Tags
desire, grace, Hell, Love, makurakotoba, Mary, poems, saints, salvation, St. Ephrem of Edesa, the fall, Theology, verse
Love came down
To raise us up
For no more reason
Than because
We fell.
Mary first of all
The Saints,
Is but a drop
in the Ocean of God
Called Love and Grace.
Hell
Is the knowing
That one’s sating desire
Leaves only
Desire without end.
These are some thoughts set down in verse form, inspired by my reading the theological poetry and verse commentaries of St. Ephrem of Edesa, and loosely following the traditional court poetry of Heian era Japan, in a form called waka and tanka. I say loosely, because the original form required a stanza to be composed according to the following syllabic pattern 5-7-5-7-7, and allowed for a lot of ‘pillow-words’ or makurakotoba (we would say metaphors and words that allude to earlier poetry, such as occurs in the Psalms) for and aesthetic word play (more expansive than puns), which also occurs in Hebrew poetry and which is a *little* harder to duplicate in English. From time to time I hope to augment this selection. Please let me know what you think!
Oh Mary, Mother of God who gave glad tidings as a song in response to the message of an Angel, and who treasured in her heart all the sorrows that befell your Son, Jesus Christ, Our Lady of Walsingham, pray for us.
The Walsingham Way 
Nice poetry/post, brother. I have dabbled in writing poetry myself and performing spoken word, but little if any of it was so theologically inspired. I did use religious themes and language sometimes.