Poetry

Lectionary Poetry – Pentecost (Year A)

 
 
Lectionary Poetry Pentecost

Each week we carefully curate a collection of  poems that resonate with the lectionary readings for that week (Narrative Lectionary and Revised Common Lectionary).
 
 

*** Narrative Lectionary ***

Lectionary Reading: Acts 2:1-4

 

*** Revised Common Lectionary ***

Lectionary Reading: Acts 2:1-21

 
 

 CLASSIC POEM:

As Kingfishers Catch Fire
Gerard Manley Hopkins

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

*** This poem is in the public domain,
  and may be read in a live-streamed worship service.

 
 
CONTEMPORARY POEM:

Veni Creator
Czeslaw Milosz

SNIPPET:

I am only a man: I need visible signs.
I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction.
Many a time I asked, you know it well, that the statue in church
lifts its hand, only once, just once, for me.

[ READ THE FULL POEM ]

 
 

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