Sunday/Wilderness

                            Sunday/Wilderness

“What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”
(Gerard Manley Hopkins)

Today is Christ's Temptation in the Desert, where Satan offers Christ things of this world, because they are of his world.

In the Wilderness

He, of his gentleness,
Thirsting and hungering
Walked in the Wilderness;
Soft words of grace he spoke
Unto lost desert—folk
That listned wondering.
He heard the bittern call
From ruined palace—wall,
Answered him brotherly;
He held communion
With the she—pelican
Of lonely piety.
Basilisk, cockatrice,
Flocked to his homilies,
With mail of dread device,
With monstrous barbed stings,
With eager dragon—eyes;
Great bats on leathern wings
And old, blind, broken things
Mean in their miseries.
Then ever with him went,
Of all his wanderings
Comrade, with ragged coat,
Gaunt ribs —poor innocent —
Bleeding foot, burning throat,
The guileless young scapegoat;
For forty nights and days
Followed in Jesus’ ways,
Sure guard behind him kept,
Tears like a lover wept.

(Robert Graves)