Prayer in Time of War
Can you breathe through spreading pain?
Can you bear the suffering again?
Can you bleach the blood-red stain?
Can you stop the rape of Ukraine?
Can you dull the loins of those on heat for war?
Can you block their guns as you’ve done before?
Can the hope of peace-talks cry, ‘No More!’?
Can fiery minds change their very core?
God, so implement the love of Calvary,
Your eirenic Spirit blast the fighters free,
Caress the world with mastery,
Your love that heals painstakingly.
The Disappeared
(The Dictatorship, Argentina, 1976 – 1983)
They’re rolling bodies from the soiled airplane,
they’ll hose the cargo hold when all are gone.
Did they cry ‘Our Father’ before were slain
not by the sea but by all who looked on?
Truth: so hard to hear that we dismiss it.
With Pontius, hands are washed in hypocrisy.
Not us, in crimes in our name complicit,
We choose systemic evil not to see.
We leave to Jesus burden of the cost,
to carry the pain, to accept the blame.
We roll him out and dump him with the lost:
For this he was born, and for this he came.
Look on, he becomes our mocking mass song.
Onlookers, felons – we compose the throng.
This Good Friday I pray for the poor and oppressed.
Jesus suffering on the cross is Jesus suffering with the oppressed.
On these people, and people like them, the heaviest burden of the Covid-19 pandemic will fall.
The featured image, ‘Jesus Falls for the Second Time’, comes from the Stations of the Cross, Church of Notre Dame des Champs, Normandy, France.
Image courtesy: Paul Davis
Kaya to Australia Day 2020
De-civilising ships keep arriving, our shores
no longer secure, nor our culture thriving,
the wedulah (the white man) brings sickness,
death too by pointing his lethal finger.
So it’s outrage I sing this Day of Invading,
Anger I shout at the smooth persuading
of their own to the terra nullius doctrine
and the smug nerve to take and to linger.
Surprise and pride at the enduring
of songlines, of rock art, of language
maturing, of wilga for dance, culture
corrosion resisting, the didj, the singer.
So it’s pride I take this Day of Survival,
ceremony I make to sing and stamp
a revival of a near-lost world of soul
whose force continues, sets my heart to tingle.
Make it too a favourable Day of cautious
Carnival for the culture that’s come
and the culture that’s here, a caucus
of crafts and story-telling all mingling.
So I make joy from blended blessings,
football deftness, hybrid harmony,
cheeky humour, drama stars, open-
ness to future cultures coupling.
From today until Christmas Eve, my poem ‘The Disappearing Arts’ will be printed on patrons’ printouts when they borrow from Bargoonga Nganjin, North Fitzroy Library in Melbourne.
The Federal Government has moved responsibility for the Arts from the Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet to a new super Department (Infrastructure, Transport, The Regions), where the Arts do not even feature in its name.
The Disappearing ARTS
The ARTS are so subversive now
(for we are young and free)
They lock them up in ‘Infrasport’,
and hide away the key.
The ARTS can set the people free
(our home is girt by sea)
So smother them in red red tape
and tangle into braid.
The ARTS nerve our loath bravery
(Advance Australia Fair)
but we are not afraid
to speak the truth so to disempower.
The ARTS cause us to laugh at rules
(of beauty rich and rare)
to denigrate the canny clown
and turn them all to fools.
-Ted Witham
My poem ‘Galactical’ has been published in the current edition of W.A. Poets’ Creatrix: https://wapoets.com/creatrix-2/2019-2/creatrix-47-poetry/#Ted%20Witham.
I am pleased to announce that two poems I have translated from medieval Italian and Umbrian into English have been published in the Adelaide Literary Journal.
Part of Jacopone da Todi’s Lauda (Praises) on the subject of poverty is published as Lauda XV.
Francis Seal of Love, by Vittoria Colonna is a Petrarchan sonnet. Colonna was a great admirer of St Francis.
Now begins the year ecclesiastical
with storms of judgment, visions of the end,
rejection of all ideas plastical
they clog the soul and block God from being friend.
Without our spiritual cleansing drastical
blindness hides the holy incarnation,
makes belief selective and tactical
its fearful retreat from fervent vocation.
Advent imagery wild and fantastical
stirs up our hearts to see the larger stage.
opens us to live enthusiastical
integrity in this and the coming age.
He
will come, he says, in clouds of glory:
Now the time to heed and join his story.
–Ted Witham, Advent I, AD 2018
Dennis (former Warden, fellow-pilgrim)
transported the surrounding bush inside
to this once stark square where (when young)
we used to kick a footie and the Archbishop chide
that thongs were not professional wear.
Now that so proper lawn has gone.
A eucalypt roughly embraces a pencil pine.
She has lost her slender straightness
and has grown a new and swollen line.
She has a definitely pregnant air.
Dog collars and stiff stocks were de rigueur.
Now a Silver Princess sways at head height
like a demented and giant alien insect
hovering and bobbing with foreign delight.
a tree, a chimerical vision, creation’s dare.
Parrots in the colossal wandoo
scatter pollen, drop nectar to the ground,
neck and squawk their sweet nothings.
In no way to convention bound,
splashing seeds of new life everywhere.
The climbing plant has eaten the wall,
And grown a vigourous, lush and living screen.
The sun shafts aggressively rays,
making the rest dark, and wild, and green,
busting with birds and vital mysteries there.
We have grown a little wild and unkempt too.
The old straight edges are softened and coalesced.
God’s tendrils of outrageous vitality
have sprouted even in the hearts of his old priests,
neatness overturned for more authentic care.
***
Published in Access Press’s Galloping On VI, Winners And Selected Poems From The Grand National Poetry Stakes 1995.
Ships of States
What is poetry?
craft carved from hard words and soft,
coloured for the eye and sounded well,
and polished along the true,
tacked with perfume and fathomed for a spell.
argosy launched from the mire of mind
to sail in auditors’ ears,
and float in currents of readers’ specific
memory, bliss and tears.
tender (legal or outlaw) convoyed from hand to hand
rich koine valued by someone new
or poems pocketed lying idle
lost change hiding in plain view.
****
Ted Witham
Joint Winner WA Poets’ 2018 Occasional Poetry Prize.
Clare’s Constant Goodness – A Liturgical Sonnet
Jesus called her to bare wood poverty,
Assisi’s high-born childhood cast aside:
sisters named in equal community,
nobles, handmaids live, and love side by side.
Jesus called her to upright integrity,
her constant goodness a daily friend,
choices crafted with brightest clarity,
look for consequences with loving end.
Core eucharistic regularity –
sharing the cup of wine and blessing bread,
bring to this moment Christ’s life charity,
God’s sacred heart among the sisters spread.
Joy of goodness, riches of poverty,
planned Eucharist: life-giving trinity.
+ + + +
Ted Witham, Feast of St Clare 2018
Feast of St Clare – readings for Morning Prayer
Psalms 62, 63
Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 2:1-9
Matthew 13:44-51
Mind Journeys 