Routine
Enchanted mornings
on a fair twilight.
The fading moon
is blanketed by misty clouds,
so are the stars
that are coated for a few hours hiatus.
Dawn approaches with its promise
of a brighter day.
The erosion of slumber sets in
with a hymn and our Lord’s prayer.
The day ahead, with a hopeful gaze
stretches beyond my optimistic expectations, with a drab end at the setting of the grinning sun.
‘The day is over’ it says
Tomorrow is another day.
Another day of routine hopes
with its attendant drabness.
A routine of expectations of an entire lifetime in the dull-coloured decades of seventy, eighty, ninety, hundred, as our strength endures until the sun finally sets.
“It is through beauty that we arrive at freedom.”
Friedrich Schiller
“The human body is the best picture of the human soul.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
” And when any will offer a meat offering unto the Lord, his offering shall be of fine flour; and he shall pour oil on it, and put frankincense thereon: And he shall bring it to Aaron’s sons the priests: and he shall take thereout his handful of the flour thereof, and the oil thereof, with all the frankincense thereof; and the priest shall burn the memorial of it on the altar, to be an offering made of fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord…
The Third Book Of Moses Called
Leviticus
Chapter 2, verses 1 and 2
When the sun finally sets in the poem at the end, for me it is a bold statement about death and grief and melancholy. It is a bold statement about the church and religion and what we who are raised in the church have been conditioned to think and believe. “The erosion of slumber sets in”, hymn, prayer, the stars alongside the universal law, our expectations. There is something very sacred about this poem. The description of the sunset is almost religious. The poet is guided mysteriously, instructed divinely and the poem itself is a religious instruction, pure, infinite as infinite as the Christ-figure. I enjoyed reading this poem for many reasons. Wherever I find a description of the Christ-figure in a poem, or read lines akin to spiritual guidance and religious instruction I find that there is an insistent renewal of my own beliefs. I am deeply encouraged to write about my own religious experience.