I have a large reservoir of affection for Joseph Bottum, a poet, essayist, and editor of First Things. I can think of only a handful of writers whose prose and verse dazzles me more; despite his reactionary politics, Bottum scribbles with such tender and generous power that he often moves me to tears. I have read just about everything he’s written that’s in print. I have mused before on my blog-crushes; my feelings for J. Bottum extend well beyond that threshold into the realm of heart-palpitating, sweaty-palmed devotion. His wife and children need not fear; no stalker I.
He has some published poetry; formal and elegant, this is my favorite of his.
The Undivided Heart
(Lines Written on My Daughter Faith’s
Second Birthday)
Why should the aspens shrink from death?
In the clearing after fire,
they sift the sunlight through their leaves:
a ripple shield, a spray of shade
for tender shoots of tower pine
in whose grown shadow aspen dies.
Yesterday I caught my daughter
pushing gently at the mirror,
reaching for her self and other,
learning now that at the heart
of things there is divide. Christ,
it was from this I’d hoped to save her,
shelter her until I died
content beneath her tower shade.
In Faith’s green age I climbed the hill
behind the cabin, through the pines,
to sit alone in the fire glade.
The aspens flashed like mirrored panes,
and in the breeze the rippled leaves
whispered there of light and dark,
death and love and sacrifice,
the undivided heart that springs
to fill the broken heart of things.
That’s beautiful, Hugo, through and through. Thank you for posting it.