Surely somewhere I have never been—
surely you are there.
That’s why I have never found you, then,
only looking where
I’ve known.

All I think and feel and do and say
I would offer you.
Silent in the ordinary day,
you have left me too
alone.

Since, O God, you will not show yourself
on well-trodden ways,
I’ll escape the turmoil of myself,
all my wheeling days
to see.

I will go out to a desert place
like the saints of old.
Surely, surely there I’ll see your face.
What will you unfold
to me?

Yet I fear before I even go:
You love not the sands
nor the way the long siroccos blow
there across your hands
for this,

not the mountains or the chasms deep,
not for what they teach.
That’s not why you will forever keep
safely in your reach
their bliss.

No, but that they are, that we all are,
creatures of your make.
With me no less than you’re with a star,
now you bid me take
my part.

I must find you in me, for the storms
stirring desert sands
blow in me where chaos yet transforms
what lies in your hands:
my heart.

The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world By The Central Intelligence Agency – The World Factbook – Algeria, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29196928

Then he said to his servants, ‘The feast is ready,
but those who were invited were not worthy to come. 
Go out, therefore, into the main roads
and invite to the feast whomever you find.’
The servants went out into the streets
and gathered all they found, bad and good alike,
and the hall was filled with guests. 
—Matthew 22:1-14

The feast is standing ready;
the doors are open wide.
The groom awaits his wedding,
but where now is the bride?

She’s fled across the wide earth,
as scattered as her heart,
but he will go to find her
and gather every part.

This promise he has spoken:
to leave no stone unturned
nor any wall unbroken
until the bride’s returned,

until upon his shoulder
she’s borne into the feast,
until his arms enfold her,
her greatest and her least.

Then call us from the highways,
from leagues of dust and mud,
and from the lonely byways
into your house, O God.

Dress us in robes of justice
(we have none of our own)
to celebrate your nuptials
and stand before your throne.

Make us, oh, make us worthy
and welcome us inside.
Your heaven weds our earth here,
and we shall be your bride.

The meal on a sabbath day at the house of a Pharisee, Brunswick Monogrammist (fl. between 1525 and 1545) Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweiger Monogrammist, das Große Gastmahl, Photo By Dguendel – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=116821411

As known and shocking as the day in fall
when sunlight casts pure color on the wall
through window prisms—as if the year wheels round
so crystals can throw rainbows on the ground—
the ordinary miracles come back.
Orion sinks each autumn on his track;
somewhere (not here) the leaves are turning red,
but I have seen them once.  They fill my head:
I watch them changing with an inner eye
while outwardly great crowds of grackles fly.
The day grows short; the night throws out its arms
to show us all the wonder of its charms,
for every season bears with it such balms,
each hour unfolding its accustomed psalms,
calling the pilgrim passing on the way
to mark the blessing of each passing day
before it flies.  Yes, we are passing, too,
where mercy every moment is made new.

Sunlight spectrum produced by the prism. By Maxim Bilovitskiy – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44968434

Two gringos walk into the Spanish Mass,
having missed the English earlier that day.
Blonde heads among the darker tresses pass
to find a pew, slide in, and kneel and pray.
My Spanish is the kind that orders tacos.
Es muy mal, I say—it’s not the best,
but I can hear the angels sing their Santos,
repeat Te alabamos with the rest.

And every moment, Christe, Kyrie
eleison.  O Mercy, draw us close
around the altar of your mystery.
Bring us all in and listen to us pray
in Agnus Dei, Cordero de Dios.
May we all sing it in eternity.
Amen.

Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, with gushing blood, detail of the Ghent Altarpiece, Jan van Eyck, c. 1432, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=691803

Let me now sing of my friend,
my friend’s song concerning his vineyard.
My friend had a vineyard
on a fertile hillside;
he spaded it, cleared it of stones,
and planted the choicest vines;
within it he built a watchtower,
and hewed out a wine press.
Then he looked for the crop of grapes,
but what it yielded was wild grapes.
—Isaiah 5:1-7

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Another meager harvest
is stunted on the vine.
This year was not the harshest,
yet there will be no wine.

And you who tend the vineyard,
now do you count the cost?
Another vintage hindered,
another harvest lost.

Next year it will be better.
Next year, oh, wait and see—
We said the same thing last year,
and nothing came to be.

What promise could we give you?
Nothing, nothing at all.
How could we stand forgiven?
How could our leaves not fall?

Our hearts cry, turning inward;
we lift our empty hands:
Do not destroy your vineyard!
Give us another chance!

Another year of mercy,
of rain upon the vine:
Be patient with your servants
to make us yet your wine.  Amen.

The Red Vineyard at Arles, By Vincent van Gogh – Pushkin Museum, Moscow, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70563335

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Recording everything, each jot and tittle,
I tot up all the sums of what I’m owed.
Leave nothing out: No figure is too little
to remember, every slight a stinging goad.
And yet each day do I repeat this prayer:
“I cannot pay you back.  Forbear, forbear.”

So I forgive but never have forgotten
how much I must forgive day after day,
how many unmet insults and how often,
how many things I could—but do not—say,
how many wounds and how to pay them back.
I keep all these things, always keeping track.

So long as sun and moon run in their courses,
shall these be written down in fadeless ink?
My memory is not so long as yours is,
its pages filled already to the brink
with numbers that I wish I could forget:
the zeros of my ever-growing debt.

And yet, of course, I count myself your pledger.
Then you, in mercy, offer me this gift:
to let the flame of love consume my ledger
upon your altar.  Let the ashes lift.
O Mercy, let the smoke rise to your throne,
Let me remember you, and you alone.

Thomas Edison’s New York City Recording Studio Cash Book 01 (of 21), Image 08 (of 41). Thomas Edison’s New York City Recording Studio Cash Book 01 (of 21), Image 08 (of 41). (Notebook #: PN-04-04-11, NPS catalog #: EDIS 1412). This book documents expenditures for recording artist fees and other payments authorized by studio manager Walter H. Miller from April 11, 1904 – December 10, 1904. Digitally scanned December 2004 through July 2005 at resolution 300 dpi, 24 bit. Some of the markings made in pencil in these cash books were made by ENHS Curator Leah Burt during the 1970s and/or early 1980s. For Leah Burt handwriting examples see pages for: December 19, 1921 (cash book 17) ; February 12, 1923 (cash book 17) ; October 27, 1924 (cash book 18) ; December 01, 1925 (cash book 19). Keywords: Phonograph; Recording Studio; Thomas Edison; Cash book; Financial record By Thomas Edison National Historical Park – NPGallery, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=105803931

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You know the nothing I have always been,
yet all I am I offer here to you,
an emptiness to lay your mercy in.
Purge it, O God, of all that is not true.

How hot the flame, how long to soften there—
I speak not of the searing off of dross
but that the burning is another prayer,
the melting and the loss of shape, the loss 

of all that I believed myself to be.
It never was, and I must let it pass
and learn to know the dust—learn to know me—
until the grains melt down and turn to glass.

Oh, breathe your spirit into dust aflame;
enlarge the space in me, as you have willed,
and set your presence there as in a frame,
that now my zero is a circle filled.

And let me still be nothing even now.
If any look on me, let them see you—
eternity or bread or both somehow—
then I at last, O God, will be all true.

Glass blower, from the manuscript De Universo or “De rerum naturis”, Monte Cassino MS Casin 132 By unknown artist, circa 1022-1032, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=162955592

Jesus said to the chief priests and elders of the people:
“What is your opinion?
A man had two sons.
He came to the first and said,
‘Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.’
He said in reply, ‘I will not,’
but afterwards changed his mind and went.
—Matthew 21:28-32

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I told you no, and still you wait
as if I’ll change my mind,
as if you’d let me come in late,
as if the world were kind.

But in my heart I long to go
though all things tell me, “Stay.”
Your vineyard waits for me, I know,
but it is far away.

What is the hour you shut the gate
and seal the guardian wall?
If I should come, it will be late—
if I should come at all.

And yet the vineyard calls, it calls
in words I can’t define
of peace as evening shadow falls
and feast in every vine.

Then if I come, if I should come
that harvest to begin—
not to do all but, maybe, some—
oh, will you let me in?

Lord, you have waited all this while—
will you be waiting still?
I come but slowly, mile by mile.
I come to do your will.

Vincent van Gogh – Vineyards at Auvers (1890) – Saint Louis Art Museum, online collection, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80071688

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The wine recalls the summer of the grape:
the rains that fall, the angle of the light
upon the leaves, the trellis where they drape
themselves, catching the breeze just right
to make the shadows flutter over the fruit
and let the sunlight pierce the cooler gloom
beneath the vines, warming the earthbound root
that drinks the rain. We are what we consume.

The grape is rain, and it is summer sun;
then may I be croissants and strong black tea.
They make the jeweled wine when summer’s done;
I don’t know what on earth they’ll make of me,
for I am growing still. Though I have fed
on fiercer things, yet let me now be pleased
to live by breaking nothing but the bread.
When I am reaped, then, may I be a feast.

No more the howling wind, the sting of snow,
and in my mouth the burning of the ice.
I have fed long on it, but let it go,
the fearsome heart, the anger of its cries,
that I be breakfast in a coffee shop
at a table near the window, in the sun,
a fresh croissant, a comfortable cup,
peace in the tea leaves and in the day begun.

Though I have known the wonder of the wine,
I am not that. I only ask for peace.
There on the table I will lay what’s mine.
Let us break bread, and let the winter cease.

Mary Cassatt – La Tasse de thé – Livre Un regard transatlantique : la collection d’art américain de Daniel J. Terra, Paris : Éditions Adam Biro, 2002. ISBN 9782876603479, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8230903

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You say, I’ll bring you back to your own land,
the land I brought your parents to long since.
Then when before your awful throne I stand,
and shield my face from glory’s light, and wince
from that unclouded sky no rain shall rinse,
I’ll be in Texas, on the hard-baked clay
enduring, by your grace, that endless day.

If it shall be in heaven as on earth,
on earth as ‘tis in heaven, I shall burn
beneath this washed-out sky’s unstinting mirth,
eternal summer—this? for this we yearn?—
there where the winter’s cold shall not return.
And certainly love’s burning must be fierce,
my livid granite heart to warm and pierce.

Lord, living here has meant becoming tough,
but when new heavens and new earth shall be,
then make me new—I’m of the selfsame stuff.
Give me a heart of flesh and eyes to see.
Make living waters rise, O God, in me
so I’ll be green as spring in summer’s light
and cool as rain while I am burning bright.  Amen.

A hole in [the photographer’s] backyard caused by the soil contracting due to lack of water. This photo was taken on March 25, 2013 near Corpus Christi, TX. By XndrK – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25274921