Sometimes I see a man, I see a woman,
I see a girl, I see a boy,
Who stop me like the end of a long search.
They make me hushed.
It always is their faces.
Their faces have an aureole of light
That brings new silent mornings
To the dark and parched arroyos
Of my heart.
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
New Poems
OBSESSION
Long, long he hunted
For the myth-inspiring tiger.
Endlessly he trod
The forest’s deathful haunts.
Far past the chasm
And the uttermost abyss
He tracked the footprints
And he did not weary.
Always he hoped,
Always he whispered,
“Tomorrow".
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
YOUR YESTERDAYS OF JOY ARE PAST
Your yesterdays of joy are past
And brief is your tomorrow;
The cloud is poised above your head,
A harbinger of sorrow.
Love will not walk the empty house
Where death has placed its silence;
Doomed is the heart that nurses grief
Or dares to show defiance.
Forget if you would ease your fate,
Forget and do not wonder;
Wiser than you and not so wise
Have torn their hearts asunder.
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
STILL LIFE
Place on my shield-large platter
Glazed grey-mauve,
Lemons large pored,
Intensely yellow;
Oranges
With peel-indented
Longftudinals
And navels honeycombed;
Clusters of riber grapes,
Their frog-egg-green interiors
And acrid seeds
Skinned in black purple;
Eggplants with sage-green glaciers
At their caps;
Shining Wenatchee apples
The stems poled straight
From dark-welled holes
Buckled symmetrical
Around their standing ends;
Burgundy-sided bartletts,
Anjou pears of jade.
Set them upon the table
Where the window opens out
To the trees,
To the lake,
To the snow-capped eastern pinnacles.
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
SEATTLE MORNING
A mist of verdigris
Monets the day.
Through crystal grills
Of angled-summer rain
The pond bridge disappears
at half its span.
The water has no shores.
An intimated patina of sun
Glazes the shimmering trees.
What new harmonics
Of reflected light
Dissolves the stale landscapes
of my mind,
Makes supple its fixed gazes
And empowers my eyes
To reperceive
The structures of the world!
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
CREATING SPIRIT
Creating Spirit and my Origin,
Who, Through my earthly father’s
And my mother’s
Coupling,
Enfleshed me,
Who, Through their own desire,
Desire born of your engendering,
Brought me to life,
You Come to me in infinite disguises:
In cells’ divisions and in comets’ dives,
In leaping whales and in magma flows,
In Brahms’ concertos and in Buddha’s peace,
In suffering organs where a cancer grows,
In my lungs’ breathing and my prayers of thanks.
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
PRAYER
Lord of the Unforgotten, have mercy on five kinds:
The signtless sailor telling of piloting ships;
Willowy girls in sanitaria
Tracing designs on tables with their fingertips;
A Navajo busboy gathering caked plates,
Singing of rain-gods to a heartsick tune;
Widows lying afraid in lonely rooms;
A child trying to catch the enormous moon.
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
COME TO ME
I send an unceasing invitation:
Come to me for love.
I make an unending imploring:
Come to me with love.
Had you receptors
For my frequencies,
They would invade your soul
Almost unbearably.
With waning hope
From my lone mountain top
I transmit unremitting signals
To your inner galaxies.
Day after unrequited day,
Year after year unanswered,
Nothing returns.
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
THE POET TO HIS READER
Interpret my words.
My words interpret you.
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
HOW STRANGE, 0 GOD
How strange, 0 God, I am because of Thee!
But, stranger still, Thou art because of me!
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
MOZART AND THE PHILISTINES
He spread the netting of his ear
Around the gliding school of notes
Cascading from the coitus
Of throbbing instruments and throats,
And drew the sea so harkendly
It seemed to them that there
Was nothing but the emptiness
Of silent, sterile air.
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
AT MONO LAKE IN IN THE HIGH SIERRAS
What made you shudder
When the sun went dead
Eclipsed by the bird-cloud overhead?
Did the phalaropes and grebes
On the tufa towers
Recalibrate your mind?
Did the broken chick shells of the gulls
On Negit Island give you any clues?
Did the brine-fly waters mirrors back to you
Presences that you had not dared imagine?
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
SUSAN, O SUSAN
Walking at dusk on Druid Hill Avenue
Susan Ann Newcomb, Baltimore bred
Rotates her sound-locator head.
It is the head of the sensitive deer
When the wind-wisps of presences not in view
Poise her for flight when come they do.
Susan, O Susan, O Susan, beware
Of the basilar twitchings in your ear!
They record the impalpable swelling flood
In a menacing blockful of skum-buckets' blood
And the gathering crisis for maidenhood
In the bowels of this crack-crazed neighborhood.
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
MY LOVE IS LIKE THE FALLEN LEAF
My love is like the fallen leaf
Upon the grass.
Unknown, undreamt of by the world,
My love will pass.
My love is like the gentian wild,
Which few have seen.
Alone and still and beautiful
Amidst the green.
My love is like the smallest tree
Within a wood.
My love is loveliness itself
And all things good.
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
Long, long he hunted
For the myth-inspiring tiger.
Endlessly he trod
The forest’s deathful haunts.
Far past the chasm
And the uttermost abyss
He tracked the footprints
And he did not weary.
Always he hoped,
Always he whispered,
“Tomorrow".
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
YOUR YESTERDAYS OF JOY ARE PAST
Your yesterdays of joy are past
And brief is your tomorrow;
The cloud is poised above your head,
A harbinger of sorrow.
Love will not walk the empty house
Where death has placed its silence;
Doomed is the heart that nurses grief
Or dares to show defiance.
Forget if you would ease your fate,
Forget and do not wonder;
Wiser than you and not so wise
Have torn their hearts asunder.
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
STILL LIFE
Place on my shield-large platter
Glazed grey-mauve,
Lemons large pored,
Intensely yellow;
Oranges
With peel-indented
Longftudinals
And navels honeycombed;
Clusters of riber grapes,
Their frog-egg-green interiors
And acrid seeds
Skinned in black purple;
Eggplants with sage-green glaciers
At their caps;
Shining Wenatchee apples
The stems poled straight
From dark-welled holes
Buckled symmetrical
Around their standing ends;
Burgundy-sided bartletts,
Anjou pears of jade.
Set them upon the table
Where the window opens out
To the trees,
To the lake,
To the snow-capped eastern pinnacles.
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
SEATTLE MORNING
A mist of verdigris
Monets the day.
Through crystal grills
Of angled-summer rain
The pond bridge disappears
at half its span.
The water has no shores.
An intimated patina of sun
Glazes the shimmering trees.
What new harmonics
Of reflected light
Dissolves the stale landscapes
of my mind,
Makes supple its fixed gazes
And empowers my eyes
To reperceive
The structures of the world!
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
CREATING SPIRIT
Creating Spirit and my Origin,
Who, Through my earthly father’s
And my mother’s
Coupling,
Enfleshed me,
Who, Through their own desire,
Desire born of your engendering,
Brought me to life,
You Come to me in infinite disguises:
In cells’ divisions and in comets’ dives,
In leaping whales and in magma flows,
In Brahms’ concertos and in Buddha’s peace,
In suffering organs where a cancer grows,
In my lungs’ breathing and my prayers of thanks.
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
PRAYER
Lord of the Unforgotten, have mercy on five kinds:
The signtless sailor telling of piloting ships;
Willowy girls in sanitaria
Tracing designs on tables with their fingertips;
A Navajo busboy gathering caked plates,
Singing of rain-gods to a heartsick tune;
Widows lying afraid in lonely rooms;
A child trying to catch the enormous moon.
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
COME TO ME
I send an unceasing invitation:
Come to me for love.
I make an unending imploring:
Come to me with love.
Had you receptors
For my frequencies,
They would invade your soul
Almost unbearably.
With waning hope
From my lone mountain top
I transmit unremitting signals
To your inner galaxies.
Day after unrequited day,
Year after year unanswered,
Nothing returns.
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
THE POET TO HIS READER
Interpret my words.
My words interpret you.
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
HOW STRANGE, 0 GOD
How strange, 0 God, I am because of Thee!
But, stranger still, Thou art because of me!
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
MOZART AND THE PHILISTINES
He spread the netting of his ear
Around the gliding school of notes
Cascading from the coitus
Of throbbing instruments and throats,
And drew the sea so harkendly
It seemed to them that there
Was nothing but the emptiness
Of silent, sterile air.
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
AT MONO LAKE IN IN THE HIGH SIERRAS
What made you shudder
When the sun went dead
Eclipsed by the bird-cloud overhead?
Did the phalaropes and grebes
On the tufa towers
Recalibrate your mind?
Did the broken chick shells of the gulls
On Negit Island give you any clues?
Did the brine-fly waters mirrors back to you
Presences that you had not dared imagine?
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
SUSAN, O SUSAN
Walking at dusk on Druid Hill Avenue
Susan Ann Newcomb, Baltimore bred
Rotates her sound-locator head.
It is the head of the sensitive deer
When the wind-wisps of presences not in view
Poise her for flight when come they do.
Susan, O Susan, O Susan, beware
Of the basilar twitchings in your ear!
They record the impalpable swelling flood
In a menacing blockful of skum-buckets' blood
And the gathering crisis for maidenhood
In the bowels of this crack-crazed neighborhood.
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
MY LOVE IS LIKE THE FALLEN LEAF
My love is like the fallen leaf
Upon the grass.
Unknown, undreamt of by the world,
My love will pass.
My love is like the gentian wild,
Which few have seen.
Alone and still and beautiful
Amidst the green.
My love is like the smallest tree
Within a wood.
My love is loveliness itself
And all things good.
Copyright 2008 © George Edward McDonough. All rights reserved.
Prelude
In this memorable collection of poetry George Edward McDonough speaks about his faith and his lack of faith, about his certainties and his lack of certainties, about his maddening despair and his joyful gratitude for life in all its manifestations. His words are not a theological discourse nor a sectarian argument, not an attempt to convert or proselytize, but a deeply personal expression of his own individuality. He opens the door to himself, and in his utterances both he and his readers find a home.
McDonough's poems allow one to let go, to relinquish oneself to what is beyond the self. He reaches out for the divine presence while simultaneously reflecting the changing moods that condition him. It is certain that many individuals will identify with him and feel their own lives enhanced.
Each poem can be understood in context, and there is more than one. The first context is his own life and culture, which may require at least some study and reflection to grasp. Another context is the tradition and heritage through which he voices his universal humanity. The third emerges when the reader interacts with the poem and transposes and adopts its expressions to his own existential situation. In regard to the convergence of vastly different contexts we may think of the distance between two horizons and the two becoming one.
An analogy illustrates the communion between the poet and those who encounter his work. An actor studies his role in order to duplicate another person, reincarnate another character on stage. He does more than mimic or memorize a part. He places his own gestures and actions at the service of his role. He mobilizes talents of imagination and concentration to embody the role with all the strong and subtle, tender and violent emotions of that character. On stage the actor aims for a credible replica of another person.
This illustrated what happens when we seriously participate in McDonough's poems. The aim of attending to the texts is to make them at home in our own context. Thus we can use them to understand ourselves, to articulate our own experience. A transaction takes place when the poet's sentiment and expression are translated into our own heart, and ultimately the poet's experience becomes the vicarious experience of one who often lives distant in time and space. The effect is a happy one: our horizons are broadened; a more profound and richer insight is achieved.
Many of George Edward McDonough's admirers find that the deep sentiments of his serious poetry apply to their situation. The threat of death is no stranger to us; and its allies come in manifold forms: Loneliness, political enemies, unfairness, sickness, psychological depression, advanced years, fears. This panorama of suffering belongs to all of us, even though one may feel chronically alone in his or her own personal suffering. The drama which the poems in his book play out is real and applicable to our lives. We can impress them with the tone of our own voice, the waves of our own emotion. But at the same time the poems mould us and become our own. Ultimately, it is a question of letting the spirit of the poet invade our spirit.
Very Rev. Konrad Schaefer, O. S. B.
Prior of the Benedictine Monastery
Guernavaca. Mexico
McDonough's poems allow one to let go, to relinquish oneself to what is beyond the self. He reaches out for the divine presence while simultaneously reflecting the changing moods that condition him. It is certain that many individuals will identify with him and feel their own lives enhanced.
Each poem can be understood in context, and there is more than one. The first context is his own life and culture, which may require at least some study and reflection to grasp. Another context is the tradition and heritage through which he voices his universal humanity. The third emerges when the reader interacts with the poem and transposes and adopts its expressions to his own existential situation. In regard to the convergence of vastly different contexts we may think of the distance between two horizons and the two becoming one.
An analogy illustrates the communion between the poet and those who encounter his work. An actor studies his role in order to duplicate another person, reincarnate another character on stage. He does more than mimic or memorize a part. He places his own gestures and actions at the service of his role. He mobilizes talents of imagination and concentration to embody the role with all the strong and subtle, tender and violent emotions of that character. On stage the actor aims for a credible replica of another person.
This illustrated what happens when we seriously participate in McDonough's poems. The aim of attending to the texts is to make them at home in our own context. Thus we can use them to understand ourselves, to articulate our own experience. A transaction takes place when the poet's sentiment and expression are translated into our own heart, and ultimately the poet's experience becomes the vicarious experience of one who often lives distant in time and space. The effect is a happy one: our horizons are broadened; a more profound and richer insight is achieved.
Many of George Edward McDonough's admirers find that the deep sentiments of his serious poetry apply to their situation. The threat of death is no stranger to us; and its allies come in manifold forms: Loneliness, political enemies, unfairness, sickness, psychological depression, advanced years, fears. This panorama of suffering belongs to all of us, even though one may feel chronically alone in his or her own personal suffering. The drama which the poems in his book play out is real and applicable to our lives. We can impress them with the tone of our own voice, the waves of our own emotion. But at the same time the poems mould us and become our own. Ultimately, it is a question of letting the spirit of the poet invade our spirit.
Very Rev. Konrad Schaefer, O. S. B.
Prior of the Benedictine Monastery
Guernavaca. Mexico
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