Christ's Sorrow

by Dawn Pisturino

A Sonnet

I was not born for pleasure but for pain;

For blood and thorns and thirst beneath the sun;

And ev'ry man who doubts I am the One

Has lost the only treasure he could gain.

Blasted with hate, betrayed, and marked like Caine,

My fate was sealed; nor was there place to run.

Standing trial and defended by none,

The case was clear; acquittal was in vain.

You hung me high; you nailed me to the cross;

On either side, the outcasts hung with me.

O enemies mine, I died on that hill

With bitterest gall; but mourn not my loss:

You have helped fulfill my great destiny.

My pain is this:--You do not love me still.

September 16, 1986

Won Honorable Mention in New Golden Poetry Contest, World of Poetry. Published in New American Poetry Anthology, 1988. Won 1988 GOLDEN POET AWARD.

Copyright 2012 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.

HAPPY EASTER 2012!

Strings in the Earth and Air

by James Joyce

Strings in the earth and air

Make music sweet;

Strings by the river where

The willows meet.

There's music along the river

For Love wanders there,

Pale flowers on his mantle,

Dark leaves on his hair.

All softly playing,

With head to the music bent,

And fingers straying

Upon an instrument.

1907, from his collection, Chamber Music

BIO:  James Joyce (1882-1941) is best known for his unique use of language in such works as Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922), and Finnegan's Wake (1939).  He pioneered the "stream of consciousness" movement which influenced such prodigious authors as William Faulkner and Joyce Carol Oates.

Sunlight

by Seamus Heaney

from "Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication"

for Marie Heaney

There was a sunlit absence.

The helmeted pump in the yard

heated its iron,

water honeyed

in the slung bucket

and the sun stood

like a griddle cooling

against the wall

of each long afternoon.

So, her hands scuffed

over the bakeboard,

the reddening stove

sent its plaque of heat

against her where she stood

in a floury apron

by the window.

Now she dusts the board

with a goose's wing,

now sits, broad-lapped,

with whitened nails,

and measling shins:

here is a space

again, the scone rising

to the tick of two clocks.

And here is love

like a tinsmith's scoop

sunk past its gleam

in the metal-bin.

From Selected Poems 1965-1975, published by Faber and Faber

BIO: Seamus Heaney was born in 1939 in County Derry, Northern Ireland. Considered a major modern poet, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!

Lament of the Irish Maiden

by Denny Lane

On Carrigdhoun the heath is brown,

The clouds are dark o'er Ardnalee,

And many a stream comes rushing down

To swell the angry Ownabwee;

The moaning blast is sweeping fast

Through many a leafless tree,

And I'm alone, for he is gone,

My hawk has flown, ochone, machree!

The heath was green on Carrigdhoun,

Bright shone the sun on Ardnalee,

The dark green trees bent trembling down

To kiss the slumbering Ownabwee;

That happy day, 'twas but last May,

'Tis like a dream to me,

When Donnell swore, ay, o'er and o'er,

We'd part no more, astor machree!

Soft April showers and bright May flowers

Will bring the summer back again,

But will they bring me back the hours

I spent with my brave Donnell then?

'Tis but a chance, for he's gone to France,

To wear the fleur-de-lys;

But I'll follow you my Donnell Dhu,

For still I'm true to you, machree.

BIO:  Denny Lane (1818-1895) was a member of the revolutionary Young Ireland Party which actively sought Ireland's freedom from British rule. He spent four months in prison after the 1848 uprising.

Dedication:  To honor my ancestors, John and Sarah McInally, who emigrated to Ile-du-Grand Calumet, Quebec, Canada from Northern Ireland in 1781. Some of their descendants later emigrated to the United States.

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!