Michael Ryan
Contributor Biography
Michael Ryan's Threats Instead of Trees won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award and was a National Book Award finalist in 1974. In Winter was a National Poetry Series selection and New York Times notable book in 1981, while God Hunger won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize in 1990. In 1995, he published an autobiography, Secret Life, and, in 2000, a collection of essays about poetry and writing, A Difficult Grace. His memoir, Baby B (Graywolf Press, 2004), was excerpted in The New Yorker. New and Selected Poems won the 2005 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Among many other distinctions for his work are a Whiting Writers Award, NEA and Guggenheim Fellowships, and awards from The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, and the Poetry Society of America. Ryan is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of California, Irvine.
Reminder
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Torment by appetite
is itself an appetite
dulled by inarticulate,
dogged, daily
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loving-others-to-death—
as Chekhov put it, “compassion
down to your fingertips”—,
looking on them as into the sun
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not in the least for their sake
but slowly for your own
because it causes
the blinded soul to bloom
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like deliciousness in dirt,
like beauty from hurt,
their light—their light—
pulls so surely. Let it.
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Author's Note:
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This poem was previously published in Michael Ryan: New and Selected Poems (Mariner Books, 2005).
Oliver BH Seet
Contributor Biography
Before his retirement, Oliver Seet Beng Hean was an Associate Professor of English at the National Institute of Education in Singapore. He has been a teacher educator for the greater part of his life. His poems have been published in many anthologies, magazines, newspapers and periodicals. These include Litmus One, Selected University Verse 1949–1957; Anthology of ASEAN Literature: The Poetry of Singapore; &Words: Poems Singapore and Beyond; The Second Tongue: An Anthology of Poetry From Malaysia and Singapore; The Flowering Tree: Selected Writings From Singapore/Malaysia; Journeys: Words, Home and Nation: Anthology of Singapore Poetry (1984–1995); and Bunga Emas: An Anthology of Contemporary Malaysian Literature (1930–1963). His book, Once (Word Image, 2019), collects his poems written over the span of six decades.
THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM
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Striding into Jerusalem
on camel back
three seers, of royal lineage,
steeped in the language of the stars,
and of their encoded messages,
who were startled one evening
to see in the prime quarter
of a galaxy,
a new star,
a diadem of purest light
outshining all the starry community,
proclaiming the birth of a King
who would cleave the centuries
of chronicled time
at His coming,
to a time before and after,
a King who would be a watershed
in the affairs of men.
So earth shaking
was the message of this star,
so importunate
that they left all to follow
its trajectory
leading them along desert trials,
rarified terrain and strange towns
into Bethlehem at last,
bearing prophetic gifts
signifying His majesty,
His sanctity and His passion.
And at last
standing in the presence
of the incarnate Son
of Almighty God,
they were filled
with such reverence and awe
that they could only prostrate themselves
astonished that the Creator
would come among men
in flesh and blood.
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DEATHLESS LOVE
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We stood once at the Aegean Sea
souls interlinked in deathless love
and heard between the surges of the tide,
and the imperceptible turning of the earth,
whisperings of immortality;
that beyond the substantial and the tangible,
beyond sentience itself,
lies a reality, we sense in part
as in a waking dream
—tenuous as gossamer.
Yet we knew then
it was not illusory,
that Divine Love that had bound
our souls inseparably,
would not leave us desolate,
but in transcendent dwellings
would bring us once again
together in ineffable joy
to live in His presence endlessly.
I stand at the Aegean Sea this day
—but now alone,
heart-rent at your untimely departure,
recalling our last lingering gaze,
so impassioned,
so filled with a lifetime of love,
so filled with unutterable sorrow,
burnt now forever into the core of my very being.
But in the stillness,
between the surging of the tide,
and the imperceptible turning of the earth,
I hear whisperings of immortality,
your gentle voice almost inaudibly
assuring me of the transcendent dwellings
and of our reuniting.
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CASTING THE FIRST STONE
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How acerbic were the Master’s words,
piercing the marrow
of their conscience,
dismantling the smirk
of self-righteousness
that sat leeringly on their lips
and stilling into silence
the hiss of accusation
against the woman
caught in adultery,
standing denuded of self-worth,
wordlessly ashamed,
before the taunting assembly of men,
armed with stones of condemnation,
baying for her blood.
“Let him who is without sin
cast the first stone.”
Simple words
spoken with the quiet authority
of the Master’s voice,
yet infused with cutting wisdom.
Stooping down again
the Master continued
to write in the dust,
telling words
that undergirded his utterance,
and one by one
they sneaked away
with hangdog faces,
ensnared by the very traps
they had laid for Jesus.
When all were gone
Jesus looked at the woman
—not in judgement
but with compassion
and forgiveness;
her contriteness
and repentance,
had absolved her of her guilt
as the Lord told her
to sin no more.
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—John 8:2-11
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ANOTHER KIND OF WATER
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How strange that he should ask me,
a Samaritan,
for water from the well
of our Patriarch, Jacob
to slake his thirst,
this man from Galilee,
this Jew,
with whom we have no truck.
He has such quiet princely dignity,
such orchards of peace in his countenance,
and eyes that read
the chronicles of my soul;
He sees through the curtains of deception
in my words.
How can he, a stranger
know so intimately
all I have done.
Is he God in disguise?
Yet there is no quagmire of intimidation
in his gaze,
but a liberation
that comes from revelation
of the truth.
He offers the gift of Living Water
whose springs are seated
in the matrix of the second birth
that he alone can actuate.
Lord give me that Living Water
that I may thirst no more.
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—John 4:5-42
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RESURRECTION
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One glorious morning
when the popinjays of twilight
were thrilling the eastern skies
and lilacs and lilies were in full blossom
in the garden
where they had laid the body of Jesus
bruised, broken, nail-pierced,
dead beyond a doubt
sealed in by a giant boulder
in a sepulchre
and watched over by centurions,
There was a confluence
of Heaven and Earth
within the tomb
a synapse of Divine and Corporeal,
a transmogrification never seen
since the Creation,
when Jesus triumphant over mortality
and the enslaving power of sin,
rose in His resurrected body,
—the firstborn from the dead.
Angels from the Throne Room of Heaven
suffused the tomb with holy light
bursting the seal on the boulder,
moving it aside like tumbleweed
while the centurion guards
transfixed, fell prostrate
speechless and quivering in cold sweat
at the sight of warrior angels
clad in blinding light.
All nature rejoiced to see
the curse that Adam brought
onto the earth
broken at last by the Son of Man
at the Cross,
victorious over the dominion of Death and Hades,
as Heaven and Earth
declared the awesome news
that Jesus is Risen from the Dead,
that all who come in repentance
to the foot of the cross
and look up in faith to Jesus
will receive forgiveness from their sin
and the gift of Eternal Life.
Because He lives
the centuries bifurcate around him:
He is pivotal to solar time.
He stands at the crossroads of destiny,
for each person passing by must choose his path
and his final destination
—Grace or Judgement
when the windows of human time
are forever shut.
Because He lives
the dossiers of sin and wrongdoing
of those who believe
are expunged by His precious blood.
In place of filthy garments
they shall receive suits of righteousness.
All things are made new
when the spirit of man
is quickened into life
by the Paraclete
and he becomes a new creation
—a citizen of the Eternal Kingdom.
—Col 1:18-23