Rememberance IIX

"Seeing this post/call for quoats of Thomas Merton gave meback a memory of the first time I cried in a zendo. That warm morning, as a fan was turned on to cool the room,( reminded of how he went ) I sobbed with thankfulness for being reminded of him there, for an invocation of his influence.

Turning to what he called "Antipoem I" I recalled his friend, Jacques Maritain, writing something about the power of a poem, or artwork, being in the prophetic relation to the destiny of the poet, or artist."

               Antipoem I

O the gentle fool 
He fell in love 
With the electric light 
Do you not know, fool, 
That love is dynamite?

Keep to what is yours 
Do not interfere 
With the established law 
See the dizzy victims of romance 
Unhappy moths! 
Please observe 
This ill-wondered troth.

All the authorities
In silence anywhere 
Swear you only love your mind
If you marry a hot wire.

Obstinate fool 
What future we face 
If one and all 
Follow your theology
You owe the human race 
An abject apology.

                                                -Thomas Merton ( '67 )

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Today, another poem of his. One from a year earlier.


            The Night of Destiny


In my ending is my meaning
Says the season.

No clock:
Only the heart's blood
Only the word.

O lamp
Weak friend
In the knowing night!

O tongue of flame
Under the heart
Speak softly:
For love is black
Says the season.

Red and sable letters
On the solemn page
Fill the small circle of seeing.

Long dark -
And the weak life
Of oil.

Who holds the homeless light secure
In the deep heart's room?

Midnight!
Kissed with flame!

See! See!
My love is darkness!

Only in the Void
Are all ways one:

Only in the night
Are all the lost
Found.

In my ending is my meaning.


                                                  - Thomas Merton



The phrase, The Night of Destiny, may have been a reference to the end of the fasting of Ramadan, a celebration of the penning of the Koran. Merton's official biographer, John Howard Griffin, saw "something of the Spirit of Christmas" in the poem, "...a feast when the heavens open and the 'Word' is heard on earth."

Come New Years Eve, this year, I hope to be with Fr. Richard Rohr, who was living in Merton's hermitage back in 1985, about the time I "first cried in a zendo".