The Ordering of Love

I'd like to take a moment to feature an anthology of poetry from one of my favorite authors. Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007) was a vibrant woman whose many occupations--actor, author, poet, wife, mother--coalesced to produce some really beautiful works. My favorite books of hers are the ones in the Murray trilogy: A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, and A Swiftly Tilting Planet. These books expanded my faith and my world, opening my eyes to new kinds of beauty in the universe.

This anthology of Madeleine's poetry was published in 2005, just shortly before her death. Though she is primarily known as a novelist, her poetry is powerful and skillful, fanciful and experimental. It's a joy to read, and I highly recommend it for fellow lovers of poetry.

An excerpt:

Love Letter Addressed To:
by Madeleine L'Engle

Your immanent eminence
wholly transcendent
permanent, in firmament
holy, resplendent
other and aweful
incomprehensible
legal, unlawful
wild, indefensible
eminent immanence
mysterium tremendum
mysterium fascinans
incarnate, trinitarian
being impassible
infinite wisdom
one indivisible
king of the kingdom
logos, word-speaker
star-namer, narrator
man-maker, man-seeker
ex nihil creator
unbegun, unbeginning
complete but unending
wind-weaving, sun-spinning
ruthless, unbending:
Eternal compassion
helpless before you
I, Lord, in my fashion
love and adore you.

Instruments (2)

(photo taken february 2007)

Instruments (2)
by Madeleine L'Engle

Hold me against the dark: I am afraid.
Circle me with your arms. I am made
So tiny and my atoms so unstable
That at any moment I may explode. I am unable
To contain myself in unity. My outlines shiver
With the shock of living. I endeavor
To hold the I as one only for the cloud
Of which I am a fragment, yet to which I'm vowed
To be responsible. Its light against my face
Reveals the witness of the stars, each in its place
Singing, each encompassed by the rest,
The many joined to one, the mightiest to the least.
It is so great a thing to be an infinitesimal part
Of this immeasurable orchestra the music bursts the heart,
And from this tiny plosion all the fragments join:
Joy orders the disunity until the song is one.

A kind of new year's resolution.

(photo courtesy of Flickr user Mark Schurig)

From "The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God"
by Rainer Maria Rilke

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one else has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.