I found a Treasure last week at a local thrift-store. The cashier raised her eye-brows, repeating the price and I told her it's fine because the money is going to help someone who really needs it and I get a gorgeous old book of poetry!
The poetry in this volume is breath-taking and as relevant today as it was Then because matters of the human heart never really change.
This is the first poem in the book! (click to enlarge for easier reading)
Oh, language of labored intricacies,
Oh, dialect of Divine intertwined
With stuttering of thought that we appease
In verse transported from the heart and mind
Then pressed upon a page, from age to age
Preserved for those still centuries afar
From he or she who freed a lyric caged
And trembling on the stage of human heart
Where Time cannot annul those matters there
The laws of love and longing's cry immune
To liberal progression; thus some dare
To curb with ink the spirit’s unchained tune
Which weeps within, unchanged since Time began
To test and vex the foolish ways of man
***
Praise God with every breath, dear fellow-friend
For poetry is more than patent word
Or edifices of syllable penned
Come, bow and let the human heart be stirred
Where poetry pours from dawn’s far-flung doors
Or, as dusk bars its shutters once again
It splays its poesy on fallow-floors
And spills its trill to every hill like rain
That falls upon the just and unjust too
For God does not withhold His glory, no
His poetry is free for all to view
And be awed speechless by its comely show
To minor poets; He bestows the ink
Whereby the pen is filled and poets drink
***
Four seasons worth; this is earth’s carapace
Where birth and death’s half-breath proximity
Stuns mankind’s thought. We reach. Who can embrace
This Slipping through our fingers to Past's sea
Save in a valiant verse as poets drain
From eventide and countryside and hearts
Attempts to tenderly snare and contain
In poetry the ken that God imparts
To soothe and smooth the defects of this place
Prone to impress us with Futility
If we are ignorant of Kinder Grace
Lacing existence with His poetry
Where meeker instruments of ink and page
Seek to preserve Glimpses, from age to age
© Janet Martin
