For many people, Sunday morning is traditionally dedicated to religious expression, to church services and Sunday school. To some others it’s a time of newspaper reading and relaxation after a busy week. Or perhaps a chance to swing a golf club in pursuit of a heavenly score. But for this column, it’s very special because it’s a chance to share our love of poetry with you.
So whenever you might be reading this, please pour a cup of coffee, butter a croissant and enjoy some noteworthy Sunday Morning poetry.
***
* * *
Poet Glenn Varona leads us off with a piece about this very Sunday morning being the first day of Autumn. He may be a little early in suggesting Indian Summer, but a glance out my window confirms that some leaves are already turning.
Indian Summer, just past
Days of intense and suffocating heat
All the land groaned, a restless Earth
It is over now, the days getting shorter
And they are getting colder
A row of maple trees in the distance
Their colors changing from light green
To a riot of reds, yellows, browns
And they are starting to fall
Ever so quietly as the world changes
Sunrise just now
Marking the leaves of the trees
In light and shadow, bright and dark
That only Divine artistry makes possible
All is still, after last night’s wind
Sunday morning and the first true day
Of Autumn
* * *
Irish poet Louis MacNeice has written a sonnet called “Sunday Morning” with his own set of observations. Hindhead is a scenic village in England.
Down the road someone is practicing scales,
The notes like little fishes vanish with a wink of tails,
Man’s heart expands to tinker with his car
For this is Sunday morning, Fate’s great bazaar;
Regard these means as ends, concentrate on this Now,
And you may grow to music or drive beyond Hindhead anyhow,
Take corners on two wheels until you go so fast
That you can clutch a fringe or two of the windy past,
That you can abstract this day and make it to the week of time
A small eternity, a sonnet self-contained in rhyme.
But listen, up the road, something gulps, the church spire
Open its eight bells out, skulls’ mouths which will not tire
To tell how there is no music or movement which secures
Escape from the weekday time. Which deadens and endures.
* * *
There is a surprisingly large assemblage of poems titled ”Sunday Morning,” of which the most significant is by Wallace Stevens, the fine modernist poet (1879-1955). In this contemplative masterpiece, a nameless woman lingers over Sunday breakfast wondering why she should have to sacrifice earthly joys for promises of afterlife. This is one of the remarkable stanzas.
Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.
* * *
One of the Sunday subjects that poets have addressed concerns whether attendance at a physical church matters other than as a social occasion. Is there not a full measure of religion to be found in Nature or just in one’s own personal beliefs? Pride of place in considering this question goes to Emily Dickinson, who found her faith at home.
Some keep the Sabbath going to church;
I keep it staying at home –
With a bobolink for a chorister,
And an orchard for a dome.
Some keep the Sabbath in surplice –
I just wear my wings –
And instead of tolling the bell for church,
Our little sexton sings.
God preaches – a noted clergyman –
And the sermon is never long;
So instead of getting to Heaven at last –
I’m going, all along.
* * *
A rising poet in Oregon, Drew Thomas Humphrey, agrees with Dickinson that religious observance can be all around us and doesn’t require an edifice. Here are excerpts from his “Sunday Morning.”
It’s been awhile.
For most of my life I hardly missed a service.
As of today I’ve missed something like eighty-two in a row.
By their standards
That makes me a backslider — a prodigal son.
The truth is, I’ve never stopped catching glimpses of the divine.
Just last Sunday
I took a walk among autumn’s fleeting luster;
There were sermons whispered in the crunch of newly settled leaves.
Next time I might
Stay inside and prepare breakfast for my children —
Another type of sacrament : broken, poured out, and scrambled.
But this morning
A spinning vinyl hymnal leads me in worship,
And the scriptures have been opened by a woman who loves me.
There’s enough here
To sustain a soul that still yearns for transcendence.
I’m learning that the sacred doesn’t hide beneath a steeple.
* * *
Ogden Nash is not famous for his religious observations, but here he explains how he handles his Sunday morning.
I didn’t go to church today,
I trust the Lord to understand.
The surf was swirling blue and white,
The children swirling on the sand.
He knows, He knows how brief my stay,
How brief this spell of summer weather,
He knows when I am said and done
We’ll have plenty of time together.
* * *
* * *
As the presence of Ogden Nash suggests, there is a lighter side to Sunday morning And our friend Anonymous has contributed some thoughts on a Sunday breakfast.
If you’d like a poet’s breakfast of the kind I prize the most,
I’d suggest a mushroom omelet, Cheddar cheese and buttered toast.
Some ham and jam from Amsterdam with mustard from Dijon.
Salmon steamed and spinach creamed, a glass of wine from Beaune.
A steamy jug of java with some brandy in the foam,
And there’s the inspiration for a Sunday Morning poem!
Bon Appétit!
* * *
Finally, a favorite of mine, a poem by Robert Hayden (1913-1980) , the first African American to be named Poet Laureate of the United States. He remembers a childhood father-son relationship that he failed to recognize at the time but many years later wrote about in “Those Winter Sundays.”
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
VIDEO. Our video offers a theatrical salute to Sunday with the poetry and music of Stephen Sondheim. It’s the beautiful and moving ending to Act One of his musical, “Sunday in the Park with George.” The painter, Georges Seurat, is just finishing his canvas for “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.”
* * *
* * *
Design
Tension
Balance
Harmony
Sunday,
By the blue purple yellow red water
On the green purple yellow red grass,
Let us pass through our perfect park,
Pausing on a Sunday
By the cool blue triangular water
On the soft green elliptical grass,
As we pass through arrangements of shadows
Toward the verticals of trees
Forever . . .
By the blue purple yellow red water
On the green orange violet mass of the grass
In our perfect park,
Made of flecks of light
And dark
And parasols . . .
People strolling through the trees
Of a small suburban park
On an island in the river
On an ordinary Sunday . . .
Sunday.
CLICK ON THIS LINK FOR VIDEO: POEMS FOR A SUNDAY MORNING
