Fighting for Poetry: “As Kingfishers Catch Fire”

I have a real struggle with laziness.  Most of my reading this year (and writing on this blog, come to think of it) is a gentle fight against this.  Reading things that strengthen and edify rather than just entertain.

I was having a depressed evening recently, and I was reading through some blogs in a desultory sort of way.  And I tripped over this poem… and stopped.  I’d read Gerard Manley Hopkins in the past, but not this poem.  And I skimmed it, in my usual lazy way.  But it drew me back in, and forced me to CONCENTRATE.  Because man, Fr. Hopkins doesn’t say things straight out.  And this drew me out of the worst of my sadness, and brought me joy, and some theological strength besides.

So I invite you to do the same.  CONCENTRATE.  Don’t be thrown by the accent marks or the strange line breaks.  Read carefully.  Find the beauty and the purpose.

AS kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;

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 do is me: for that I came.

 

Í say móre: the just man justices;

Kéeps gráce: 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.

May your limbs and eyes show Christ today.