R. Joseph Hoffmann's Blog: Khartoum, page 3

Lily

I think sometimes
"Why can't you understand?"
for if you did you would
understand it all.

Tte nature of men
commiserating with the snow,
sensing the slow
ebb of their strength...

The nature of defiant boys
tongue-tied and shifting
from lie to lie
refusing to confess the sins
that cause their sadness...

The power of the complacent beauty
that drew me to you
and the stabbing fear that
there is no paradise but you...

The shreds of your mother's understanding
that words do not change us,
your father's silence in watching the melting snow.
You would understand

How I Love You

for nx





I want you to know that when you are close
doing ordinary things like checking your phone
the earth squeaks and jostles me like a boy
afraid to hop off a merry go round that’s slowed,
but not stopped. Here am I; There is the ground:
Spinning.
When shall I hop? Should I spin again?
What can it hurt to remount the beautiful white
wooden pony with the blue mane
encrusted
with gold and rhinestone glitter?
Must it hurt?

I know that too much spinning is bad for me
so I welcome the jostle to recall
that the carousel ride, like you coming close,
lasts only minutes before the slowing begins.
and the palomino is really a dull and lifeless wooden
thing on a stick that moves only when dark,
unshaven, drunken men want it to.

Yet when you are close
the horses come to life and gallop away,
free from their life of spinning.
Only the pretentious benches
do not move.
And the spinning does not stop
for what is lasting is the spinning,
and the sufi boy in me
longs to be as free from you
as the escaping ponies.

The Lie

Even after all these years I am still a believer in the penitential system of the Roman Catholic Church.

I do not mean boys on their knees in a dark closet whispering their foul intent to a man in a cassock, dispensing God’s forgiveness, one box over.

I mean what Dorothy Sayers, the great mystery novelist, called "the theory of penance."

In addition to the two requirements for “absolution” ( the church prescribed knowledge of the evil as evil and remorse--sorrow-- for doing the deed or misdeed), it prescribed punishment, originally as a token or symbol of the sinner’s remorse—or contrition, and resolve to clean up his sordid little life.

It was all packed so tightly into a couple of mumbled prayers that I am not sure that either I or any of my chums really got that bit, but it was there anyway. And within the system, it made sense: God is all powerful, all good, desireth not the death of a sinner, etc., but infinitely just and while merciful, no fool.

People who tell lies will lie about not telling lies, even to a priest. But contrition comes from within, Pinocchio, and from the same place springs the desire to amend our life. You must go to the lady whose package you stole from her front porch and ask her forgiveness. You must return the package or pay her for it. That is justice, the greater part of penance.

But more is required. You must bring her flowers and promise to never do this again. You musty oofer to cut her lawn for the next six month for free on a hot Saturday afternoon and she may need you to run errands for her, as she is always out of Coke, and her dog had a bladder condition and needs walking. This is Justice Plus. This is penance. And you must not begrudge her or call her a looney old bat


Do you understand? Of course you do you thieving little worm.

Sorrow is cheap if it buys forgiveness. So it doesn’t, not all by itself. Penance cheerfully endured is God’s seal of approval on the transcaction.

What was clear to me as 10 is still clear. Recently a very simple person told a lie about me. And another person.

Almost no one believed it but she kept telling it, because repetition is the soul of truth to a liar. I believe in Dante, this is called slander. It the form of deceit in which the goal is to do actual harm, which once was a grievous sin because it is a sin against truth, love, and justice.

I do not remember Dante’s punishment for this, but it was grievous and has something to do with old fashioned tongue piercing, not the decorative kind. Here, now, I find myself in God’s role as the offended party, so my prerogatives are theoretically endless. But like a just God or a reasonable priest, I wanted the punishment to fit the crime.

My choice was to free myself and my staff from any obligation to be in the same room with her, no matter how urgent or ambitious the meeting. A woman who loves to talk and be heard talking with no listeners. A tree falling in forest with only a woodpecker to applaud.

The payback seemed approp

It is still too soon to know whether this application of the penitential system will work. If it doesn’t, there is always piercing of snipping, or exorcism, But for the time being this is enough.

What is Not Forbidden is Allowed

I wrote poetry
when I had nothing to say about you
and every image was a guess
and every symbol was a wish,
a jab at the truth with a lying pen.
You deserved better
so I brought roses, and wished for less.
In the evenings, sometimes,
I would close my eyes
and your would rise in my brain
like a late summer storm over
the islands I call home
and the windows of my house
would tremble and shatter my glass words;
flowers would be uproote.d and
hills would ooze mud, turf. and small rocks.
Sometimes it would rage all night
and at dawn you would stand outside
in the retreating wind--no movement
not even a bird, unless you moved,
and no air unless you breathed
and no sound from you at all.
You would not stand next to me--
nor speak, no, nor ask to enter,
for what brought you was the yearning
not the promise, and what
half keeps you is the force of
my deep and despairing desire
to be rooted in you.

Awakening

But i cannot share
Or be calm or numb
Demon love prods us
To want the sum
Not fractions.

And passion is not fair
It wants the part of you
That loves in secret
But loves not me
And hates these actions .

And wisdom will not win
Against Desire's tug
So i must let you fly
To his arms and your sin
And say goodbye.

Deleted

In the clash
only your clear sound
and in laughter
your silence,
and among the same faces
your eyes
like birrtday candles awake
among the slumbering crowd.
I see you
for the hundredth time
and never have seen you.

A Kind of Flower

I came home to a small pot of soup
gurgling on the stove:
vegetable with a splash of lamb,
"sactifice boiling in its own juices"
my father said once. The nettoyeuse knows
lamb is my facourite. She is kind
and tries to seem necessary to my life.

It is October now in Samarkand--
not orange and crisp like
New England with its leaf loss
and vague brittle excietments.
But you are here, not far
from where I am composing
these words about trees,
and you say sweety. "I love
flowers," and you mean
the ones I gave you this day.
In this dry month, your words
are brighter than tulips
more ebullient than June's lupines,
as happy as rain drops and as free.

Sonnet XXI: Of Melancholy

I saw your spirit move (though you stood still)
and scarcely spoke, and scarcely saw my eyes
apparise your loveliness. Say what you will,
but in such agony the present dies
and dreams awaken. A thousand years conspire
to frame a moment, and a thousand sins
are purged away by Beauty's painful fire
and Beauty's promise. And a thousand violins
play canons, fugues, and dizzying Highland flings.
Thy Beauty is my enemy, O thou my friend,
for in you I despair of higher things
than flesh, and as flesh this will end.
I saw your spirit move though you were still
and full of sadness, too: Say what you will.

In and Out

Now in September
it is more important
for you to know why I love you
than for you to love me.
This is my story; it is always the same:
You've blundered into my aged house,
near a pounding sea,
because I left my door unlocked.
You thought, like Goldilocks,
the house was deserted
until you found a fire burnt down to embers
and dinner not eaten,
the BBC declaring news
to an empty room in the night.
When you turn around
(this is how I remember it)
You see me, unstartled, and say hello.
You excuse yourself.
You say the door was open
and you wondered in winter
Why is it so.
You do not say you are lost,
only that the door was open.,
Nevermind I say. It was open for you,
and you came. Have some dinner,
I made chowder but ate the biscuits.

You sit in a windsor chair missing two rungs,
as perfectly as the letter L.
You ask if I have lived here long,
so near the sea
whch is always grey in January.
A long time, I say smiling. Forever.
You ask to wash the dishes, and call me dear.
Your eyes dance among my pictures
and your fingers along the keys of the piano.
"My library is in the barn, it fills the loft."
"That'nice" (you say) "that you read.
But you must learn to close your door."

So I will Speak

So, I will sing to you
in lines of old songs and poetry
measuring my images
(the kind David chose
to soothe mad Saul),
knowing that serenity
is not the whole of beauty.
No, there is also silence.
And a rage for words
that dissolve like crystals
in the assent of your eyes.
And since beauty
is a force given by Eros
to beckon and command,
ensnare, lift up, and disappoint--
To keep its erratic power over us
in harmony with fate,
there is also kindness.