#20 The Secret of the Wisdom

http://www.eliteskills.com/c/19451

I know that the day’s temper will likely always affect the reading of these Dream Songs—they’re so fragmented, sometimes they reflect what you bring to them like shards of broken mirrors. But something graceful is surely shining out of this one. Yes, we get hurt, and yes we stupidly strike out, and for sure we screw up all the time (Henry), but despair needn’t be the only reaction to our failures, and we needn’t loose “a pelican of lies.” We have not listened! The poem is a plea. And so: a villanelle. Beginning with Dream Song 20’s ending. Same title. The final lines tend toward an aphoristic pronouncement, which the iconic “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” villanelle, by Dylan Thomas, also does, and which the villanelle form seems to lend itself to. So. This is for the Sisters of Charity, whom this Dream Song has put me in mind of today:

The Secret of the Wisdom

We hear the more that sin has increast

The more grace has been caused to abound
We circle together our passage in feast

With daylight arising clear in the east

Struggle is marked by broadcast sound
We hear the more that sin has increast

It weighs on all, the great to the least

So we work a commitment to gather around
And circle together our passage in feast

Whether through crying heart’s pain is decreased

We trust at our table that grace is found
Yet still hear the more that sin has increast

Believing full well the wage of the beast

Grace is to motion for lives on the ground
Circling together our passage in feast

And may a day come when trouble has ceased

The more grace has been caused to abound
Hearing no more that sin has increased
We’ll circle together our passage in feast

KZ