Peter Lilly: Poems

Πνεῦμα  (Pneuma) I hear you in the near silent sleep of Gabriel The great proclaimer of good news, Resting in infancy. You whisper through his tiny nostrils Nourishing the matrix of his budding cells With so much more than bread. I hear you in autumn’s rustling mural Fluttering flaming flakes before the blue With a cogency unseen. You whistle past our window cills Piercing through our self-made hells For which the incarnate bled. I hear you sing beneath the sensorial   The tone beneath the chord, within the myth the true, A resounding symphony That echoes between hearts and hills, That melodies in the deepest living well; The source from which all souls are fed. This poem is inspired by the reflections of Owen Barfield, often called the ‘First and Last Inkling,’ who, in his book ‘Poetic Diction’, reflects on the evolution of language. The Greek work ‘pneuma’ can accurately be translated as ‘breath', 'wind' or ...

You took on flesh, True flesh and grew With the same astonishing  Life-long quickness  Of my one-year-old son. You had a first birthday,  Finding your feet, The Word, imitating language With sighs and groans, The Word of Life, so deep within, So clear and true, In unadulterated expression Of a conviction beyond Language. On the 28th of December my son, Gabriel, will have his first birthday. The year has been indescribable. Yet throughout all the challenges, just revelling in the privilege of being with our little boy as he grows has brought such sheer joy. At this time of year I'm obviously thinking about the incarnation. But rather than Jesus' birth, I'm thinking of him at the same stage of life as our little boy, as a one-year-old. Gabriel has been walking for a couple of months now, and often makes long convicted speeches in sounds that no one else understands, waving his hands like he's teaching some essential truth to a captiv...

I find myself where the wind in the leaves is heard but traffic is not, where hills without houses roll to the horizon, where the creaky chair and  desk of tired varnish furnish the coming days with ideal, and I must write. The air is fresh and the sun blistering, et je vais parler français  avec les amis, en buvant le vin de la région,  et la sensation de la conversation dans une belle langue  ajoute une émotion pure, when I come to write verse in my native tongue. And the boisterous laughter of children, and the giggling of an infant energise this siesta atmosphere to fill the time with melody, and the fill the melody with words, and to fill the words with meaning, to fill the coming months avec le repos de maintenant. Written in July 2017 while Silje and I were on retreat with some friends in a tiny village in the south of 'Le Parc National des Cévennes.'  As I learn to speak more French I have ex...