoll,
Among the rainbow grasses stroll
The lambs and all the sheep
That daily grow, leap and sleep,
Or sometimes wander far
'Neath stalwart sun and twinkling star
Till, O that Mother-Ewe
Unstained! as if she knew,
Would come and find her stray;
Would find and show the way
Again, within the Blood-won flock:
Purging-path-pointed, Heaven-headed flock,
Warmed by the rays of a fiery light
That rides on a solar sea
Burning as the prayer of a mystic, love-bright,
Caught in an ecstasy,
Caressed by the breeze at play in the trees;
At play with a myriad bees;
Held by the clover till daytime is over
And the birds to their nests all fly,
While the Maker ofnight
Builds His cities of light
Through the vaulted abyss of the sky.
(But if in the dark
 Wild nimbus embark
 With tempestuous rage unknown,
 The timorous fold
 To Mary can hold
 For peace as full as her own.)
To Bethlehem cave when winter frost,
Tenacious fingers heavily laid 
Upon; frigid-fixed and icèd-crossed
On silent soil, solid-cold, made
Unrested treks more wearisome,
Did not the spouse and Mary come
That Jesus might in humbleness
Be born, swaddling-shod, and nothing more?
She knew the wrack of trial;
The tears that tribulation brings,
Yet hers is a peace-filled smile;
A Magniicat she ever sings.
Fear not the tempest-slashèd skies
Or rumbling, thunderous cumuli
That roll therein.  Betake
To our Untainted Ewe
Your sin-suffering soul;
The sorrow your heart endures.  Mistake
Not the words she utters to you
Amid the fold upon the knoll:
   Be poor and love, and peace is yours.

   In silence wrapped did Mary live,
Full-joyed when she, her love, could give
From Bethlehem to Nazareth 
To Calvary: one rising breath
Of lung-bursting virtue;
A heart-rending issue
Of virgin-bonded blood.
   Where blooms the meadow's rosebud,
The Lamb of God is found
With His Untainted Mother-Ewe
Through whom all things are crowned,
Created new,
Made sound,
Upraised true;
Angel choirs confound.
On bloody, cedar-crossèd Calvary
This Lamb, Himself did sacrifice
To end, oh man's marked misery,
With life renewed; and though this should suffice,
He gave Himself as food the eve before:
Eternal sustenance--a wondrous wine
And beauteous bread, boundless gifts
Of glory-winning grace to home incline
The path traversed by man, by man who drifts
So easily from Him he should adore--
Forever-food, new manna made
For all the sheep that sleep and leap
Within the world-derided fold,
That sleep in Mary's arms when cold
As Jesus crucified was gently laid
On Mary's lap, and she,
Not one to weep,
In mystic visions deep,
The wisdom-work of God could see
Through all its shrouded mystery;
That leap round Mary's feet
As Jesus did at Nazareth,
And then, as now, she felt
His final breath
And caught Him up to rest
Against her heaving breast
Where seeming hard defeat
Was victory complete,
And she, in prayer, thendwelt
Upon her Son
Till time was done
And He had won.

   His death--our life,
And limbo rife
With joy sprung free
Upon eternity; and He
Arose in resurrected glow
Of light, as winter snow,
(Reflecting rays of sun,
 Gold-glancing glitters spun
 Through cloudless atmospheres
 To dry earth's tears,)
In primal air-borne fall
Is cherub-pure: and all
Reminds of Easter morn
And Christ's footfall,
The hope of men reborn,
At love's first call
Straight-turned towards her
Who mothered Him to stir
This Virgin's sinless soul,
This Taintless Ewe upon the knoll,
With love that should forever grow
To strengthen straying sheep below;
Alone in wild, tumultuous blow,
The raging thief of day, of day
Returned when men to Mary pray:

   O Virgin wrapped in timelessness,
   The Mother of my God and me,
   Lead onward through the world's duress
   This lamb that would to heaven flee.
   Untainted Ewe, remember me,
   Your little lamb on bended knee,
   And guide to life's eternity
   This flock you bound in Unity
   By willing that in humbleness
   Which God proposed to work through thee,
   And fold in meadow happiness
   This flock you bind in Holiness
   By willing that in charity
   Which God must yet through thee express;
   Thus causing God the globe to bless,
   And every man to give no less
   Than highest praise in poetry,
   The poetry of prayerfulness.


                                  April, 1962 revision
                                 Brian Salchert, N.S.J.



-------------------------
Blessed Virgin


-
Brian A. J. Salchert                   

sw00692sem-4.jesusbound

Seminary



 Jesus Bound


O those wounds with which we wounded Him
Through which He heals our wounds--this Jesus bound.
Lo! e'en the silence streams as strident sound.
O languishing alliterations--lapped
On each like sea-swoln tongues that taste the sand,
A searing sand, to lapse in death beneath
The seeming petant rush of other tongues;
Alike the lethal lash whose lick would limn
Licentiousness in blood upon the Man,
Inflaming Man; would fall to rise again--
Momentous motions, mountain movers, march,
Forever march, in solid starward step
Across the blood-red Back that bridged the years,
A radiant rainbow arch Redemption bent,
As men in one Man unified through death.
Indeed, let ev'ry man now bind himself
Against that pillar cold where he can feel
The unrelenting ripping off of flesh
Imposed by sin.  In this compassionate.
Low bend, yea, unto creeping bend, and weep;
True nothingness is everything too deep.
So we, as godly men, must grow to naught
By being bound in love with Boundlessness,
Receiving only injury and hate
Like naked slaves or criminals depraved,
Which wretched ruck in truth we are though He
Be innocent.  Thus to descend is need:
The deed is duty.  But the duty done
Is saintly sleep.  Full freedom reigns all-pure
In atmospheres of that Paternal Will     
Alone/ through which the dying sun sends rays
Of sanguine light to rend the sinful veil
That men might see, to fill the cup of life
That men might grow, to vivify the air
That men might breathe more freedom still and find
The ropes that bind, the ropes that free, the ropes
That ever shall unite weak man with Christ,
Who being pillar-bound is bound to all
Things good which bend pursuit of happiness
Towards God.  Conjoin us each in You to posts
Of suffering, our "Father of the world
To come," where drumming, brutal scourgings bruise
Our body fleshes unto humbleness,
Where each expectant pause between the beats
Is pregnant with the blare of trumpet fears
That echo down the caverns of our ears
And rumble 'round the mending rooms of thought:
The deed is duty.  But a duty done
By none but freedom-breathing sons to whom
At last the silence strides as holy sleep,
A vigil-rest caught in/ the Pillared One.




-------------------------
There are moments I call God moments, and today a link
on Silliman's Blog to an article by Veronica Whitty about
Francis Thompson
allowed me to experience several such moments.


-
Brian A. J. Salchert                   

sw00638sem-3.manuol

Seminary           3                                                           


     Written in 1961, this is the third of three elegies on spiritual life.



 Manuol


(A fetid congeries of dung,
 Of rotted flesh and ashèd bones;
 A desert waste of shifting sand,
 Of unrelenting storms and poison pools--
 This was the final lot of Manuol
 When loneliness and devil-deep despair
 Invaded full upon my pavid state.)

O Manuol, O Manuol,
Thou unified totality of man,
Unparalleled descent your person saw.

                                 What grief have I.
Who can allay a turbulent Aenean sea
Or turn aside a hurricane of hate?
No man can lift himself from endless depths.
In fiery hells I ponder reasons why;
From conflagrations uncontrolled I wail:
Release me from this adamantine pit.
Extend to me the ladder of Thy light;
The darkness of confusion roams about
And blist'ring whips of eerie hues accost
My dying heart with punishments supreme.

O Saviour humble crucified,
With tear-filled eyes I gaze
Upon the image of Thy wondrous death:--
I gaze upon the crucifix
And ponder reasons why
No man can lift himself.
But He Who is Himself the Light,
The Life of every man;
Who calls Himself the Son of Man,
Alone can lift Himself, and has.
All reason fails to grasp the meaning of Your way--
It fails to gather fruit,
For what of good is found upon a dying Vine;
In vain it comes to reap,
For what of value stays in blighted Wheat;
In fear it nears the holy tree,
For what of worth remains in bloodied wood?
Unaided reason mystery evades
For fathomless are truths of Love Divine,
And yet, a greater part may mankind see;
May mankind now believe what wisdom hides:
In all illumined verities of Thee,
Where reason falters, faith undaunted strides.
My faith:--in gratitude I cherish it.
Unchallenged spheres of mystic light
This ever-present gift can penetrate.
But oh this wonder men do marvel at
And saints in union unified employ,
What qualities of peace engenders this
When dark reality deprives a man of joy?
(My faith is yet within me.
 Allow it always to remain,
 In blessed peace or purging pain.)
In purging pain?
Excruciating whips of pain,
Volcanic gurgitations borne in solitude,
Disgusting dregs of nauseating person-love.
(So senseless is this martyring of self.)
My eyes reveal Thy purity of love.
Why idle then am I?
Why do I harbor sordid ships
Along the waterways of thought
And seek in shame within their holds to hide?
Return to me the life Redemption bought;
Reteach Thy laws, O Saviour humble crucified.

That evil pedagogue of thrice
Deceiving, caustic fefellations!
Begone, Satan!  Begone!
Do not so torment one desirous to be free.
Incarcerate your wretched wrath
In crimson ebullitions roiling wild.
I shall not plead with thee.

O misery, begotten friend,
Yet ever churlish foe,
Beget yourself another reed to bend.

                                       A lonely waste
Where wicked bowls of desert sand
Engaged by cataclysmic airs
Attack the dunes and masticate themselves.
As dismal night in silence wanders by,
Its presence strengthening the realms of gloom,
It spreads a morbid, purple shadow-shade
Upon the pools of deadly consequence.
To this degree of decadence, O Manuol,
To this extent you plummeted the doom.
Alone I must accept the blame
For causing you such disrespect.

O Manuol, O Manuol,
If ever I might mold thee new.

Impurity upon impurity,
And all is self-abusing pride.
A million months of melancholy morns
Could never equal this degrading fault.
In measurements unmeasurable to men
This active God-escaping escapade
In utter senselessness deprives
The total man of that totality itself,
Without which oneness, life no meaning has.

No longer do I poetize,
But speak with straight and forward fact;
The poetry existence is relieves
The need of weak, artistic act.

Yet still the dreary truth prevails:
The fort is but a desert dune,
The fountain but a venomed pool,
And she, the happy maid, in sorrow fled.

O silent Virgin, Mary pure,
On humbled knee I pray to thee:
With malice I have turned my face from God,
From God, the spring of all my happiness.
In gladness full I drank the waters new
That course in endless rivers from the throne,
Rejoicing like the harbingers of growth
Or bounding as the spritely antelopes;
In innocence I lived and loved my King.
But now my thirst is quenched on filth and slime,
on acrid draughts of worm-infested self.
Within this state I kneel before your feet,
Revealing here my dastard murderings.
Accept my plea for simple chastity;
My prayer for grief-expelling grace,
Betaking them to Christ, my one desire,
That hell may never torture me with fire.
Do thou thus intercede for me, your son,
Your lonely, wayward prodigal,
O silent Virgin, Mary pure.

The setting sun a bloody picture paints,
A beauty-bound creation, speaking well:
In me, the end of day, is Jesus crucified.

How then on night, a canvass made for death,
Are stroked the horrid nimbus clouds of fear,
Concealing all the splatterings of stars.

These treasures have I hung upon a crumbled wall,
Artistic labours wrought by God and man--
The one, by sorrow deep, is framed;
The other, emptiness has claimed.
Yet, neither is devoid of timeless worth,
Though both disclose the blackest void on earth.

                                             And thus, from death
And desolation's depths I cry:
Where can I go?  What can I do?--
So great despairs my path belie.

But life from One shall rise anew. 



Seminary book intro / links to poems
-------------------------
Humanity


-
Brian A. J. Salchert                    

sw00637sem-2.spiriel

Seminary           2                                                         


     Written in 1961, this is the second of three elegies on spiritual life.



 Spiriel


To dusty depths declined,
A desert dune, a transient creature formed
And blown away by midnight winds,
My fort of flesh was last reduced.

But Spiriel, immortal soul,
Deprived of ivory-orbing grace,
Dwelled in damp and fog;
In mossy muck and mires
Of mortal-wounding death.

Here stood my soul:
A fountain in the rampart's court.
Then Spiriel fell:
A weedy, muddied desert hole.

(Imagination quickly tires
 When ponderous thoughts
 Impose an equal sorrow
 Upon the inner man.)

So dark became the pool           
Of Spiriel, the calm
And clear reflection
Of Almighty God,
When that transparent, unseen grace,
The life of life from Life,
Returned to Him Who makes;
Who gives and justly takes.

O Spiriel, O Spiriel,
I've sentenced thee to deepest hell.

And now objective musing
Does recall
The hidden truth within
Those once insurgent entities
Which long subjective musing
Would forestall:

The turbid nimbus
Of deep, unchecked desires
A fatal poison pours.

Exciting thus emotions
Causing melancholy moods,
Recharged imagination
Excogitates this mighty,
Interrogative reproach:

Insane instant,
What thought of gain
Aroused your blind approach?
What happiness abides
Within infernal fires?
Do thou answer me or not?

Oh, how my heart evaporates
Beneath the torrid streams of gloom,
Desperation and despair,
As dew beneath the summer sun.

I am weak, so weak.
O my soul, how black you are!
How coal-like are your waters;
The pool of life,
How putrid and defiled it is!
My life is but a nigrous stench.

Would that my skin were night
And my soul were white.

Return, return, I cry aloud.
Return, O purest grace.
From mirky dungeons
I petition your attention.
Bend your ear
To the yearnings of my voice.
My suffering heart entreats
You:  Come, my soul's sweet life.

Dear Faith, at least you still
Remain to keep me near
To that Forsaken One
Of Whom my mouth did form
This phrase:  Tolle!  Tolle!
Crucifige eum.
Through you I wish to pray
To Him, beseeching Him
With mercy-seeking tears.
Be thou my messenger,
My wingèd Mercury.
Confusion conquers Spiriel.
Hurry, Faith!
Hurry to theSon of Man
Whom I have crucified.
Beseech Him.  Beseech Him
E're I lose thee.
Beseech Him:  Have mercy.

So pusillanimous am I.
My soul, why did I let you die?

O wondrous, fruitful man-growth,
Exceeding beauty have you,
But he who understands this not
Has labored to enslave you.

Impelled by need for happiness
This juvenile misused a good
And hurled that holy thing
Back into God's all-loving face.

I am that youth.

                        O Spiriel,
Where is the radiant light of grace;
Where is your vivifying friend,
The creature God extends
To fill the souls of reborn men?

A natural gift was wrongly used;
A supernatural gift diffused,
No, more than this--
It was expelled, cast out
Before/ a laughing viper's hiss.

Timidity, you weakling.
Unchanneled curiosity,
You devil in disguise.
Begone, double fault!

Attempt, attempt--
Attempt what?
So depressed is my spirit,
I can not free myself;
I cannot escape the hands of filth
Nor tear the heavy shades of night.

My soul, O my soul,
Unceasing are my tears--
Dewdrops of despair
Condensed by inner emptiness:--
And yet my course remains
Unchanged, remains unchanged.

O desolation unsurpassed! 



Seminary book intro / links to poems
-------------------------
Spirit


-
Brian A. J. Salchert                   

sw00636sem-1.aerual

Seminary           1                                                       

     Written in 1961, this is the first of three elegies on spiritual life
     for which revisions exist into November of 1965.  One day perhaps.
     I was a novice in a Jesuit Seminary in Minnesota at that time.
     These elegies are passing strange.  I know not how to premise them.
     - - -


 Aerual


Three years my life in essence lost
When mortal hate my senses took,
And darkness hid a once pure soul
That slipped and fell--the bridge not crossed.
As pages from a sacred book
      Were ripped,
These raven powers, April grasses, stole.

Thus Aerual my spirit left;
My angel wept new unborn tears.

What Hates loomed above the shell
As Pluto stole the happy maid.
A markèd black so quickly spread
Throughout the fort where she did dwell
It fell corrupt, all life bereft.
The added thrust to twisted thought
Which fed upon Satanic bread
Entangled spring, though barren dead.

O Aerual, O Aerual,
I've cast thee from thy only home,
I've battered down your humble wall;
I've sent you sand on which to roam.
What deed more dark?  What deed more dark?
No longer can my pencil move.
(The heavy cloud that hides me now
 Will not a further thought allow,
 Till quiet rest the zephyr prove.)

How lost, awaited zephyr, was my life:
A soul in death, the fort of flesh
Sand-slaved by sand-enslaving airs.
(How sad: how sad the very thought
 Of loss, the loss of Aerual,
 The thought of loss, the loss of Aerual.)

Such repetitious sorrow;
And yet, such sorrow does repeat.

Harken then, thou joyous zephyr, rest;
To you I elegize my life,
My Aerual, the donum dat.

I lived, a man, a child in Christ;
My ways were children's ways--
Abundant tears, imagined fears,
Excited smiles, and happy whiles.
My play was children's play--
Mud pies, and castles formed from sand.
My joys were children's joys--
A festive time, the trees, the wind.
In dreams; in acts, I was a boy.

A member, one, but lastly, none:
From living town,
Love-freed by free and loving grace,
To desert fort,
Sand-slaved by sand-enslaving airs,
My being clothed in night did fall
Away, a nomad all alone.

O Aerual, O Aerual,
I've castthee from thy only home.

To rest among the April grass,
To move with men of life and light,
To work beneath the vernal sun;
To live where spring eternal grew
Were all alone an innocent's delight.
But now delight by newer path
Has satisfaction found--
A path of death and burning ground.

But first, before this path it took,
"Twas Aerual that led the way--
The way of free and loving grace,
The narrow path, the open way.

How quickly life did fall away!

A soul; a body maketh man.
The first by grace, his being, vivifies;
The last by dust, his being, fortifies.
This last was then the home, the fort
Wherein my Aerual within
The first did find abode and made
Alive the whole, the total man.

From this abode the maiden Aerual,
While leading me across the bridge,
Was forced to flee, and I to drown withal.
In Pluto's arms was she, and I in desert-sea.

An innocent, a child of God,
Impeded self in growth to grow.
A child of God, when spring was full,
Impeded self, his growth to know.

Emblazoned now upon his heart
Were Pluto's glossy, raven words.
And thus he trudged the Stygian trail
Enfolding night around his home;
Expelling light from its abode.

An empty shell, the home of flesh,
A fort corrupt, on sand appeared.
No mere mirage, this fort bereft
Of all released by spring.
Reality besmeared with grime--
A monument of dust to time,
To time ephemeral.
A passing night enjoins the whole
And empty is the dawning's role.
But yesterday a splendid fort;
Today a dune protects the site--
A monument of sand to night,
To night unchangeable.

Within the body reigns a soul,
Abode of Aerual, but/
The soul is dead; the body dust,
For Aerual from home was thrust.

O Aerual, O Aerual,
I've battered down your humble wall.

The fort, a stronghold physical,
A stronghold true, and yet a fort
Surmountable, was overcome,
Because its life interred
Exposed a vapid, empty 'hold
To desert's bold, relentless dust.

The mystery of midnight airs
Across the barren wastes insued;
Its weird and wild cacophonies,
Charged perplexities of demented joy,
Caught sands and dashed the wall
With Vandalic force, levelling all.

Unmeasured miles the eerie storm
Expressed a power ominous.
With morbid moans and strident screams
Implanting fears within my heart,
It raged and razed the ramparts strong,
Unleashed wrath of Satan's art.

Amid the primal blooms of spring:
Anemone and daffodils,
My Aerual, that maiden pure,
Was wont to live; to be with God.

Upon the ivied garden wall
She rested still, unrestinggrace.
In her repose/ the action/ did abound;
Her quietude is one/ of love/ unbound;
'Though still, is ne'er inactive found.
Within this tranquil state of act,
I also sat with Aerual.
Together we enjoyed the view
Which spoke of God's exceeding love:
The flowers fair, the gentle wafts
Of balmy spring's Aeolian air,
The olive meads bedecked with dew,
Each nascent blade in beauty born
And silver-spanned by spider webs;
The faithful trees that burgeon new
In wooded vales, on wind-swept wolds.

Above this peace serene,
Apollo's flaming chariot
Made hot the wall which she did grace.

As Aerual's companion true,
I also/ sat upon the ivied stone
Enthralled by spring; engrossed in spring,
The wonderment that filled the earth
With multitudes of living things.

The heat of day intense became
Upon the humble wall,
So Aerual, and I for shame,
Were forced to leap.

                               Forsaken rock,
A rampart built of flesh for man,
In solitude you wait for death.

Prevailing westerlies arise
And all the air, a turbulence, foretells.
The reigning sun, a common pact
With Vulcan, now decrees;
Incarcerates the hapless realm
By sending rays of whitened heat.
Portentous calm engenders fear,
While darkness, the horizon, hides.

Then massive clouds of whirling dust
Appear above the western plain.
They muster force from angered winds,
They roll and toss in frenzied ire,
They ebonize the occident
In every part that strikes the eyes;
They tumble towards the noon-day fire.
Tempestuous groans from distant dark
Obtrude upon my fearful ears
And louder, louder, louder grow,
Resounding kettledrums
Of monstrous clouds in thunderous roll.

A whipping wind invades the place
Where Aerual and I remain.
It snaps the limbs of stately elms
And twists the willows' tender boughs.
Beneath the/ burning heat and drying wind,
The vernal season's verdant vigour wans.
Behold, the umbered ivy dies!

Ironic laughs of dirging dust's
Blackened bowls inurn my soul
And lacerate the garden wall,
The fort of flesh, the desert dune.

Apollo's oft triumphant car
Is lost behind Satanic clouds
Of hellish rage.

Enslaving all the rites of spring,
The savage tempest roars and whines;
It claws and gnaws; it reigns as king,
A tyrant wrought in dire designs.
He rules the depths of mortal death,
"Tis Pluto; and the ebon bowls, his robes.

To dust the garden wall descends
Beneath the/ grinding sand,
The jewels on the robes of Dis.
A worthless dune the wall becomes
Beneath the black abyss of hate,
The rising storm of lethal fate.

Unearthly cries transpierce the night
When witches mouth theirwailings weird
As oracles of 'pending blight--

A moment's madness, eternal loss.

In trembling and timidity
I shuddered; torn between myself,
Retreated from the crumbled wall.
And running far from Aerual,
To her disclosed my pavid state.
I hid my face, abashèd thing;
In shame I veiled my countenance.
Within my veins a heated hate
Arose against the Source/ of Aerual,
And as the roiling haze,
The color and the aspect of despair,
Whipped and wheeled 'round about,
My life, my Aerual, in sorrow fled.

So battered is the humble wall.

O Aerual, O Aerual,
I've sent you sand on which to roam.

Depravèd wretch was I, my bowels wrung
By bitter gall.  My only food
Was rank, Satanic bread, the storm
Of boiling ire and all the waste
Abounding in its sordid wake.
An adamantine land of stark aridity
Deposing vital spring's enrobed viridity
Alone remains, a masticated realm
New-ground by teeth imbibed with hate.

Thus Aerual, the highest grace,
By thieving cast from soul, the fort
In wasting storms became a/ desert dune;
I/ fell, and falling, died.    



Seminary book intro / links to poems
-------------------------
Elegy


-
Brian A. J. Salchert