Some Poems of Father John Duffy, C.Ss.R.
John Duffy, C.Ss.R.,
son of The
Mission Church
+died on Christmas Eve, 1993
+Domine Jesu! + Prayer for Sleep + What Gold, What Stars You Beautified +The Annunciation +A Priest's Prayer Before Mass +Where Thrushes Sang +Dei Genetrix + Cure in the Water
Up from my golden saucer
in the dawn
Flows without fleck, in streak of utmost glow,
The Floodlight of my Savior Jesus Christ,
Ascending soundless, like an upward snow.
More than the rainbow’s
last invisible hues —
Intangible yet scorching bolt of Grace,
Probing the poles of space and all the stars,
It finds and floods with joy the Father’s face.
Lo, from my mirror,
lacquered like a lake;
Lo, from my dish, as from a focused arc,
God from the shallow bottom of the world
Streams upward unto God through all the dark.
And I, with Domine
Jesu! on my lips,
Bend and look softly over in the blaze,
Bend and look downward in the blinding beam,
My lips, my eyes caught betwixt Gaze and Gaze.
By Thine effulgence
breaking on my brow,
Domine, bear mine image on with Thee
To cast my shadow on Thy Father’s face,
That in Thy look He may remember me.
God,
through whom we sleep or wake
Here’s my soul for Thee to take.
Lift me in divine release
Out of time and back to peace.
Fold me in Perhaps and Seem,
Make me once again the dream
Dreamed before I came to be
The thing I am, this loved—by—Thee.
Keep unchanged my moonlit world
Of fields and snow-roofs bluely pearled,
And starry stillness vast and deep
Round the silence of my sleep.
Bring, in icy air afar,
Tomorrow’s drop of morning star.
Wake me, gentle, with a kiss
Out of night’s unplumbed abyss,
Through the day to feel and be
Lost in Thee as Thou in me.
Here’s the password, still the same,
The drifting whisper of Thy name:
“Jesus!’’ And I make the sign,
Passing Thee-ward half divine.
Inward to the world of Seem.
Twelve o’clock and all is dream.
WHAT GOLD, WHAT STARS YOU BEAUTIFIED
There are no sunsets since you died.
Those skies we watched when twilight fell:
What gold, what stars you beautified
In simply being by my side
As one to turn to and to tell!
Lovely the west, but what's to say,
Without you near me, looking too?
Beauty is where you went away.
One sunset closes every day -
The one I'll never share with you.
Through tears I've watched the gold of space
Fade and take silver stars around.
Sad is their splendor, since the face
That smiled and gave them half their grace
Lies blind forever in the ground.
No not forever! Star-stitched gold
Burns on, and I have watched and cried.
But come the day that Christ foretold,
And we'll be looking as of old,
By God! by one another's side.
The Annunciation by Fra Angelico
And was it true,
The stranger standing so,
And saying things that lifted her in two,
And put her back before the world's beginning?
Her
eyes filled slowly with the morning glow.
Her drowsy ear drank in a first sweet dubious bird.
Her cheek against the pillow woke and stirred
To gales enriched by passage over dew,
And friendly fields and slopes of Galilee
Arose in tremulous intermixture with her dreams,
Till she remembered suddenly...
Although the
morning beams
Came spilling in the gradual rubric known to every day,
And hills stood ruinous, as an eclipse,
Against the softly spreading ray,
Not touched by any strange apocalypse
Like that which yesterday had lifted her sublime,
And put her back before the first grey morn of Time -
Though nothing was disturbed from where she lay and saw,
Now she remembered with a quick and panting awe
That someone came, and took in hand her heart,
And broke irresistibly apart,
With what he said, and how in tall suspense
He lingered, while the white celestial inference,
Pushing her fears apart, went softly home.
Then she had faltered her reply,
And felt a sudden burden of eternal years,
And shamed by the angelic stranger standing by
Had bowed her head to hide her human tears.
Never again would she awake
And find herself the buoyant Galilean lass,
But into her dissolving dreams would break
A hovering consciousness too terrible to pass --
A new awareness in her body when she stirred,
A sense of Light within her virgin gloom:
She was the Mother of the wandering Word,
Little and terrifying in her laboring womb.
And nothing would again be casual and small,
But everything with light invested, overspilled
With terror and divinity, the dawn, the first bird's call,
The silhouetted pitcher waiting to be filled.
0 Flower of Enfolding
Eternal Three,
For joy of Jesus
Enfolding me!
Like a bee in petals
Dimmed and drowned
I sink in the Beauty
That flowers me round,
That furls me home
And the petals close
Of God within God,
The folded Rose.
Oh, joy to be lost
In Light, in Light
In the heart of Beauty
Burning white,
Where, blind for bliss,
The clustering Three
Fold in one rapture
Jesus and me!
Rose
of Being,
Fold, I implore
Fold me with Jesus
Once more, Once more
Caught in their line of fire
In the green wood-light,
I stood where thrushes sang,
One left, one right.
Sweet, to and fro, at ease,
Two joys conferred.
They had their all; for them
Life was pure bird.
But where those joys combined
Midway across,
Stood one who made of them
Sad sense of loss:
The ache all men must feel
But cannot say,
Lonely because of God
In some dark way.
Full, fierce beatitude
In their rich trill!
But my fierce need, though dumb,
Ached richer still.
They had their God; they sang,
Full of sweet fire.
I stood there, with no God
Except desire.
The Madonna of humility by Fra Angelico
He shared the blissful
transport
With only one.
Joy of the
bright-begotten --
My Son! My Son!
0 crown no other creature
Can ever claim!
From her as from the Father
Sweet Jesus came.
Blent in that temporal bearing
Two natures shine.
"Mine," proclaims the Father ...
"And also mine."
Assumed to that relation
Which makes God's bliss,
She shares with God the Father
The borning kiss.
Word of the Father's
stillness,
No sound is heard.
She too from virginal silence
Speaks the hushed Word.
Lily of coolest purity
In the deep night,
Brushing vast
darkness -- and the dew
Gathers down bright.
Star-throb in evening air,
Cool virgin blue,
Then the bright Jesus
dartle,
White light clear through!
Childing by God the Spirit:
A deed like
light -
White as the touch of snow
On snow as white.
Starshine and snow, pure lily
Where the light quaked...
Ah, blessed the womb that bore Him,
The milk that slaked!
He shared the blissful
transport
With only one.
Joy of the beautiful
bearing --
My Son! My Son!
CURE IN THE WATER
Feast of the Assumption, 1924
Apparently, this poem is about his own beloved mother, Bridie, and the tradition prevalent in some Catholic cultures that the waters were especially blessed on the Feast of the Assumption -- and thus many of the devout would go to various beaches and take a dip, hoping perhaps for some cure or blessing from the Mother of God.
You shamed that naked goddess of the seas,
0 Bridie, barefoot in Our Lady's tide
The day you begged a miracle to ease
The swollen feet that life had crucified.
Clothed to the knees in black, you stood and prayed.
Your little son, I watched, appalled. I knew
What you were praying for and was afraid
Of God - and miracles - and even you.
Ah, back you came, cheated of your surprise,
A crone bent over, cramping on shells and stones,
Our Lady's answer grieving in your eyes
And Golgotha still groaning in your bones.
Nothing, poor dear, poor crone ... But what you thought
Blessed back to God what lust had cursed away,
And with the aching in your bones you wrought
A sacramental out of Quincy bay.
I'd carve you in great marble if I could,
My Bridie of Our Lady of the Sea,
To show the sorrow of it, how you stood
Praying in vain for what was not to be.
Long dead, my dear... but when at last we meet--
O changed forever! The Eternal's bride,
Robed all in white down to the little feet
Shining like His who once was crucified!
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