O Magnum Mysterium

Today my wife asked me to translate the Latin from a song she's singing with Martha Sargent's Christmas Chorus. This was the "O Magnum Mysterium" text from the responsorial chant of the Catholic liturgy. As I did so, it made me miss that time when I was more immersed in reading Latin. I find the language both an intellectual puzzle and provocatively mysterious. So I decided to expand / adapt my translation of the text into a sonnet.

I composed my sonnet version while listening to this very moving contemporary musical setting of the text by Morten Lauridsen. Enjoy.



O Magnum Mysterium
by Gideon Burton
after the responsorial chant

So suddenly in sacramental awe,
in marveling, in mystery, in grace
as plain as bleating animals that saw
the birthing virgin, sweaty in her face,
another burdened woman made divine
in suffering and blood, in sacred price.
Eternity, enwombed in mortal time,
in labor to deliver sacrifice,
how like thy mother, present to the pain
and fear, uncertain of the body’s bounds.
Can wearied, shaking flesh at last contain
infinities of yearning, sounding sound?
     As mute as night, I stand among the beasts;
     My God, my Christ, my child, my friend, my priest.


O Magnum Mysterium

O magnum mysterium et admirabile sacramentum,
ut animalia viderent Dominum natum jacentem in praesepio.
O beata Virgo, cuius viscera meruerunt portare christum Dominum.
Domine, audivi auditum tuum et timui; consideravi opera tua,
et expavi: in medio duorum animalium

Post Percussion

Attended a drum concert tonight with two of my sons. It was both very primitive and very civilized. Mesmerizing.

Post Percussion
by Gideon Burton

A phantom hammering, the drumskin white,
residual with heat. The stinging palms,
blood bright. The ringing ears, the sweaty bright
persistence in the air, though resting calm.
The clap and shimmer, mallet, cymbal, bell.
The evening evened, cadenced into time.

Hot tides of sound that burst, recede, and swell.

The clack and friction buzzing up the spine.

One hears the drumming, then one is the drum.

One feels the rush, the rhythm's breaking crunch,
the muscled snap, the surfaces that hum
and shake, compressions tight or loosely bunched.
     So primitive, to beat and bob the head.
     So primal, thunder raised to free the dead.

Photo: flickr - Miguel Sánchz

Good Chemistry

After hearing today about some friends divorcing, I felt another one of those waves of gratitude for having a sound marriage. Thanks, Karen.

Good Chemistry
by Gideon Burton

They see you need some chemistry; as though
cologne adds zesty charm when on a date.
That's not the sort required in a mate,
not spritzer pepping up a rosy glow.
Ammonia for starters, so the flow
of ever-fresh forgiveness won't abate.
Plus milder solvents, suds to soften late
apologies, or balm to soften blows.
The chemistry is deeper, though, below
the skin and tissue, in the blood and bone,
the neurons trained to feel and to forgive.
Our bond is not with words; it's something stowed
in genes, the primal code. Our love is sewn
like atoms stitched to structure all that lives.

Infinite

Infinite
by Gideon Burton

The infinite. How can we think this through?
What traction tracks eternities for us,
the moths of six or seven breaths for whom
an errant breeze returns us to the dust?
What frame for the unframed when all
we have are thin durations, end-to-end,
extrapolating endlessness from small
extensions, mathematics crudely bent.
The best we have are repetitions, paced
in spiral iterations and the arts
of ignorance and hope: the past replaced
implies a future as a whole's implied by parts.
     And yet, I stay more certain of forever;
     the rest remains, though I change like the weather.

Photo: flickr - caese

Gratitude

Gratitude
by Gideon Burton

As though it were a platitude, abstract,
a homily, a pleasantry, or thought,
commodified into a thing that's bought
or traded, something needed to transact
one's business, lubricant for social tact.
Perhaps, to some degree. Yet I am caught
within a web of wonder: moments fraught
with suns and thunder, atoms coiled and cracked
as moonlit evenings open their array
of silent supernovas mutely splayed.
In gratitude I find that ballast scope
that centers me in patient, latent hope.
In gaping thanks, routine as meals or sleep,
I'm safe from depths in fathoms brightly deep.

Photo: flickr - jmtimages

Fall

I ask my students to write sonnets. This is one of those. Thanks for letting me post it here, Taylor. This is her photo, too.

Fall
by Taylor McComb

The sky above my head has grown profound
For Fall is framed in varied shades of grey.
The time it spends here rivals time away,
And only cold is sharper than the sound
Of beating wings, and leaves churning about.
But dappled ground will give to frosty slate
And all the beauty heretofore I’d hate
Will quickly turn on heel and hurry out.
The taste of autumn on my lips will fade
Misfortunately settling in will be
My hunger for it, searching for the key
To lock out ache of winter in the shade.
     My yearning for a season like my home
     May ask too much for one who likes to roam.

Thought's Bodies

Thought's Bodies
by Gideon Burton

Due diligence: do diligence toward
electrons and to ink; to paper's fiber,
to hyperlinks, to images, and wider.
Be generous to weigh each way's rewards.
As words engraved teach what each word affords,
or fluid speech can teach agility--
so, find in writing writing's true ability:
how pen or keyboard mock the might of swords.
The pace of thought is metered to the means:
whatever matter mediates the flow
predominates in shaping one's intent.
Impossible to one way (so it seams)
comes clear in a translation that's more slow,
transforms as it is spoken, written, sent.

Photo: flickr - boadiceafairy

Still Life: Woman and Blue Marble

I came across this photo posted by Douglas Wheelock, one of the NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station. He took this of a crew member,  Tracy Caldwell-Dyson, who returned to Earth after six months in space in September, 2010.

Image: Astro_Wheels via twitpic

Still Life: Woman and Blue Marble
by Gideon Burton

She'd walked in space, an engineer, afloat
above the metal pods and trusses, far
above the humid atmosphere, thin moat
of air dividing most of us from stars.
How easy to recede into the black,
that deep-dark silent cold beyond outside
where gamma rays and meteors attack,
and yet, like gods, the astro-sailors glide.
As though upon a river bank she lay,
unhurried by the passing of the day,
content to hear what stream or sky might say,
she followed drifting clouds where they might stray.
     Be still as she, absorb the poetry;
     and with her walk in space and sky and sea.

Invited

Invited
by Gideon Burton
after George Herbert's "Love (3)"

As though a host who welcomed me to eat:
"Come in," he said, yet all my dust and sin
prevented me. He saw me balk, retreat,
then kindly asked just where he could begin
to help. "I am unworthy. Let me be."
"Let me be judge; I've set for thee this place."
"How can I? I'm unfit to look on thee."
"Who made those eyes? There's no disgrace."
"Except what I have done to mar my fate."
"But I have sounded fate, confounded hell.
The way is hard, but near. It's not too late."
"Then let me serve," I said. "I would serve well."
     "Sit down," he said, "for I have born the blame."
     I sat, I ate, in grace to know his name.

Photo: flickr - Sifu Renka

Love (3)
by George Herbert

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
       Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
       From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
       If I lack'd anything.

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
       Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
       I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
       "Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
       Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
       "My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
       So I did sit and eat.

Autumn Sky

Autumn Sky
by Gideon Burton

The celibacy of the autumn sky
recedes so easily with nudging hues,
with tissued wisps of clouds that downward fly
across the fading azure, darkened blues.
The night is coming, wet against the leaves
that paste the windows and the quiet streets.
It is already nesting under eaves
and through the fields of corn and ripened wheat.
I must preserve my vows to know this chill,
to blend my hair with breezes as I walk
along the lake, to let the season spill
its ambers and its skies of winging flocks.
     Above, the shadows germinate and grow,
     and swelling stars pour smoky light below.

Photo: flickr - spodzone