A Crown for Abba Moses

By Timothy Bartel

Mature poetic craft deftly does its job on every page of this gathering of new and selected poems. Timothy E. G. Bartel knows precisely how to use ageless poetic tools -- metrics, metaphor, allusion -- to elicit ageless responses from us: joy, grief, wonder. He brings gentle humor, wide curiosity, and an understanding of human nature to

• Language: English
• Publisher: Solum Literary Press
• Release date: Jan 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781735998497

Book preview

A  C R O W N 

F O R  A B B A  M O S E S

New and Selected Poems

______________

Timothy E. G. Bartel

Author of Aflame But Unconsumed

© Timothy E. G. Bartel, 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the prior written permission of Timothy E.G. Bartel except in the case of quotations in critical reviews or other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN 978-1-7359984-9-7

Cover art by Timothy E. G. Bartel, based on photograph

by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Cover and interior design by Sarah Christolini

Picture 51058

2055 E Hampton Ave, 235

Mesa, AZ 85204

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New Poems

(2019–2021)

1.

Which way I fly is Hell, myself am Hell

—Paradise Lost 4.75

I hear

My ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,

as if my hand were at its throat. . . . 

I myself am hell;

nobody’s here—

—Robert Lowell, Skunk Hour, ll. 32–36

We hear too late or not too late.

—Geoffrey Hill, Christmas Tress, l. 9

Status Check

Try to make sense of what happened when you were alive:

Where was there justice? How hot were the breezes in August?

Where were the altars? To whom was the sacrifice offered?

Who were the men you were punished for slandering? Which songs

Played at the feasts and the weddings? and who was forbidden to sing them?

Canceled

Who is it watching you from nearby eyes

Who notes repeated phrases and distinctions

You make throughout your study and your play?

Who is it that records your conversations

If not on tape, at least in memory,

And practices your speeches as their own?

You fear it is the critics, ready to

Accuse you of your cruel or thoughtless terms.

But fear far more the one who is in earnest

And makes of you a pattern for their art

Of living, judging each internal shift

Of their own thoughts by your external acts.

For you remember how your idols died:

At first in estimation, then indeed.

The Old Craftsman

The brief asphyxiations peak at dawn.

He whittles down his plans and arguments

Again against the lack of time, the known

Despised uncertainty of each next day.

But still he toys with anxious wishes for

Another fame or one last masterpiece.

His wishes rise, and grope, and settle as

His final breath inscapes, escapes.

Yes, this,

My soul, is how the next old craftsman dies,

The next, the next. A queue of dying forms

Is set that will arrive, at last, at you.

What will your little toils at making seem

When breath itself becomes a rationed thing?

Be wary with what arrogance you sing.

St. Basil Chapel

–University of St. Thomas, Spring 2020

The emptiness of Houston is acute,

As empty as the bayou shores where once

The native fishermen caught native fish

And not one face of Houston’s race had seen

Their own reflection in the browning stream.

The space where there had been a level plain

Is gouged at angles only men could make.

There is an empty place within this wall,

A cross-shaped void; above it He is stretched

In some creative feat of hovering.

The cross will never cease to be a cross.

It cannot be back-filled; that’s not His way.

The only sure direction we can take

Is forward, through the empty, toward His arms.

What Flesh is Heir To

There was once asphalt here, but now new grass

Growing in tufted rectangles of sod,

Their little roots reintroducing soil,

So long kept dormant, to a life again.

The water from a recent rain makes mud

At every edge where sod meets sod; my feet 

Attempt to step where there is only green.

I fear my clumsy walking will dislodge

The little permanence it has achieved.

I’ve mourned to see the parking lots expand,

And smother soil to sleep, to wake no more.

But here before me is a little plot

Reversing, root by root, the larger trend.

I know it’s not so radical or grand,

But brother, let us love the thing we have.

Micro-Sapphics

1.

Spring is a warning,

warming the Gulf