Shut me in her sacred cell
Let vesper pray’r these speeches quell
'Till dawn bid that the silence null
'Till matin and till lauds are done
'Till hymns and chap’l songs ascend
To Jesus Christ our Lord and Friend
With Spirit and with Father one
-jwm
Of the Poem:
My initial intent was to write a poem about a Carmelite Monk (specifically Juan de la Cruz), while attempting to adhere to a metrical pattern and a rhyme scheme of some sort- so much for the meter!
This has happened to me before… I would start a poem intending at least four quatrains (with which I’m most comfortable and enjoy) and then, after a single stanza or two, an overwhelming sense of completion would set in. No matter how intense the edits, addition, subtractions, altered rhyme scheme, different imagery- in short, no matter what!- that sense of completion would become polluted. And not just mildly.
These two stanzas (now an octet) are almost as they were first written, then that sense of solidification set in, my initial intent was vanquished. So I left it as is for a while, attempted adjustments and even entirely new stanzas, but to no avail. Finally I abandoned myself to its completion, and only then did I feel ‘clean’ about it. I’m very happy with this short poem.
