All who have departed – William Saumarez Smith
THE PREACHER’S PRAYER
LORD, when my heart is slow to feel,
And when my lips are slow to speak,
And yet my heart still Thee doth seek,
And yet my lips would Thee reveal;
Then send Thy gracious Spirit, Lord,
That He may my dull heart inspire,
And touch my lips with heavenly fire,
So shall I hear and speak Thy word.
And other hearts with love will glow,
And other lips Thy word proclaim,
So shall we glorify Thy Name,
And Heaven’s light shine on Earth below.– William Saumarez Smith
I randomly started reading a book of poems today by William Saumarez Smith (1836 – 1909), published and edited 100 years ago (1911) by his sisters. The book has only ever had that one edition. As far as I can tell, Saumarez isn’t a particularly well known figure (even in Sydney), and the poetry isn’t spectacular, but as I read his poems and the short account of his life at the beginning of the book, I got a little teary.
William Saumarez Smith was Bishop (later Archbishop) of Sydney from 1890-1913. He died of a brain haemorrhage in his office – died with his boots on, as they say – the first Archbishop of Sydney to be buried in Australia. His poems are a little window into the world of a man who walked humbly and simply with his God. He loved God.
He also clearly loved the people around him. Most of these poems were written as little notes to friends, family, and acquaintances. There are many about saying ‘farewell’ to family in England; a few for his daughter; two for his grandson. His life wasn’t easy. He spent time as a missionary in India, had eight children, and his wife passed away shortly before they were to leave England for Australia in 1890. He came anyway.
As I said, it isn’t all great poetry, but it is the affective life of a godly man. I was humbled and encouraged. It touched me that his little notes have made their way down the generations and are still quietly glorifying God.
Actually, I was twice blessed today. Reading the poems of William Saumarez Smith was the second time I shared communion with the everyday saints, got to watch – just a little awestruck – at the resurrection life peaking out like the fingernail of a sunrise at Easter.
And we also bless thy holy Name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear; beseeching thee to give us grace so to follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of thy heavenly kingdom. Grant this, O Father, for Jesus Christ’s sake, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen.
William Saumarez Smith, Capernaum and Other Poems, London: Elliot Stock, 1911.
Extract from the ‘Memoir’
As to his private life, “he lived much in his Bible,” said one who knew him, ” no one could go into his study and see the ‘stand up’ desk covered with his Bibles, authorized, revised, Hebrew, etc., without perceiving his life-long devotion to the written word.” Many will recall how beautifully he read the Lessons in the Cathedral and other churches.
In the strenuous life of a Bishop, times of relaxation were rare, but now and then he would take part of a day off to watch some important cricket match, with keen enjoyment.
His love for reading was intense, and it was wonderful how in his crowded life he managed to devour some of the books and writings of the day. How reading tempted him may be gleaned from his joke about himself that he was not to be trusted in a bookshop for fear of ” the indulgence of buying.” Languages also interested him greatly, and he could read eight or nine. On one occasion at the Baptism of some Chinese converts at the Cathedral, having specially learnt the words, he was able to baptize them in their own language.
Those who were able to see him in his happy home at Bishopscourt, delighted to see him throw aside his work for an hour or two, and enjoy like a boy the simplest pleasures. And away in the country when visiting his clergy, any children that he met would find in the Archbishop a ready playmate.
In Holy Week of 1909 there were as usual Musical Services in the Cathedral, the Archbishop also giving a short address. Some who were present on the Wednesday, will never forget the earnestness of his closing words on the love of Christ, which proved to be the last that he spoke in his Cathedral pulpit. He ended by quoting the verse:
And there, with all the blood-bought throng
From sin and sorrow free,
I’ll sing the new Eternal Song
Of Jesu’s love to me.
The next morning, apparently well, he did his usual work, but that afternoon in his office at the Diocesan Registry he was found unconscious, and the letter he was writing was never finished. It was thought that during the next ten days he never regained consciousness, and on Sunday evening, April 18th, 1909, he “crossed the bar.”
His sudden death in the midst of his work produced a wonderful effect in Sydney. The people recognized that he had devoted his life to his adopted country, and there were many who gave touching proofs of how much they loved and honoured their Primate. The Cathedral was filled to overflowing for the first part of the Burial Service by a representative and sympathetic congregation. No signs of mourning were there. The lovely white flowers and impressive and beautiful music gave a note of Easter Victory and Peace.
Large numbers of people lined the long route of five miles to the beautiful Waverley Cemetery, which reaches down to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. The description of the scene given by one of the Sydney papers may fitly conclude this brief sketch: “A soft but clear air hung over the Cemetery, and there was a lazy beat of rolling water against the rocks below. To sea only a solitary tug was distinguishable, and further out a column of smoke denoted a steamer against the horizon. The elemental calmness, and the absence of distracting incident served to hush and further impress the very large crowd.” After the last hymn— “For all the saints who from their labour rest “—was sung, ” the people gradually withdrew, and left only the rollers of the Pacific beating against an empty headland, and the fresh breeze of the ocean stirring the grass about a new-turned grave.”
Thoughts of a Tree in Autumn.
1. Deliberation.
With less vigour comes deliberation.
Those things done, are hard done. Sitting comes to do.
Rooted.
Even the dust swirls more slowly in the quiet.
Golden in tangibility, in this
little room of light with walls and dimensions that has taken space within my room.
At my fingers’ tips.
I run them along the beam, stirring. Deliberately.
The weight of light on my fingers’ tips speaks exhaustion speaking life.
Life spent.
Some of it in this chair.
I hold the face of the light, like lovers hold their faces: cupped.
And like a lover, I bring my face to face the light.
The quality of Autumn: light in which no one dwells, but light touched.
2. Trembling.
Is vigour health? Or poison? With effortless actions come intoxications.
Vigour, madness? Untamed projection.
They died of cancer, in this chair.
An invitation to spring, to indwell, to be in others’ places.
Spring makes weeds of us all.
I blush for cold. Or anticipation of nakedness.
Skin paper, fired shades, longing for fire? Or writing?
We leave this season for judgement.
Leaves the colour of Revelation.
Virgil wrote one line evey day for ten years and died.
Although the years were different then.
3. Stillness.
When I am still I still am
Comment and Share
New like New.
For Easter Sunday.
New, like the second coming
To faith of an old man
In the love of the plain
Faced. Like their autumnal child. Unplanned.
New, like a child’s crowning, labour’s pain.
Push, He is coming, Push!
As good as
like
that new.
For God’s Elect in Shopping Malls.
For those who would not choose to grow old
before the Son of Man comes.
A woman with eyes painted on her boobs.
Another reading ‘dodgy’, another inscrutable.
Unfailingly matched to personal genre.
Thematised Personalities of the latter Capitalism.
World writ on the chests of post-Christmas shoppers.
On their post-Christmas T-Shirts. Taunt as these turgid surplus days.
Or sagging with remorse, various colours of remorse.
Buyers. Gifted – those who grieve their gifts. For whatever reason.
Returning shirts. Those soft packages, small bombs of disappointment
That mined the carpet round the Christmas tree.
Sale shirts. Unwanted gifts never sold. A surplus of disappointment.
This excess week, just enough to reconcile the wrong gifts of the old year.
What cancer lives in the soul of a people who exchange gifts?
Gifts that were never thought precious to begin with. But were.
Gifts that were cheap because the panting labour of creation was stolen.
Groaning. Tired hands and aching backs that sutured them cheap.
T-shirts that were hated by their makers, and a disappointment to those who received them.
Who will never be worn. Passed from hand to hand but never worn.
Raped from the earth. Cotton-farms, Great scratches across her face. Unswabbed.
Made poisonous by hatred and other chemicals. Buried.
Done again. And again. Until there is nothing left to take and no where left to hide.
When the Son of Man comes, and all his Holy Angels with him,
Will he need to do more than open our landfills, speak to the T-Shirts,
Give them words to tell their stories, the testimony of fibres. To pronounce?
What was whispered in workshops will be shouted from the rooftops.
And the judgement written across our chests, graphically, designedly.
Stern Son, I would have no hope of your judgement.
If you had not worn such a shirt. Clothed yourself in flesh.
Hung upon, cared and washed, worn out. Worn still.
Been surplus. Been a disappointment. Been laid with the fodder.
Been unspeakably precious. Been the joy of groaning history.
Been unrecognised. Been bloodied. Been hung out to dry.
Laundering Son, how I long to be clothed by you.
Christmas 2010
Comment and ShareChasing after the Wind
Chasing after the Wind
In the armpit of a tree
between striking chords of grass
everything chasing
nothing
everybody chasing
breaking wind to interrupt
the symphony of airconditioners
I think he left a note somewhere
Waiting on the obverse of a kite.
Stephen Edgar: Memorial
[This post contains an image and a poem depicting an event that was utterly abhorrent, and that some people may therefore find offensive]
Les Murray is a poet of the voice. His genius lies in making strange that most familiar sound, capturing it and presenting it on a page. Often what he has to say feels less significant than the inflection and accent with which he carries it through.
Stephen Edgar strikes me as being a poet of the eye. He is one of the rare breed of modern poets who disciplines himself to use formal metrical and rhyming structures – a discipline that engages the eye as well as the ear. And the sense I have of his poems (the very few I’ve read so far) is that he is concerned with communicating vision.
The poem Memorial was written in response to viewing an exhibition of photographs depicting lynchings that took place in the South of the United States. In particular, Memorial is a viewing-by-verse of a photograph of the lynching of Rubin Stacy in 1935.
The poem is saturated with religious language: the hanging corpse is ‘transfigured’, the onlookers in the photograph ‘contemplate the mystery’. In the second stanza the beholders are being ‘devoured’, ‘sliced’, ‘enticed’ – what the photograph depicts is a grotesque Holy Communion, the memorial of an Anti-Crucifixion in which the celebrants are themselves consumed.
The final two stanzas zoom in on a girl in the left of the photograph, ‘a girl of twelve, maybe’. She is smiling, ‘lit up with a half-embarrassed leer’. Drawn into this moment, she is hanging between innocence and trespass. (or maybe the point is that there was never any innocence?) Unlike the other participants who souvenir elements of the body, the girl will live her life in the knowledge of this horror. ‘This hour will hang between her and the light’.
Whenever this photo is done in remembrance of him, she will find herself damned, not redeemed.
Memorial
The lynching of Rubin Stacy, 19 July 1935
In the still transfiguration of sunshine
That whites out almost all one leg and arm
Until they merge into the slender pine
He’s hanging from with an inhuman calm,
Who are these blanched beholders gathered round
To contemplate the mystery they attend
With titillated awe?
What men and women and what children bound
In witness of the hour that they suspend
Lightlong? What shocked observance of what law?
Two little girls are standing at the right,
One staring at the lens perplexedly,
The other, half her face devoured by light
Bright as her smock, lifting her eyes to see.
There’s one man whom the trunk obscures and slices
From view, a woman peering as though round
A door or window frame
At something not quite decent which entices
Attention even so, and will confound
Every objection modesty might name.
And then you see her. At the left she stands,
Behind the awful focus of suspense,
Her hands crossed, mimicking his handcuffed hands,
On her frocked crotch, her naked face intense
And lit up with a half-embarrassed leer,
A girl of twelve, maybe, too unaware
To mask her downward grin.
Sometimes the witnesses would souvenir
Some item: a photograph, a hank of hair,
A severed finger joint, a scrap of skin.
Surely she’ll have no need of them. For here
This ritual and her rapture will unite,
Surely, into a lifelong souvenir.
This hour will hang between her and the light,
Between her and her life to come, this scene
And what she is in it will interpose
Imperishably through
The days that have to be the day that’s been,
Lighting forever everything she knows
With what she saw, and knows she saw, and knew.
Stephen Edgar, “Memorial” in History of the Day, (North Fitzroy, Victoria: Black Pepper, 2009), 51-52.
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