Cassandra Voices

Tag: Haley Hodges poetry

  • Poetry: Haley Hodges

    The Sacred Mundane

    1

    We might say with confidence that the world
    is a lovely catastrophe—paradise
    buried in a rubbish heap; devilish, angelic,
    perishing, precious, priestly, proud;
    one home to the light that is oil and the water that
    is darkness,

    this poor dazzling Earth a jar cracking
    with the strain of their dueling dual containment,
    each repelling ceaselessly the other, each true and
    each toiling, warring for truest.

    Us? We sip from the strange chalice
    of these shocking simultaneities. The draught
    makes us dance, and weep, and worship
    and slay, and curse, and kiss, and pray.

    2

    This rainfall spends and spends itself
    on the ground that can only receive it,
    and my thoughts spent with it are hardly
    a poet’s thoughts – I wonder is there anything
    else like rain, and decide at last that nothing is,
    but the conclusion makes me think
    in this regard rain is like God, and have made
    myself a paradox.

    And then I think of your second name,
    a challenge, fierce in its declaration
    ‘Who is like God,’ and fiercer still
    in the silence that is the only true answer,
    and the rain falls steady with my unsteady
    thoughts; they are paired today in a dance
    strange and tuneless, and breaking
    over me like a jar of perfumed oil
    is the thought ‘I get to be here,’
    and the cosmic unfathomable voice
    of the rain says this also, and with
    the same measure of delight.

    3

    I passed the Dairy Corner on route 7–
    it was evening and a storm had
    begun in earnest and without apology,
    yet the Dairy Corner stood neon and unblinking,
    oblivious, resolute beneath relentless hammer blows
    of rain. I can’t say just why,
    but it warmed my soul to see the people
    (and these were not oblivious)
    huddled in a merry mass under the insufficient
    awning, drenched with their sundaes and cones,
    who–perhaps without even intending to–
    counted it all joy.

  • Poetry – Haley Hodges

    Make of me, too, a microcosm

    Make of me, too, a microcosm—
    Merger, marry, manifest
    As the bridegroom, as the stone-melted
    Heart. Move but do not remove me, for monsters
    Maraud in madness here, and we meet
    Mettle to mettle about the place. But you—
    Magnificent as mystery, as morning, you
    Are mooring the ship of me, mastering the maze
    Of my malaise to run like marrow through bronze
    Bones, an unmappable river overlapping the
    Mayhem. You mumble or hum of Spring-things,
    May-things made for me, mighty and bright
    As midnight meteor, final as eucatastrophe
    Mounting in stillness. You dip Ursa Major
    Into the pail with a wink milky as motherhood:
    Come meadow, come minnow, come maple
    And mink, come drink, (you say) come marvel!
    Our blue marble maiden—mess though she may be—
    Her majesty is mineral-deep! Minstrels sing it and mages
    Know it. Myriad music still marks her mind, her memory,
    Music of mending and meaning, naming and being—
    Music of mackerel meandering, matter and mass,
    Metaphysical music marching from moment to minute
    To minute and back in a palindrome line, meticulous
    And light as a match, hatchling fresh. You say much more,
    All unmeasurable, and to the unending moment of you I say:
    Make of me, too, a magic.