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A Poem by Mark Doty

By Robert Hass
December 20, 1998

For Christmas week I ought to be able to find a poem that rings out like Handel's "Messiah." What I found was a poem that describes how Handel's "Messiah" rings out. It's by Mark Doty, from his recent book "Sweet Machine" (HarperCollins). It's too long to quote all of it here. It begins by describing burning clouds, "torn and sun-shot swaddlings," over a Methodist church where the choral society is preparing a performance:

From MESSIAH (Christmas Portions)
This music
demonstrates what it claims:
glory shall be revealed. If art's
acceptable evidence,
musn't what lies
behind the world be at least
as beautiful as the human voice?
The tenors lack confidence,
and the soloists,
half of them anyway, don't
have the strength to found
the mighty kingdoms
these passages propose
– but the chorus, all together,
equals my burning clouds,
and seems itself to burn,
commingled powers
deeded to a larger, centering claim.
These aren't anyone we know;
choiring dissolves
familiarity in an up-
pouring rush which will not
rest, will not, for a moment,
be still.
Aren't we enlarged
by the scale of what we're able
to desire? Everything,
the choir insists,
might flame;
inside these wrappings
burns another, brighter life,
quickened, now,
by song: hear how
it cascades, in overlapping,
lapidary waves of praise? Still time.
Still time to change.

Robert Hass, former U.S. poet laureate, is the author, most recently, of the collection "Sun Under Wood."

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