I Caught This Morning Morning's Minyan Poem by gershon hepner

I caught this morning morning’s minyan
in the beth hamidrash where
ten men give God His dominion
which He is prepared to share
with all Jews who daily daven
in the room where men umodish.
gather like a witches’ coven
facing east, the aron qodesh
in which Torah scrolls are lying,
waiting to be leined on Mondays,
Thursdays, Sabbaths, festivals
and, and on fasts, sometimes on Sundays,
read with ritual rationales.
Christ is not their Lord, yet they
come to their minyan every day.

Inspired by Gerald Manley Hopkins’s sonnet “The Windhover” which was quoted in David Gates’s review of Justin Cartwright’s novel “To Heaven By Water” (“Sensimilia and Sensimility, ” NYT Book Review, August 16,2009) .


THE WINDHOVER
BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

To Christ our Lord
I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

8/16/09