"We Are Ground"

A poem in honor of Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ

Today is the anniversary of the death of the great English poet–and great Jesuit–Gerard Manley Hopkins. He died early at age 44 and suffered a great deal in his life. He left us with breathtaking and bouncing lines of poetry that were only published after his death. They speak to us both of the euphoric experience of God’s presence everywhere and in everything and the absolutely dreadful experience of crushing doubt and abandonment–all part of the religious experience.

He was a man in touch with his own pain and wounds and yet he knew, nevertheless, himself–and us–to be wound with mercy. Here is a poem I wrote inspired by a line in his poem, “The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe.”

We Are Ground

“I say that we are wound with mercy, round and round” -Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ

God is a hound
and we are wound
with his soft mercy
round and round.

Yet with wounds we are wound
and bound in bonds we are;
and bondage of honey,
smooth and refracting.

Bondage; plumage of grace holding
us. Though ensnared, we seeking snares,
seeking bondage not of honey and still
bound by a holy hound sniffing
every inch of ground we walk around.

We fall, father, gather, seek, step, climb
on mounds of dark that become grace and too
with wounds, we are still wound. We lick
cherish, open, spurn, falter down.

But that hound put his snout to the ground,
Deepest down ground; that hound’s ground
was us–is us–we are ground
for his snout, for his body; Our hands are
ground for his flesh, even our gut—ground
for his resting. In our teeth, he is ground
deepest down

sound of his silence
bondage of his liberation
life of his death.

His wound, that blessed hound’s
wounds make us wound
with mercy, round
and ever round.

Crucifix in the Historic Cemetery at Holy Rosary Mission, Pine Ridge, SD.