a well-ordered soul

Here is a poem to think about and hear. 
Wiman refers to  this line by Eliot's East Coker from The Four Quartets:

I said to my soul, be still....

Listen to the poet read this poem here.

"AND I SAID TO MY SOUL, BE LOUD"







by Christian Wiman







Madden me back to an afternoon 

I carry in me

 not like a wound

 but like a will against a wound

Give me again enough man 

to be the child

 choosing my own annihilations

To make of this severed limb

 a wand to conjure 

a weapon to shatter

 dark matter of the dirt daubers' nests

 galaxies of glass

Whacking glints

 bash-dancing on the cellar's fire 

I am the sound the sun would make

 if the sun could make a sound

and the gasp of rot 

stabbed from the compost's lumpen living death 

is me

O my life my war in a jar

 I shake you and shake you

and may the best ant win

For I am come a whirlwind of wasted things

 and I will ride this tantrum back to God

until my fixed self, my fluorescent self

my grief–nibbling, unbewildered, wall–to–wall self

 withers in me like a salted slug