My heart's beatings

My heart’s beatings                                                                  

I swallowed Your wine,

causing me to dance in the streets;

letting my heart slip out a bit

from under the heel of my brain –

the caravanserai licensed again

to traffic in the goods of companionship.

Your wine sings in my blood, years later,

not with the rough immediacy of tavern songs

but with the hymns and psalmodies of praise,

an influence to my every movement,

a blood-part of me, the strength of me,

the heaven’s sake of my heart’s beatings.

When this cup is crushed, when my blood is dust,

(judging the Infinite from the particular), I pray

Your wine will sing through me still,

filling my veins and throat, core and skull

with Your wine and light and song

on my wondrous way to becoming You.

O child of God, wine loosens your tongue and sends you

rambling beyond the bounds of propriety.

                   (from A Jewel in the Dust)