The Invisible God
Poems for Devotions
John J. Brugaletta
The Invisible God
Poems for Devotions
Copyright © 2017 John J. Brugaletta. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
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199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
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paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-1848-2
hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-4408-4
ebook isbn: 978-1-4982-4407-7
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
For the Reverend Canon Mark Shier
“He is the image of the invisible God,” Colossians 1:15
Acknowledgments
The poems listed below were previously published in the
journals indicated, sometimes in a slightly different form.
A Civil Reply to Screwtape The Lamp-Post
Ballade of the Hanged Men TRINACRIA
Church Time of Singing
Consummations Blue Unicorn
Hope Blue Unicorn
No Breaking Branch The Lyric
Sun Blue Unicorn
The Speed of Light Chronicles
Three Translations from Dante South Coast Poetry Journal
1. Quests
"Seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you."
Luke 11:9
"Without the quest, there can be no epiphany."
Constantine E. Scaros
THE BLIND ONES
If the bard in the Odyssey is a clue,
Homer himself was blind
but saw so clearly the Achaean ships,
the spears apparently slow in gutting a man,
the effete Trojans at their tower,
that we see them through his absent eyes.
Tiresias too, perhaps more than a fiction,
saw more than the sighted,
the running sore hidden at the heart
of Thebes, the parricide, the incest
to which others were blind until
the blindest of them all tore out his eyes
so he would see no more his offenses,
and then finally saw most truly of all.
Milton certainly, Paul as well.
And so we close our eyes to kiss,
and when we savor some delicious food,
and when we sleep to dream, perhaps of You,
and when we speak to You in darkness,
hands shielding our eyes, blinded for minutes,
hoping to catch a glimpse of You.
A CIVIL REPLY TO SCREWTAPE
“[God] has made change pleasurable to them. . . .
But since He does not wish them to make change. . .
an end in itself, He has balanced the love of change
in them by a love of permanence.”
The Screwtape Letters
I love a change of pace, a change of scene,
But when I’ve lost my way among the new,
I find the same old thing makes me serene.
A flat stability is much too clean;
I long to rove, to taste, to live askew
And love the change of pace, the change of scene.
But then adventure soon becomes obscene;
I trade the seascape for my kitchen’s view,
Because the same old thing makes me serene.
You demons bait your hook with flash and sheen,
And scheme to net and land and kill us through
Our love for change of pace, for change of scene.
But heaven’s planted here a sweet routine
Of table, of our bed, and of a pew.
We know these same old things make us serene.
Our saving grace is that we live between
Those ancient trees and these that lately grew.
We love a change of pace, a change of scene,
But only in the old are we serene.
LITTLE FLAME
Here I tend on bended knee
This uncertain tiny light,
Coaxing it with twigs and breath
Till it shatter cold and night.
Should it grow so I can see
Where to walk and where to rest,
I may sweep and order here
For the coming of our Guest.
I had sensed the pits and bones;
Firelight tells me nothing new,
Only steeping my shut eyes
In the miserably true.
If this little flame will grow,
He may come to grace my day,
So the breath that helps it climb
Blows in words with which I pray.
QUEST OF THE MAGI
Nothing is true below the moon;
Only the stars are wise.
That's why we blink at things of earth,
Searching the steadfast skies.
Once we'd observed the rising star,
Each from his proper land,
Three of us took a mount and food,
Met as if all were planned.
On went the star, and we went on
Following where it led.
Give no belief to those who say
Truth will elude the head.
We had no sense where God's Son lay;