ANTHONY S. ABBOTT



official author website

The Search For Wonder in the Cradle of the World


ISBN: 1-879934-66-3
St. Andrews College Press

$10.95

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"I dig with the boots of memory," the poet says, and this figure of speech, homely, disturbing, wry, suggests the tone of The Search for Wonder in the Cradle of the World.  Here are poems of loss, of triumph, of heartbreak, of dark probing, of love--most of all of love in a thousand guises."

                -Fred Chappell

Genesis

For Stephen and Katy

 

The swinging Lord, that master maker

of cool chords, shifted in his empty

heaven and said, "I need me some music,"

 

So the sky was full of music

and he declared that it was good

 

And then the equally androgynous Lord

said to herself, I need some light

to fill the fragrant fingers of the night

 

So the waters shone with light

and she declared that it was good

 

And when the light and the music played

together the stars wept for the beauty of it

And the swinging, singing Lord said

 

I need me some people to praise

this thing that I have made

 

The Lord thought long and long about what

sort of people might be the purest praisers,

what sort of people might truly see the light

 

And he made man, with his cunning brain,

and he made the zebras and the elk

and the swift running antelope for man

 

to wonder at. And she made woman with her

imagining mind and her long, limber dancing

legs and her eyes that saw the color in the light

 

And when the man and woman had been crafted

The Lord declared that it was good

 

Then the man heard the light in the woman's eyes

And the woman saw the music in the man's mind

And the music was the silky manes of violins

 

And the light was like the laughter of clarinets

and the glitter of guitars. And the man and the

woman moved to the measure of the music and swayed

 

to the gold and amber brilliance of the light.

And they knew that the sound was neither his nor hers

nor like anything that ever was before.

 

And the Lord saw what they had made

And behold it was very good