Thursday, September 1, 2011

What compels the righteous to renounce the soul?



Lucien
   









So will I compass thine altar, O Lord: That I may publish with the voice of Thanksgiving.








     Thine altar is to me this bathtub
     where my four-year-old twin
     girls tip back their heads.
     They close their eyes.
     I read their faces from above,
     in trust and fear, in holiness,
     has touched their hairlines, cautious.
     Look: their hair flows underwater
     like the scrolls unfurled in heaven.































Psalm 26
Translation from the Greek by
  Brooks Haxton

Brooks Haxton
Uproar
  Antiphonies to Psalms
  "Scrolls"
op. cit.

Alexander Agricola
1445 - 1506
Motet, Nobis Sancti Spiritus
San Francisco Chanticleer
Chanticleer Records, 1993©





2 comments:

  1. Lucien to Laurent - In my simple mind the best answer to your prose of the renouncing of the soul

    There can be only one permanent revolution — a moral one; the regeneration of the inner man. - Tolstoy

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have always been rather frightened by Tolstoy, as you can see why: sometimes, the balloon goes up. Thanks, Lucien, and a very big "ouch."

    ReplyDelete