RAINMAKER OF GRACE (Foreword to Rain of Grace by SIAM) Sometimes, somewhere, one is graced to come to great abundance. It can be flowers. I rode from Valencia to Cordova by an old mountainous road skirting Sierra Morena across barren La Mancha, and found myself in a narrow dale drained by a meager creek. A vast field of poppies spanned the blood-red banks, painting the earth by dense colours of flame and royalty, and on the opposite slope, a blinding-white chapel of Our Lady withstood relentless assaults of their crimson waves. I waded this living bonfire and felt its intense heat on my flushed face through shut eyelids. Such a great explosion of flower power is grace. It can be fire. In the fiery land of Kamchatka, a narrow mountainous peninsula wading the cold waters of the North Pacific, I saw a volcano in full blast of its furnaces. Deep and rich crimson liquid engulfed the mountain and ran down the steep slopes of Avacha, its colours constantly changing from purple to golden brown, from glowing embers of forgotten forest bonfire to ferocious blaze of sun-like lava, the stuff stars are made of. It was The Mount of Fire as dreamt by mystics in their midnight visions. It can be femininity, another great element of life unmentioned by Heraclites. In the very last day of May, I came to an age-old tiny and tranquil Ukrainian town with the ancient church of Our Lady of Intercession looking into a slow river from their high bank, and was swept off my feet by the flash flood of young maidens, fresh and sixteen, graduates at school-leaving ball in the park under open warm blue sky, with white bands and garlands of flowers in their golden hair, in white ceremonial aprons on top of dark and mercilessly short skirts leaving open their graceful knees above high white socks and dark sleeveless tops flashing tender arms and elbows, with their blue eyes a-gleaming in the shade of black poplars. It can be rain. It falls on the parched land of the Negev and fills its open ravines, overflows every hole or depression, and by hundreds of small streams it runs over the stretching roots of huge old jujube trees and brings to life sleeping grass; it sustains laughing jackals and desert foxes and leopards, it brings life back to life after long summer sleep. It buzzes like a hive of angry bees, and turns the ever arid south of Palestine into vast celebration of greenery. This miracle of turning desert into living land is sheer grace. The poetry of SIAM belongs to the same category of primeval elements. It is akin to fire, water, flowers, and blossoming femininity in their great abundance. It is the Mount of Fire and the Desert Rain. SIAM is a miraculous rainmaker in the tradition of West Africa, and the rain he calls for is indeed the rain of grace. His appearance in our Philistine age in the mundane Indianapolis, Indiana is a miracle undeserved by us; but then grace usually is undeserved. SIAM belongs to the tradition of spiritual poetry, one that begins with the Psalms and leads through deep Sufi mysticism of Rumi and all-American cosmic spirit of Walt Whitman. His poetry is a natural phenomenon as much as a work of art, and reminds us of the sacred roots of the divine vocation. In his psalm of the world he writes: There is not enough Mercy in the world, not enough gentle reciprocity, the reciprocal miracle of being a simple good human being, not enough smiles in the world to outweigh the frowns of the world, not much Holy dance or intimate romance left in the soul of the soul of the world – not enough grace to save face in the world... from the foreword to Rain of Grace, New & Selected Poems by SIAM by Israel Adam Shamir
Posted on: Mon, 02 Dec 2013 21:07:11 +0000
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