The Book of Uncommon Prayer is a title borrowed from the handsome volume of poetry by poet/novelist Katherine Mosby. The poem are short, eloquent meditations, exhortations, and uncompromising glimpses of the self in which she formulates, in her own words, “A form of prayer broad enough to include people who can't name their god.” Ms. Mosby's poems provided me with portals to related poems, and with an adhesive to bind the cycle together. There is no through line in the piece: the juxtaposition of texts is purely associative. This cycle is thus a meditation on a meditation, touching on some of the things for which we pray: sacred, secular, and seemingly quite profane.

The Confitebor is two verses from Psalm 42, but appears here in Latin because it is part of the opening prayers of the Ordinary of the Mass. Its last line, “Why are thou sad, my soul, and why dost thou trouble me?” and that of Bleach my bones “Let one day the shadow lift that binds my soul to sadness” intersect at a fundamental unease in the human condition.

Teach me the beauty and I Stop Writing the Poem stand in stark contrast to each other, the one describing an inner wilderness, the other domestic routine, but there is a lesson learned in both. The emptiness of the self is echoed in the emptiness of the shirt, arms in a folded embrace, foreshadowing the death of the poet's husband from a long illness.

Help me to laugh and Old Photograph share laughing as a theme, but the laughter of MacLeish's young woman (his wife Ada, an operatic soprano) appears forced. She seems to be saying to the lens, “Ne me touchez pas”, the first words of Melisande to Golaud in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande. The song is made from musical snippets of the opera. The couple alluded to in the poem, Gerald and Sara Murphy, were wealthy arts patrons (Gerald being an accomplished painter) who lived for a time as expatriates in a chalet in Cap d'Antibes that they dubbed “Villa America”. They regularly played host to Picasso, Hemingway, John Dos Passos and his wife, the Fitzgeralds and the MacLeishes, and many other creative luminaries of the early twentieth century.

Archibald MacLeish's The Two Priests and Music and Drum are two poems put together in one setting. The anti-clerical, anti-establishment tone is refreshing, coming from a lawyer who served as assistant director of the Office of War Information from 1942-1943. He also served as assistant secretary of state for cultural and public affairs and wrote speeches for Franklin Roosevelt.

The decidedly secular exhortations of Let sing the bedsprings serve as prelude to Ferlinghetti's lusty, beat hallucination, San Jose Symphony Reception (In Flagrante delicto). Lawrence Ferlinghetti was friends with conductor George Cleve, the director of the San José Symphony for twenty years. Cleve invited him to an after party following a concert one night for what Ferlinghetti referred to as the 'donor class'. This poem was his response. The music veers from quasi-Liszt through fractured Bach, to a sly allusion to Brahms' first cello sonata. This scene well could be a circle in a present-day Inferno, its frustrated denizens forever on the make.

Take Hands, on a poem by Laura Riding, is a moment of respite and a glimmer of hope.

Two poems of journey follow: For I have come so long is accompanied by variations over a repeating 12-note bass figure, suggesting weary travel, never arriving. Calypso was commissioned and premiered by the New York Festival of Song some years ago as part of its American Love Songs, and has found a home in this cycle. The poet supplies accent marks in the text, sometimes on unexpected syllables, to insure an island lilt.

The next three poems share the grave as their subject, albeit in very different ways. Much of Kenneth Patchen's poetry speaks of the horrors of war, and Breathe on the Living was penned during or just after World War II. It is set as a chorale. Archibald MacLeish's Words to Be Spoken is inscribed, “For Baoth Wiborg, son of Gerald and Sara Murphy, who died in New England in his sixteenth year and a tree was planted there.” He died in 1935 of meningitis. Mark Strand's brilliantly nihilistic Some Last Words, which begins with a rude mangling of one of Jesus' parables, is a wry allusion to the Seven Last Words of Christ.

Hope, and the opening music returns in Angels have I none and The Phoenix Prayer, two poems by Katherine Mosby, the latter being the last poem in the volume.

As the piece began with a standard prayer, it ends with Keep Watch, the text taken from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. A short postlude recalls some earlier musical thoughts, but ruminates predominantly on the initial question, “Why are thou sad, my soul, and why dost thou trouble me?”

1. Confitebor Bleach My Bones

Confitebor tibi in cithara, Bleach my bones

Deus, Deus meus: and twine my hair

Quare tristis es, when I am gone

Anima mea, feed my flesh to pigeons

Et quare conturbas me? or jackals

or the old men

who need to warm themselves

but first grant me

[I will praise Thee upon the harp, this: let one day

O God, my God, the shadow lift

Why art thou sad, my soul, that binds

And why dost thou trouble me?] my sould to sadness.

- Psalm 42 - Katherine Mosby

2. Teach me the beauty

Teach me the beauty

of my emptiness:

the white sky

not even a crow

will mark with its

jagged flight

or fierce cry.

Fill the hollows

of my ribs with wind

until they ring

like drained glasses

rubbed into song.

- Kathrine Mosby

3. I Stop Writing the Poem

I stop writing the poem

to fold the clothes. No matter who lives

or who dies, I'm still a woman.

I'll always have plenty to do.

I bring the arms of his shirt

together. Nothing can stop

our tenderness. I'll get back

to the poem. I'll get back to being

a woman. But for now,

there's a shirt, a giant shirt

in my hands, and somewhere a small girl

standing next to her mother

watching to see how it's done.

- Tess Gallagher

4. Help me to laugh

Help me to laugh

with so much heart

I shake the trees

and tremble the quiet

pools. Surprise

the old carp

and warblers

with my joy.

Multiply my delights

till they surround

me like an echo

revolving

in a gorge.

- Katherine Mosby

5. Old Photograph

There she is. At Antibes I'd guess

by the pines, the garden, the sea shine.

She's laughing. Oh, she always laughed

at cameras. She'd laugh and run

before that devil in the lens could catch her.

He's caught her this time though: look at her

eyes – her eyes aren't laughing.

There's no such thing as a fragrance in a photograph

but this one seems to hold a fragrance –

fresh-washed gingham in a summer wind.

Old? Oh, thirty maybe. Almost thirty.

This would have been the year I went to Persia –

they called it Persia then – Shiraz,

Bushire, the Caspian, Isfahan.

She sent me the news in envelopes lined in blue.

The children were well. The Murphys were angels:

they had given her new potatoes as sweet as peas

on a white plate under the linden tree.

She was singing Melisande with Croiza –

“mes longs cheveux.” She was quite, quite well.

I was almost out of my mind with longing for her . . .

There she is that summer in Antibes –

laughing

with frightened eyes.

- Archibald MacLeish

6. The Two Priests Music and Drum

Man in the West When men turn mob

Man in the East Drums throb:

Man lives best When mob turns men

Who loves life least, Music again.

Says the Priest in the West.

Man in the flesh When souls become Church

Man in the ghost Drums beat the search:

Man lives best When Church becomes souls

Who fears death most, Sweet music tolls.

Says the Priest in the East.

When State is the master

Man in the West Drums beat disaster:

Man in the East When master is man

Man in the flesh Music can.

Man in the ghost

Man lives best Each to be one,

Who loves life most, Each to be whole,

Who fears death least, Body and soul,

Says Man to the Priest Music's begun.

In the East, in the West.

- Archibald MacLeish - Archibald MacLeish

Let sing the bedsprings

the choirboys

and mating cats.

Ring all the bells

and raise the blinds:

Let this feeling

overflow

and swell the room

with light.

- Katherine Mosby

8. San Jose Symphony Reception (in flagrante delicto)

The bald man in plaid playing the harpsichord

stopped short and sidled over

to the sideboard

and copped a piece of Moka

on a silver plate

and slid back and started playing again

some kind of Hungarian rhapsodate

while the lady in the green eyeshades

leaned over him exuding

admiration and lust

Half-notes danced & tumbled

out of his instrument

exuding a faint odor of

chocolate cake

In the corner I was taking

a course in musical destruction

from the dark lady cellist

who bent over me with her bow unsheathed

and proceeded to saw me in half

As a consequence my pants fell right off

revealing a badly bent trombone which

even the first flutist

who had perfect embouchure

couldn't straighten out

- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

9. Take Hands

Take hands.

There is no love now.

But there are hands.

There is no joining now,

But a joining has been

Of a fastening of fingers

And their opening.

More than the clasp even, the kiss

Speaks loneliness,

How we dwell apart,

And how love triumphs in this.

- Laura Riding

10. For I have come so long

For I have come

so long without

a sign

into my path

shed moments

like the shake

of leaves

in handfuls

ripe and random,

a little grace

the comfort

of this gift.

- Katherine Mosby

11. Calypso

Dríver drive fáster and máke a good rún

Down the Spríngfield Line únder the shíning sún.

Flý like an áeroplane, don't pull up shórt

Till you bráke for Grand Céntral Státion New Yórk.

For thére in the míddle of thát waiting-háll

Should be stánding the óne that Í love best of áll.

If he's nót there to méet me when Í get to tówn,

I'll stánd on the síde-walk with téars rolling dówn.

For hé is the óne that I lóve to look ón,

The ácme of kíndness and pérfectión.

He présses my hánd and he sáys he loves mé,

Which I fínd an admiráble pecúliaritý.

The wóods are bright gréen on both sídes of the líne;

The trées have their lóves though they're dífferent from mine.

But the póor fat old bánker in the sún-parlor cár

Has nó one to lóve him excépt his cigár.

If Í were the héad of the Chúrch or the Státe,

I'd pówder my nóse and just téll them to wáit.

For lóve's more impórtant and pówerful thán

Éven a príest or a póliticián.

- W. H. Auden

12. Chorale: Breathe on the Living

Breathe on the living,

They are numb.

The dead have tidings,

These have none.

Stones roll off graves,

Men rise not.

Your Son was saved,

Ours cry out.

Send down a light,

All's dark here.

And prove not your love,

As men have done.

- Kenneth Patchen

13. Words To Be Spoken

for Baoth Wiborg son of Gerald and Sara Murphy who died in

New England in his sixteenth year and a tree was planted there

O shallow ground

That over ledges

Shoulders the gentle year,

Tender O shallow

Ground your grass is

Sisterly touching us:

Your trees are still:

They stand at our side in the

Night lantern

Sister O shallow

Ground you inherit

Death as we do.

Your year also –

The young face,

The voice – vanishes.

Sister O shallow

Ground

let the silence of

Green be between us

And the green sound.

- Archibald MacLeish

14. Some Last Words

It is easier for a needle to pass through a camel

Than for a poor man to enter a woman of means.