Otter's Rock

One of our professors here at seminary writes hymn texts on the side (our President Emeritus did, too, before his death). Some of them I really like. For National Poetry Month, how about I transcribe one of them for you:

I Was Wed At Sinai
by Dr. Mark Oldenburg

I was wed at Sinai to my treasure,
and my pleasure
was to hold them close to me;
link love and labor
until together we
set the whole world free.

Not alone from slavery I saved them,
but I gave them
life to live in liberty.
They'd be my people--
just, peaceful, holy, free--
I their God would be.

All my ways of justice they rejected
and, dejected,
saw I my beloved fall
to be a nation,
just like the nations all,
fleeing from my call.

Broken hearted yet I will not hurt them
nor desert them,
faithful to my faithless love.
No thundring edict
can raise their hears above;
I must woo my love.

Not with bribes will I win them from error,
nor with terror,
but uplifted on a tree
with arms wide open
I'll draw their hearts to me
for eternity.

text based on Jeremiah 31:31-34
Sing to hymn tune Pan Buh (Gradual, Prague, 1567), #484 in LBW. Contact Dr. Oldenburg at Lutheran Theological Seminary if you want to use it.

With the sending out of assignments for remixredux08, there has been a lot of discussion about remixing and hard assignments and such, and it has occured to me to ponder--if remixing is so difficult (and it is the most difficult kind of ficathon I've ever been involved in, definitely), why do we do it? Why is the Remix ... Redux such a big deal every year, right up there with yuletide? And I think it's the same reason that poets write sonnets. Because sometimes it's better to do the hard thing because it is hard, because it really makes you focus on your craft, on getting every shred of power you can out of the words and the ideas and the characters you have available to you.

So. An appropriate poem.

On the Sonnet
If by dull rhymes our English must be chained,
And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet
Fettered, in spite of pained loveliness,
Let us find, if we must be constrained,
Sandals more interwoven and complete
To fit the naked foot of Poesy:
Let us inspect the Lyre, and weigh the stress
Of every chord, and see what may be gained
By ear industrious, and attention meet;
Misers of sound and syllable, no less
Than Midas of his coinage, let us be
Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath crown;
So, if we may not let the Muse be free,
She will be bound with garlands of her own.
-John Keats, 1819

I have a choc_fic due today, and I'm scrambling around for a title for it (I know, but I'm really bad with titles). Anyway, in the scramble I came across my list of poems I've saved from various places. And now, I want to write a story for Sharon (Boomer) Valerii from BSG to this poem:

One Art
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master,
though it may look like (write it!) like disaster.
-Elizabeth Bishop (1976)

It doesn't fit this story, but it fits her so well I have no idea why I didn't list it as a prompt back when they were calling for prompts.