Gregory Orr – Ⅰ
Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved
Part One (Selections)
*
Who wants to lose the world,
For all its tumult and suffering?
Who wants to leave the world,
For all its sorrow?
Not I.
And so I come to the Book.,
Which is also the body
Of the beloved. And so
I come to the poem.
The poem is the world
Scattered by passion, then
Gathered again
So that we may have hope.
The shape of the Book
Is the door to the grave,
Is the shape of the stone
Closed over us, so that
We may know terror
Is what we pass through
To reach hope, and courage
Is our necessary companion.
The shape of the Book
Is dark as death, and every page
Is lit with hope, glows
With the light of the vital body.
*
I read the Book for years
And never understood a word.
Scrawled in its margins.
Wrote my own versions
Of what I read there,
But never got a thing right.
Didn’t understand that each
Poem was a magic spell.
Was a voice,
And under that voice: an echo
That was the spell.
As if each poem clearly spoke
The word “Death”
And the echo said “Life.”
Echo roiling the poem’s surface
As the angel was said
To trouble the waters
Of Bethesda’s pool in Jerusalem
So that the first person
To enter the water
After the angel had been there
Was healed.
*
Those who wake in the middle
Of the night read a different book.
For one thing, the world’s all dark
Around them, as if it disappeared.
The poems they read are anxious,
As if they feared the world
Might not return next morning
Or if it did might bring them
Sorrow or bad news. more sorrow,
More bad news.
A little light
On the book’s white pages
While they read for an hour:
Pages lit up like a sail at dawn.
The boat alone on the sea.
But the wind steady, pulling them along.
Part One (Selections)
*
Who wants to lose the world,
For all its tumult and suffering?
Who wants to leave the world,
For all its sorrow?
Not I.
And so I come to the Book.,
Which is also the body
Of the beloved. And so
I come to the poem.
The poem is the world
Scattered by passion, then
Gathered again
So that we may have hope.
The shape of the Book
Is the door to the grave,
Is the shape of the stone
Closed over us, so that
We may know terror
Is what we pass through
To reach hope, and courage
Is our necessary companion.
The shape of the Book
Is dark as death, and every page
Is lit with hope, glows
With the light of the vital body.
*
I read the Book for years
And never understood a word.
Scrawled in its margins.
Wrote my own versions
Of what I read there,
But never got a thing right.
Didn’t understand that each
Poem was a magic spell.
Was a voice,
And under that voice: an echo
That was the spell.
As if each poem clearly spoke
The word “Death”
And the echo said “Life.”
Echo roiling the poem’s surface
As the angel was said
To trouble the waters
Of Bethesda’s pool in Jerusalem
So that the first person
To enter the water
After the angel had been there
Was healed.
*
Those who wake in the middle
Of the night read a different book.
For one thing, the world’s all dark
Around them, as if it disappeared.
The poems they read are anxious,
As if they feared the world
Might not return next morning
Or if it did might bring them
Sorrow or bad news. more sorrow,
More bad news.
A little light
On the book’s white pages
While they read for an hour:
Pages lit up like a sail at dawn.
The boat alone on the sea.
But the wind steady, pulling them along.
