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The Mercy Seat

from The World Is Charged: Poetic Engagements with Gerard Manley Hopkins

Joshua Robbins
Affiliation:
University of the Incarnate Word
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Summary

Crepuscule rain ricochet,

Desk genesis-insipid summed and pale blue-rinsed,

Floor cloud-break quadrangled and daylight paged.

It's a teasing,

these words and their maneuverings

Blacked on white and smudged and swapped,

Models ribbing models ribbing models,

Their lures, allusive and flicked, this sacrament sought

And never

is it not caught, its metaphors

Like invisible hooks in my lips

Lined to the body of what I cannot see,

The ink on the shadowless source-side.

Metaphysician and skeptic,

faith unfaithed,

Mine's both the cloak hood's cowled want

And the sleeping hand's inner hush.

I'm talking about wish and suspicion,

The prayer of the page unblanked

versus the of,

Both bridge and barrier.

Failure into wonder, that's the task.

Synapse-spark and pleasure-doubt.

One must conceal

to reveal.

Ascent is as often smoke as it is ascent

And doubt like a burning glass.

As often as fire we become the stars.

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The World is Charged
Poetic Engagements with Gerard Manley Hopkins
, pp. 112
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Print publication year: 2016

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