Covenant College - Tartan Yearbook (Lookout Mountain, GA)

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Cease you hindrance, you hateful summer with spiteful greens and light. Let poor winter send the haughty sun to his farther palace of deeper night. Sweep your warmer sons Aeolus to a distant place And summon your hoary headed child from the freezing fields of space To sing the dirge for fecundity and verdant life. Embrace me with a frosty kiss on this forehead marked by strife. Come, O Winter, take away all promises of rebirth- Promise me brighter stars, Promise me barren earth, Promise me my Nepenthe, Promise me my Lethe, Promise me these things, for I would forget My painful fertile days, Heady summer and springtime's tiresome ways. Octoberl7 The round hollow of the moon's blind eye Filled my mind and troubled my sleep. I was touched by all her pale fingers. My cheek flushed and hair tossed as she caressed To feel and to know he, who had so long Gazed adoringly upon her. But as she touched and breathed into my forehead I saw she was a young girl. Her eyes seemed fixed on a deeper place in the heaven's field. Upon seeing her, I slowly began to yield To her urgent silences. She laughed a foreign laughter and drew Her pallid body to me. We sang all night to one another. I plucked moon blossoms for her But she could not see. I fell at her feet in tears. The round hollow of the moon's blind eye Filled my mind And we ride the sky-tides together. We laugh a foreign laughter and feast on blossoms of light And sing to the earth that we are blind. Diana shot her curved bow Amidst mad moonlight Beneath dark shadows. Beyond the trivial path The mute field Held with moist hands a tunic And the moon mirrored by th As the waters enveloped One who knew power, Pale light and silence. The night so easily won The heart so easily won From behind the vinessfallen From the trees, wisteria. Was he willing, was he willing For the hounds to blindly do their killing? And then was he satisfied with sleep? And was he carried over the sacred stream? Was he dead or Merely sleeping Almost touching, Almost dreaming? e pool shattered

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6lThistle is a motif and it is a tool for use the figure ofUlysses, which expression. For instance, I have is a well known mythological some poetry on Ulysses and I figure, to speak of certain Ulysses beneath the cliffs I That rough bark being cast upon the sea And the warriors tired of war Straining for home No foreign land or strange beauty Could turn them from their native shore. Circe had only magic And what did she know of their true souls Being a sorceress Being a woman? No perfume fnot even the lotusj Could hold those tempered by death From their final mission As homeward was their last earthly heaven Or make their minds, fevered with one Obsession, to turn and forget. But was their leaderls quick mind Snatched from them for a moment On the murderous rocks Beneath the singing, Themselves being saved by wax? And being the coast of Ionia Did he doubt for a moment And think of the face that profaned all beauty forever And turned the women of lllium to shame? Did he hear for a moment the song That, being a consuming beauty Leading to death upon thejagged cliffs, Spun for his heart and lost? Was he staggered by that face And dizzied by that song And perhaps, before his wife's patient arms Could soothe the madness Did he wish that in that moment he had torn the lashings Broken the bonds, flown from the heaving deck And flung himself on the cliffs drowning in the song? While the others beat the oars to safety Blind, deaf and dumb never speaking When later asked why their master did not return to his home. existential themes. This imme- diately puts the poem in some kind of context.'I don't have to spend a lot of time on charac- terization. I have the type of man just by saying the name. I don't have to build a whole new character. Can you see any other problems in the way in which Christian's view poetry? Well, the other thing in Christian poetry that you don't see too much of, it appears to me, is that you don't get a lot of honesty. Christians write poetry when they're happy or when they're sad but not so much when they're reflective. And they always feel that they have to put a Christian moral on it. Very few of my poems could somebody pick up and say, Oh, this guy's a Christian. However, I think that if 25 of my poems, say, were read to- gether it could be seen that I was tending in that direction. I don't feel that I have to tack a moral on the end. I believe that if I want to speak of hatred and I have felt hatred in my heart then I'll write about hatred and I don't feel the urge to give any Christian moralizing about it. If I want to talk about romantic love I talk about romantic love. To me one of the major calls of the Christian poet is to be honest. And hopefully through my poetry people will see an imperfect person, but a person who has a commitment to something higher than himself which, of course, explicitly is to God and Christianity.

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Could these rough hands have reached the smallest flower or having reached Cursed to touch or even deify fwhich is also cursedj? The petals fall upon my dark flesh's Burning memory with each embrace. I must receive And yet this is no place for such a one With such eyes of earned innocence. These are no such hands That could have faith. Yet, once a man Pressed his lips Against a holy ember And was undone And was made clean. I would be taught and teach If that fire could blister This mute tongue And then perhaps, after the Perhaps the flower- Mine. fire, at l If there once were promises They shall be given as signs For seasons Or patriarchal stars Or the sun making the day Or breaking the darkness of night I have seen a pool I have seen a pool Water in the ground Do not be led away If I laugh as if to tell her- The water will always have its reflections It shall always for the burning hand Prove the cool answer To the animal demand. If there once was a sea If there once was a sea That needed crossing It shall be raised to the stars And wet their tired burning faces. And we shall walk upon the sand And walk upon the sand Reaving oranges from the palmls green hand If there were sands If there were deserts And even if we could become Thirsty together side by side Then these our own clean bones would lie And chirp until the heavens moved Down upon our desert And the world was water once more And the world was water once more. This shall be only a long never This shall be indeed a long never In our minds. For a forever It was promised that water Should be in pools onbf fNow fire must come entire for the first time being quenched in the earthless streamsl But still the water remembers If there once were promises They shall remain along with- You and I before the fire And stars which shall never die.