Tell All the Truth, but Tell it Slant
by Emily Dickenson

Tell all the truth but tell it slant,
Success in circuit lies,
Too bright for our infirm delight
The truth’s superb surprise;

As lightning to the children eased
With explanation kind,
The truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind.

_____________________________

HT: David Kern
Image via

Below is the poem I read at Papaw’s funeral on Saturday. The poem is full of allusions to Papaw’s own poetry and life story, and may or may not make perfect sense to those who didn’t know him.

It was a beautiful service, honoring a beautiful man and celebrating a long, beautiful life. It started with the church bell ringing once for each of his ninety years and ended with full military honors. In between, his daughter sang a beautiful hymn and his son (my Dad) led the service, telling touching stories and the truth about the grace of God. It was a memorable memorial. My brother read a touching poem that I’m amazed he got through and my cousin honored a life of service, including his service in World War II as a ball-turret gunner on a B-17. To end the funeral, Dad asked me to read this poem. I took my 6 year-old son up with me and he recited this passage before I read my poem:

“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”
(1 Corinthians 15:20-26 ESV)

A Farewell Song for Papaw (Clair Shadwell Smith)

A rare gem indeed, this gentle man,
Without a title, and precious, little land,
          But true native soul.

Saw ribbons of highway, held fantasy wars,
With daisies and tenderly, imagined much more,
          Wept over daisies killed.

A ball-turret gunner, with crippling dreams,
How many angels, guarded Chute 13?
          Misnamed as it was.

Rode a flying a fortress, into flak-ridden hell,
You lost Don and many, many others as well.
          Irreplaceable, inescapable loss.

In a Northampton church, an ancestral sound,
There you felt kinfolk, long-laid in the ground.
          Your own, whispering over the years.

It was a true war and now, more daisies cut down,
And gathered to grace the fresh graves in the ground.
          But you came through, at last.

You had a last mission, saw, breaking through clouds,
The fine shore of England, bright as a crown,
          England! and thank God.

You and so many others, fought on gallantly,
Got the hell out of Europe, and set millions free,
          Saved England and endless others.

Home again, then, America for you,
Back to the New World and old life you knew,
          The green, familiar hills.

Married your Myrtle, a family tree grew,
We have these dispatches, of the joy you knew,
          A country poet’s verse.

A daughter to start, and many to come,
A warrior whose quiver brimmed daughters and sons,
          Life, hard and happy, you knew.

You got your own Don, to honor the fallen,
Who served in his turn, then heeded a calling,
          To an even-nobler cause.

And your life was grand, here in your home,
A fine man and good, who was never alone,
          Surrounded by loving ones.

Grandsons competed to be your most beloved,
And maybe all felt that they were, I know I did.
          Each granddaughter was.

And to the great-grands, you were a King out of Faerie,
They loved you and believed your fried eggs legendary,
          Even as I always had.

The last thing I saw, was the best ever done,
You spoke words of blessing to my daughter and son,
          Tender, life-giving words.

And words make up much, of our prized patrimony,
It’s the loving of words, not the words we love, only.
          But oh, what words!

I remember keenly, the great blaze that roared,
In my soul, when over your poems, I poured.
          Reshaping all my life.

And so you did, I suppose, all your days,
Reshaped the world in a thousand bright ways,
          An instrument of God.

Blunt instrument, yes, a man clearly flawed,
But a good man, yes perfect, in the eyes of God,
          Clinging to Christ’s work alone.

What can we say, now here as we lay,
This precious body, down in its grave?
          It’s you, but not you, entire.

When Christ the firstfruits, comes once again,
To make of black death an inglorious end,
          Clair Shadwell Smith shall rise.

Your mission is over, for you, no more war.
You land at last, on a lovelier shore,
          Than England ever was.

Night
by Clair Shadwell Smith

The grey and death-like, quiet night.
          Where, in its non-directed light,
The moon from four horizons shines,
Revealing naught but softest lines
          Of hill and plain.

Where man’s hard shell of pride is lost,
          And lain aside, his soul the host,
Now clothed in softer gowns of thought,
No glare of day or deed is brought,
          To hide truth’s face.

How like the end of life, the day,
          When we have ceased our thoughtless way,
And our ennobling armor lain aside,
Defenseless, beside our selfish pride,
          We meet our God.

For those of you who heard the poetry session Andrew Peterson and I shared at Hutchmoot 2011, this is the poem I read from my Grandfather. It’s long been a favorite of mine and one of the first poems that ever really “got me.” Many people there loved it, including AP. I hope you enjoy it too. -Sam

Rare Gems
by Clair Shadwell Smith

They burned us in the fire,
Your page and mine;
And I was glad.
But still, though curled and charred,
The printing could be read.
Then came the wind
To draw us up its whirling draft
And shatter us to bits.
Together in one airy cloud,
We drifted around the world
And while above
Some far and distant land,
A shower bore us to the ground.
And a child’s small, chubby hand,
On that soft, summer day,
Rolled us into tiny pellets
While at her festal play.

And there for many years we lay,
Baked by the sun,
And polished by the wind.

Then came a wanderer from afar,
Who searched for precious stones;
And sold us in the market place
For food to warm his bones.
Now we adorn the crowns
Of princesses and kings.
And it is said these stones that fell
From out of the sky above,
Are rare because they but reflect
The lights of perfect love.

Is It Words?

A Guest Post by Gina G. Smith

“Here, listen to this.” My husband said to me as we got in the car. The kids were with us and we had a ways to go.

Sigh. “Is it words?” I asked sarcastically. I love being part of his world, but if there’s one thing that puts me instantly to sleep, or sends me spiraling into a world of daydreams, it’s listening to audio books. He somehow listens to them while driving and going to sleep at night, which seems like a recipe for disaster to me. I just cannot focus when the reading begins. Come on, husband. Don’t you know me at all? I prefer music in the car.

He rolled his eyes and said, “Yes, it’s words. But just listen.”

It began and I got the distinct feeling this was a joke. Oh, no. This sounds like…like, Poetry? Doesn’t he know I’ve stormed the towers in the Unstoppable War Against Foes Both Foreign and Domestic (but mostly Domestic) All Day?

Poetry! Oh, dear. I’m drifting, drifting. But then…I giggle. I’m hooked. It was Billy Collins and it was brilliant.

Here’s one in particular that my mother’s heart could relate to. I’m posting the video (with the words below) so you can get the full effect. I think it’s a real treat to hear it read by the poet. Then you know exactly how it should sound. Actually, with Billy (I call him Billy), his poems are so simple that it’s hard to get them wrong. I love that. Who needs to pretend to be sophisticated?

Please enjoy this hilarious tribute to the vocation of Motherhood.

The Lanyard – Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

For those who asked me, this is one of the poems I read at Hutchmoot. It really was unintentional that it followed all that stuff about Morning People. -Sam

Morning Person (Vassar Miller)

God, best at making in the morning, tossed
stars and planets, singing and dancing, rolled
Saturn’s rings spinning and humming, twirled the earth
so hard it coughed and spat the moon up, brilliant
bubble floating around it for good, stretched holy
hands till birds in nervous sparks flew forth from them
and beasts – lizards, big and little, apes
lions, elephants, dogs and cats cavorting,
tumbling over themselves, dizzy with joy when
God made us in the morning too, both man
and woman, leaving Adam no time for
sleep so nimbly was Eve bouncing out of
his side till as night came everything and
everybody, growing tired, declined, sat
down in one soft descended Hallelujah.

from Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems

Soaking Up Sun (Tom Hennen)

Today there is the kind of sunshine old men love,
the kind of day when my grandfather would sit
on the south side of the wooden corncrib where
the sunlight warmed slowly all through the day
like a wood stove. One after another dry leaves
fell. No painful memories came. Everything was
lit by a halo of light. The cornstalks glinted bright
as pieces of glass. From the fields and cottonwood
came the damp smell of mushrooms, of
things going back to earth. I sat with my grand-
father then. Sheep came up to us as we sat there,
their oily wool so warm to my fingers, like a strange
and magic snow. My grandfather whittled sweet
smelling apple sticks just to get at the scent. His
thumb had a permanent groove in it where the
back of the knife blade rested. He let me listen to
the wind, the wild geese, the soft dialect of sheep,
while his own silence taught me every secret thing
he knew

from Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems

Pied Beauty (Gerard Manley Hopkins)

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

The Mystery
by G.K. Chesterton

If sunset clouds could grow on trees
It would but match the may in flower;
And skies be underneath the seas
No topsyturvier than a shower.

If mountains rose on wings to wander
They were no wilder than a cloud;
Yet all my praise is mean as slander,
Mean as these mean words spoken aloud.

And never more than now I know
That man’s first heaven is far behind;
Unless the blazing seraph’s blow
Has left him in the garden blind.

Witness, O Sun that blinds our eyes,
Unthinkable and unthankable King,
That though all other wonder dies
I wonder at not wondering.

via gkc.org

Sometimes, when the sky is high and the earth is low,

I think to myself,

Things.

Things about how right now I can’t concentrate long enough to write anything worthwhile.

Take this blog for instance.

What on earth am I doing?

The sky, like a high thing, stays where it is.

Why do poets always talk about the sky and rain and feelings?

I am here at the table typing this after watching a basketball game on TV,

Much like Emily Dickenson.