I wake and feel the fell of dark

Like espresso, maybe, or better, Guinness, the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins is certainly an acquired taste. I discovered his work while teaching high school English a number of years ago. I don't suppose my students ever really delved the depths of God's Grandeur or Windhover; but then, I'm not sure I have yet, either.

So one day I was looking for a few Hopkins poems to include on an English exam, of all things-- some lyrical fodder for a few half-hearted, adolescent poetry analysis essays-- when I stumbled innocently enough across this sonnet that stopped me dead in my utilitarian tracks.

Sonnet 45

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hoürs we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

I remember so clearly standing alone in my classroom, reading these lines over and over. And it felt like a fist had closed around my heart-- and crushed out beauty and ache and sadness and hope all mingled together. I couldn't escape the words. They, quite literally, brought me to my knees. A few days later I sat down and tried to write a poem in response to this brush with beauty.

Still thinking about the creative power of human speech to heal and transform, I offer it here:


Logos

O! to be pierced in the soul with words, their nails burning.
Pierced hands and feet, pinned body driven down against the thought,
the bright stab of the shining logos touching to the very heart
and letting flow the mingled blood and water of my yearning.
Encompassing my brow within the twisted knot of thorny verse
to beat, break, bruise but balm my crown, let stream the wish,
your ringing, swinging phrase at once can flay and salve my flesh,
and lift against my lips a vinegar to slake and hone my thirst.

See! There! Look! Led by the heart, you've held me by the ear
brought to the root of the triumphant tree on gleaming wings.
Ah! There! In the bubble of my passion, in you passion, springs
as flotsam in the flowing fountain of His passion, pure
haloes, light, and streaming blood, doves, bells, stars and other holy things:
To praise the Word that that was the first, my broken word now sings.