The cruelest month: Neither slumber nor sleep

For today in National Poetry Month, I was going to give you something by John Donne. Donne is easy to absorb as a teenager, which is when I became aware of him. He wrote both sacred and profane poetry. I was surprised at how, ah, earthy some of the latter were. (Well, I was kind of naïve in my teens.) But he was quite the Jack-the-lad before he became Dean of St. Paul’s.

Everyone—everyone knows his “No man is an island” (officially, “Meditation XVII” from Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, and maybe not even a poem in structure) and perhaps it might be therapeutic to put it here, since it’s good to be reminded that we’re all connected to events that take place far away from us. The incidents in Boston this week diminished us all—as do events in Iraq and Pakistan and Somalia.

No man is an island,

Entire of itself.

Each is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thine own

Or of thine friend's were.

Each man's death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.

But in some ways, Donne is a cheap shot. We all know we’re involved in mankind, even if we try to dodge it. And Donne’s words have been with us for nearly 400 years. Have we paid attention? Only sporadically.

So my official entry today is from the Book of Psalms (King James version). You can squawk if you want about whether any individual Psalm is a poem, but this is my damned blog and I’m the boss of it.

I’m sharing with you one that was given to me by a fellow retreatant when I was in my 20s. We were at a convent somewhere in the San Fernando Valley, on a weekend retreat; three women trying to work through individual challenges to our lives. I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently, because I appear to have got lost along the way from that place & I’m not sure how to get back.

Anyhow, this woman—much more adept with scripture than I’ll ever be—looked at me, put her hand on my shoulder and said, “This is your Psalm.” I don’t know why it should be, but here it is, number 121:

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,

   from whence cometh my help.

My help cometh from the LORD,

   which made heaven and earth.

He will not suffer thy foot to be moved:

   he that keepeth thee will not slumber.

Behold, he that keepeth Israel

   shall neither slumber nor sleep.

The LORD is thy keeper:

   the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.

The sun shall not smite thee by day,

   nor the moon by night.

The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil:

   he shall preserve thy soul.

The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in

   from this time forth, and even for evermore.

I’m strangely comforted by the idea of a presence shading my right side. It may not be as important that it be there, as that I believe it is.

You have to start small and work your way up to mankind.