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To Some Religious Brothers

Beg! pray! or preach!  Or make one gravel-throated noise,
Make murmur or a whimper or a single moan!
Burble or belch or grunt!  The silence of your voice
Unsettles souls and states, and your mute-mouth makes known
Our pregnant insufficiency, our copious dearth.
Our squally saxophones disguise our heart’s distress;
We shroud our fretfulness in mad synthetic mirth;
We hammer out our angst with accentuated stress—
But our din-sounds sound dull against your dumb deeds!
(O strange and silent souls, who boast no heap of words
But nameless feats, remember to your God our needs.)
And from your black-robed halcyon platoon nothing’s heard.
We with our racket have unearthed no rest, but you—
You have unheavened peace in the thousand things you do.

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Patrick Murtha is a teacher at St. Mary’s Academy, in Kansas.  His poems have been published in the St. Austin Review and Modern Age, as well as both poetry and essays in the Angelus Magazine.

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17 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    After reading this several times, I have decided the message is that the “halcyon black-robed (preachers, pastors, priests) platoon” words and deeds diverge between telling God about ego enhanced “nameless feats” and “unheavened peace in the thousand things” that are done (or in essence doing the wrong or nonproductive things).

    Reply
    • Mary Gardner

      I didn’t read that into the poem, Roy. The narrator is contrasting his life, which employs noise to fill its emptiness, with the religious’s quiet yet full existence.

      Reply
      • Roy Eugene Peterson

        I respect your interpretation. This demonstrates to me how differently a poem may impact each reader. Patrick indeed may have a third reasoning and interpretation for us. Thank you , Mary, for sharing your view.

      • Patrick Murtha

        Roy and Mary, thank you looking into the poem. Roy’s interpretation left me wondering how poorly I might have worded it for him to draw such a conclusion. Mary’s interpretation is in line with what I had hoped it would say.

      • Roy Eugene Peterson

        Patrick,
        1. The poem begins with negatives in my view that set the stage including such words as “burble, or belch, or grunt;” “the silence of your voice;” “unsettle;” and “mute-mouth.”
        2. “Halcyon black-robed” is a negative take on the present because “halcyon days” refers to former days and not the present. Here is the definition from the Cambridge Dictionary: “a very happy or successful period in the past.”
        3. “Unheavened peace” is a negative for me, although with your comment it may mean something else. Unheavened in my mind means not heavenly, but earthly, which refers in my mind to the present religious situation in which “religious brothers” kowtow to modern sins and societal misdeeds or silence in the face of sin.

      • Patrick Murtha

        Roy, I see your point. I think you correct to read those negativities in your #1 and somewhat in #2. The narrator is worldly and his conscience bothers him. He does not comprehend the silent working. At first, all he wants is for the religious to make some noise, to join the world in empty din. Even the term “halcyon,” as you point out, is a thing of the past. The term “black-robed” is also a term of the past. “Halcyon” adds also a mythical or legendary character. He is saying, I’ll admit, that the black-robed religious are like that: a mythical thing of the past. It is an enigma to him. And yet, he is content in the end to call on their help. The term “unheavened” is more of an uncovering from heaven just as “unearth” is an uncovering from the earth. “Deheaven” would be to take heaven out of the thing. But “unheavenly” would be another term entirely just as “unearthly” is far from being unearthed.

    • Patrick Murtha

      Alena, thank you. I’ve been struggling with that couplet. To be honest, while I like how the first line of it shapes out, I am not satisfied with the last. I want to fit at least another word in, but…argh! frustration!

      Reply
  3. Margaret Coats

    Patrick, I think I get it. Mary Gardner could be right with her interpretation concerning the quiet yet full existence of humble religious brothers, like the Carthusians who practice extreme silence. But your speaker seems to demand religious speech. Line 1 addresses different kinds of religious: the mendicants who beg, the monks who pray, the active orders whose business should be preaching. Line 4 says silence “unsettles souls and states,” and line 5 with “pregnant” and “copious” describes “dearth” when there is much that needs to be said, but fails to come forth. In contrast to this are the “squally saxophones” of the irreligious world, and I love that reference to a typical instrument of jazz.

    This poem is published as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is meeting. I imagine it as addressed to them above all. The world’s racket is not restful, but neither is there heavenly peace in doings of Church bureaucrats.

    Reply
    • Patrick Murtha

      When I wrote this, several orders were floating through my head: the Benedictines, the SSPX brothers (I personally know many of them. They are immensely hard workers, jolly sorts in a conversation, but hardly boastful of even the wonderful things they have done.), the Carthusians, etc. I was somewhat reminiscent of Ernest Dowson’s poem about religious life as well. I confess that the middle two lines: Our squally saxophones disguise our heart’s distress; / We shroud our fretfulness in mad synthetic mirth. Gave motivation to keep the whole piece.

      Thank you for the delightful comments and critique. I am always open to thoughts for development.

      Reply
      • Margaret Coats

        The SSPX brothers are a breed apart. Amazing contributions to the spiritual health of others, with so much discerned and done not by rule, but on the practical basis of “what’s needed here and now.”

  4. Daniel Kemper

    Perhaps my coffee’s not fully in effect this morning. When I gave the poem a read, I was carried along by the imagery, and the progress towards a strong punch at the conclusion — and I very much liked “unheavened peace” but I was tentative on interpreting several places that one would have to be immediately strong on in order to receive the poem’s impact. At the first read, I whiffed it on “religious brothers” and was thinking, “Which two brothers?” rather than monastic orders. Unheavened peace to me could have meant peace brought down from heaven, i.e. brought from the unattainable to the attainable or made peace into a miserable activity. One things of the lawful peace inside the communist coutries of the past. Hoping only to add this comment to give one person’s experience. Hope it helps somehow.

    Reply
    • Patrick Murtha

      Daniel, thank you. If the poem made you add another cup of coffee to your morning or even a whole new pot, I apologize. I appreciate your comments. You may be correct that it requires a little more clarity. The title, for one, is a poor start, and I should have reconsidered that. It perhaps misleads. Anyhow, I enjoyed your comments.

      Reply
  5. Adam Sedia

    This poem is a wonderful statement about the power and sanctity of silence. I have attended masses and divine offices in churches of monastic orders, and I’m always struck by the peace I feel there. Far from being “nonproductive” as I’ve seen in some comments (a thoroughly Calvinistic view), the “nameless feats” reflect a life of everything done for God out of view of the world (“Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doth”).

    I also like seeing Alexandrine verse. It is much rarer in English than in Romance poetry. I wonder if that “non-English” choice was intentional.

    Reply
    • Patrick Murtha

      Adam, I am so delighted you caught the hexameter! I wondered if it would be lost. My point in choosing hexameter over pentameter was to suggest more wordiness in the narrator.

      As for attending Mass or other liturgy at monasteries, it is incredibly peaceful. For several years of my life, I grew up next to a Seminary in the miles from anywhere significant. The Seminary was a place of peace and calm. And often I’d go there for Compline (one of the most beautiful of the Divine Offices), and the peace was heavenly. Thank you again.

      Reply
  6. Monika Cooper

    The initial interest of this poem for me was whether the “religious brothers” were going to be praised or critiqued/satirized. The first lines certainly kept me guessing. But the brothers gathered points in their favor as the poem developed and, in the end, it makes a beautiful case for the monastic life and the power of silence.

    Love the crowded chiming and condensed thought of the line: “But our din-sounds sound dull against your dumb deeds.” Hopkins could have written it. And the conclusion that appreciates “the thousand things” the brothers do – it’s a deft reversal of the common complaint that contemplatives are mere shirkers. There is a whole world of action within monastery walls, where a thousand “little things done with great love” are helping God save this sorry sorry world.

    Reply
    • Patrick Murtha

      Monika, thank you for comments. It joys me to know that you wondered whether the poems praised or satirized. (That was more than I myself intended.) I work daily with religious brothers, and they are an enigma to me in this regard. In the same way that stage-hands are enigmas. I confess myself, at times, to be a bit of a show-man, an actor. And why people would shy away from the public eye, the center stage, baffles me. But I appreciate them still, and marvel at their virtues. And so, this is a little thing I can do to praise them and their higher calling. God bless them!

      Reply

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