notes on mass parts

just to note sources, the poems were written to the parts of a mass that my friend rob strebendt wrote for a church choir i was a part of last year.  (all the prepositional phrases!)  they're written for (kinda) e.m., who for the purposes of this series (that, in part, of doing a kind of reverse later-john donne thing) is a dude, but not in actual life.

hence the title "mass parts" is pret-ty literal...that is, it's a metaphor (?) grounded in uber-literality!  and don't worry about what it's a metaphor for, because i'm not worried about it.

huzzah for first drafts made overly public!  no, it's not actually all that public.  but still probably too public.

mass parts: sanctus

for e.m.

i want
the rest
inherent in Your breadth--

the joyous
expanse
of Your forgiving taste--

the promise
of life in You, life for You,
my Lord--
adoring, longed-for servitude.


for so long
i wandered
the unbound plain--
no seed for grain,
no water for the seed--

o Love, o Life,

how can You love me
o so much
to wish to harvest
nothingness?

O Lord,
grant me, i pray, faith in Your rest--
o grant, o grant,
grant me
Your seed.

mass parts: sanctus

for e.m.

like a cracked black stone
upon which the water has always dropped,
the stone opening further and further
under the soft wet fall--

or the endless shadowed stretch and furl,
the vast ebb and flow of wings
inherent to ascending giant birds, eagles,
vultures,
the rhythm of wings' arcing movement
toward the bone-white sun--

like the trace
of shadow
in the groove
of tree bark
pressed to liquid black
against its lit grain--

i open the depths of myself
to the rhythm of your stroke,
my Lord--i open my darkness
to your broad pattern.

mass parts: gloria

for e.m.

i see You in the shiver-sweet beauty
of all things i love to look at--
the yellow signal of the iris
flagging its rich blue pendant petal,
the shuffle of its edge in thickening wind,
shifting stem within rustling green sheaf
nearby a night-blue lake that moves but will not leave.
or silver sky too thin and bright
to be abandoned to its rain
but plain with moisture all the same--
unharvested storm within its sheen.
or sunset rose against a white
column, at third-story height, above still trees
whose leaves now show their purple under-green,
waiting out for night--the red within the light
reaping its white within the column-height.
tumbled together, each sense of what is seen
become distinct, an eye for purple and for green
and yellow, each thing its color, each color
its thing--this gap, this over-consonance,
this bright and dark, this it, this this,
this is to i what You are be,
so shiver, shifter, so sower and so sweet.

mass parts: kyrie

to e.m.

if it be Your will, make me
the instrument
of Your satisfaction--
mold me to the requirement
of Your line.

for upon Your fingering
my slightest string,

the strands of song within me
come together,
fall disjunct
according to Your pleasure.

please, please,
enact on me
the note You wish--
strike from me
what chord You find
the sweetest to your taste.


My Lord, I was nothing
before you put your hands on me--
and when Your touch goes from me
i will be nothing again
but what You made of me.

so form me, my everything-maker, upon Your line,
string me, pluck me hard and soft,
turn my song upon Your cresting word--

for You i sing, sing,
i sing anything.