James Matthew Wilson

After Jacob of Serug Blessed are you, O Maiden; blest     The fruit which dwells within your womb,Beloved in that holy rest     Whose secret comes to sacred bloom.And blessed is this virgin birth     Which shall uproot sin from the earth. Who grants this . . . . Continue Reading »

After Richard Peter’s photograph of “Gute” Her shoulders slumped beneath their heavy cloak,Large hands outspread despite a shattered thumb,The lady Goodness stares out on the smokeAnd ruin below, and stands, as always, dumb.More planes already drone on the horizon,Their bellies pregnant with . . . . Continue Reading »

October 20, 2007 Dear Lynn, I haven’t met you yet, and yet,  Because of your groom’s frank and free oblations  In sonnet sequences or while we drink,In permanent print or on the internet,  I write to share my cheerful approbations  For what I cannot know but may still . . . . Continue Reading »

Storm clouds move in and darken all the house,    The morning paper on the kitchen table dim,Where I’ve been reading some reporter’s grouse    At things already bad, now growing grim.    Most of the prodigies agree with him. I rise to light a lamp, and hear the . . . . Continue Reading »

Here we are, with four children, at late Mass,   The nave a bloated hull of tin, the cross   Dangling from double chains, its weight of lossMoored in midair as listing decades pass.A few gray heads, behind, recall a past   When the bright sharded window cast its . . . . Continue Reading »

Beyond the window, morning sparrows made Their song as if the whole world’s goodness paid Its plenty out for them and them alone. The old saint heard their joy and squelched a moan As his legs, stiff and heavy still with sleep, Arranged themselves beneath his cassocked heap Of belly. Where had he . . . . Continue Reading »

Snow that has fallen in the night Blankets at last the sodden clay And offers such peace to our sight As if it were the eternal day. Yet shoppers, now, begin to fight Among stripped shelves, and husbands say Some stinging thing to frazzled wives Just before the first guest arrives. What blessing . . . . Continue Reading »

I follow the clean-edged macadam northTo catch the train. The maples lining bothSides hang with leaves turned soft but brilliant reds,Oranges, and umbers that will make their bedsSoon in the unmown grass that lines my street,And crumble at the weight of passing feet.The people who just moved in . . . . Continue Reading »

Allen Tate: The Modern Mind and the Discovery of Enduring Loveby john v. glass iiithe catholic university of america, 376 pages, $59.95 I well remember sitting up half the night annotating Allen Tate’s “Ode to the Confederate Dead” in my Norton anthology. As do I remember reading for the first . . . . Continue Reading »

His limbs splayed, writhing, as he hung there, Murmuring of a kingdom somewhere The Roman guards had never been, The sun beat on his darkened head. He barely heard what the good thief said, So swollen and plugged his ears were then. “I thirst,” his mother heard him cry. “Why have you left me . . . . Continue Reading »