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“Where Ever-present Joy Knows
Naught of Time”

—Dante, Paradiso, Canto X, D.L. Sayers translation

a rondeau redouble

Where ever-present joy knows naught of time,
The music of infinity is sung
In full-toned harmony and richest rhyme,
In higher speech than any earthly tongue.

Outside the bounds of days or hours, it’s sung;
No years are measured as its deep-toned chime
Resounds with overtones, and bells are rung
Where ever-present joy knows naught of time.

Below the bells, cathedral anthems climb
To vaulted ceilings, where the voices flung
By choristers accord with the sublime,
True music of infinity that’s sung

Above the arch of sky. No mortal lung
Can give full voice to it. Earth’s paradigm
Must serve for now, however much we long
For full-toned harmony and richest rhyme.

Celestial choirs’ eternal hymns proclaim
A ceaseless circling psalm—a perfect song
Where Evensong and Matins are the same,
In higher speech than any earthly tongue.

There, night has disappeared, and now among
The music which no longer measures time—
Where past and future, words and notes, have long
Ago become eternal, perfect rhyme—
Is ever-present joy.

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Hanging Harps

“As for our harps, we hanged them up upon the trees
that are therein.… How shall we sing the Lord’s song
in a strange land?” —Psalm 137: 2, 4, Coverdale

Our harps are tangled, hanging on the trees
Of Babylon. Our hopes are strangled, dangling
From sapless branches scorched in desert breeze
That scorns our hymns; its currents strum the strings
Whose groans are haunting us from where they’re hanging,
Mangling the songs we thought our memories
Would sing forever—melodies that ring
Inside our minds. This wind’s harsh howls wring
The heart from Zion’s charming harmonies,
Distort glad dances into mournful keys
Alien to us; these morbid chords
Turn dancing into mourning. Heartache parches
The spirit, till the mind forgets the words.
How can we sing, while our captors wrench such dirges
From long-lived festive rites? Our vocal cords
Are seared by sorrow; these once-graceful harps
Can vibrate only with our miseries
While hanging in this foreign air that warps
Their wood where they are tangled in the trees.

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Cynthia Erlandson is a poet and fitness professional living in Michigan.  Her second collection of poems, Notes on Time, has recently been published by AuthorHouse, as was her first (2005) collection, These Holy Mysteries.  Her poems have also appeared in First Things, Modern Age, The North American Anglican, The Orchards Poetry Review, The Book of Common Praise hymnal, and elsewhere.

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25 Responses

  1. C.B. Anderson

    Both of these are marvelous examples of the confluence of form and function, where the musicality speaks for itself, yet speaks also to the subject matter. Where have you been hiding these?

    Reply
    • Cynthia Erlandson

      Thank you so much, C.B. It’s very encouraging that you refer to musicality, which is always a main goal for me (and music is one of my major themes). These are both pretty new; in fact this is my first rondeau redouble.

      Reply
  2. Sally Cook

    Lovely, just lovely! I can see those harps, hanging in the trees;
    hear that speech, higher than any earthly tongue.

    Thank you, Cyntha.

    Reply
    • Cynthia Erlandson

      I’m so happy that the poems were able to bring these these things alive for you, Sally. Thank you very much!

      Reply
  3. Paul Buchheit

    Thoughtful, descriptive, pensive. Thanks Cynthia. I didn’t know whether to rejoice or mourn, but I loved them both!

    Reply
    • Cynthia Erlandson

      Thank you, Paul. I love your comment about rejoicing and mourning; they almost seem, in this world, to be two sides of the same coin, so to speak. I’m often amazed and perplexed that, with so many scary things going on in the world, there can also be good things happening at the same time, like the community we have with each other on this site.

      Reply
  4. Yael

    Both poems are very enjoyable, and the first one is my favorite. I love the vivid imagery in both of them, and the flowing rhymes are beautiful, thank you very much.

    Reply
    • Cynthia Erlandson

      Thank you for reading and commenting, Russel. A blessed Christmastide and happy new year to you!

      Reply
  6. Joshua C. Frank

    Cynthia, both of these are lovely, but I’m drawn to the first for its haunting beauty and how it captures the perfect beauty of Heaven so well. I love the rondeau redoublé, and it’s the perfect form for the “music of infinity.” Well done!

    Reply
    • Cynthia Erlandson

      Your comments mean a great deal to me, Joshua — thank you! I’m also grateful to Evan for the well-matched artwork he chose to go with the first poem.

      Reply
      • Joshua C. Frank

        Thank you, Cynthia. It’s quite an honor that my comments mean a great deal to you, especially since you’ve only said this to me, Susan, Brian, and James. It’s nice to know that you see me as being of their caliber, even though I’m well aware that I still have a long way to go to actually be such!

  7. James Sale

    Very beautiful work; I especially like the ‘Joy Knows’ and its clever form which reenacts its own subject matter but with subtle variations. Good to see, too, someone referring to the DL Sayers’ translation of Dante – still possibly my favourite in a very strong field, partly because she does render it in terra rima. Very difficult!

    Reply
    • Cynthia Erlandson

      Thank you so much, James; your comments are especially meaningful because of your skillful use of terza rima in “The English Cantos.” I totally agree about Dorothy Sayers’ translation; the fact that she keeps to the terza rima, and does it so brilliantly, has made her translation the one I read.

      Reply
      • James Sale

        Thanks Cynthia and for not correcting my ‘terra rima’ – I am sure you realised it was autocorrect did it! I can’t seem to get my program not to do that and I sometimes miss its sly efficiency. But your ‘Joy’ is unaffected and still wonderful!

  8. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Cynthia, these two poems are superb! I am a huge fan of the rondeau redoublé and you do the form every justice with your mellifluous composition. I like the change from ‘Where’ to ‘Is’ at the close… it completes the cycle of thought and enhances the beauty of your message.

    Both poems highlight the musicality of language with poetic device used in a masterly way. I love the assonance employed in “Hanging Harps” – the dirge-like sound of “morbid chords”, for instance, heightening the message with emotion.

    These poems are laden with truth, beauty, and a skill that impresses and inspires me. Very well done indeed!

    Reply
  9. Cynthia Erlandson

    I’m very honored by your reaction to these, Susan, especially since you are such a master at the rondeau redouble (it’s my first) — so, thank you very much! Indeed, your work inspires me. I’m sure the fact that my epigraph comes from such a beautiful psalm, made it easier to effect the musicality.

    Reply
  10. BRIAN YAPKO

    These are indeed exquisite, Cynthia. The rondeau redouble is a difficult form and yours is quite wonderful. And your Harp poem is a splendid exploration of the Psalm. We’ll done!

    Reply
  11. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Cynthia, I have always been a fan of your poems, perhaps because I have sung in groups and soloed all over the world and appreciate the lyric qualities you bring to mind. Your second poem reminds me of one I once sang with Boney M, a rock group out of the Netherlands, titled, “Down by the Rivers of Babylon.” Sometimes music and memories of songs are all we have under trying conditions!

    Reply
    • Cynthia Erlandson

      You are so right about music, Roy; I, for one, NEED music. I’m always turning on the radio or a c.d.; I don’t know how I could deal with the craziness in the world, without it. It reminds me that there is order and sense, though it’s often hard for us to see those things.

      Reply
  12. Margaret Coats

    “Hanging Harps” is a nicely done circular complaint of despair (by circular, I mean it ends as it began). I feel especially the “long-lived festive rites” wrenched into dirges!

    But the first poem is one of the best I’ve ever seen on the rare (because ineffable) subject of heaven. You do well to confine yourself to making some hints about the music, and these are thought out and then expressed so beautifully. Pope Benedict, who passed on in that direction this morning, reminded us that infidels like Nietzsche no longer even want a kingdom of heaven. He and his fellow “grown men” want a kingdom of earth. The much-to-be-lamented Pope says the Nietzschean desire to enjoy the material world now, uninhibited by any scruples, has to a large extent shaped the modern mindset of how our contemporaries feel about all of life. Your poem, Cynthia, reminds us to think in the contrary way shared by so many of our predecessors on this earth–who were all the happier waiting for what this world cannot offer.

    Reply
    • Cynthia Erlandson

      I’m deeply grateful for your words, Margaret— thank you so much. It wouldn’t have even occurred to me to try to write about heaven, without the springboard that Dante and Dorothy Sayers gave me.

      Reply
  13. jd

    Congratulations, Cynthia on placing second. I must have missed these
    the first time around. Glad of the chance to read them now.

    Reply

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