Best Ineffable Poems
The sound of rain falling on your roof,
feeling raindrops on your flesh...ineffable--
The tightness of a hug from one you have
not seen for a very long time...ineffable--
Laughter of young children playing, yours
or not, doesn't matter...ineffable--
The way a sunrise gives you hope, and a
sunset presages a peaceful death...ineffable--
The touch on your neck by your beloved,
the quiet sharing of doing nothing...ineffable--
The awakening from a dream full of wonders,
the sense you were in another world...ineffable--
The moment of joining with another human being,
the strange mixture of joy and sadness...ineffable--
Beholding a tree in full bloom, its myriad leaves
turning in the wind, whispering life...ineffable--
The quiet, secret, almost desperate longing
for transcendence, for God... ineffable....
*** Words Vanish ***
Words vanish!
Disperse — as prayer begun
Moves to clear the mind
And bare the heart,
Swelling the soul to meet Thee
With love…
Sending on high gratitude’s praises,
Pulsing on into silence —
Worshipping in awe of Thee!
By Thy grace
Blessing along Faith’s way
With heavens’ lights leading
Searching souls
Close, ever closer to Thy presence —
Drawn to that touch —
Of communion with Thee!
Yet, prayer in a moment might flee
Back to thought to fruitlessly plea
For the ineffable to reveal
Some phrases of devotion and humility…
From the human to the Holy
…Entering Radiance
Words fail the feelings
Of the soul’s prayerful flight in adoring love
For Thee God…
God alone
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** The words “God Alone” are etched in the stone
above the arched entrance to the Trappist Gethsemani
Monastery in Bardstown, KY, USA (home of Fr. Thomas Merton, teacher, peacemaker, author
of The Seven Storey Mountain, New Seeds of Contemplation, No Man Is an Island, & more.
He also had a great fondness for James Joyce and taught often about poetry. Lectures of his
classes at Gethsemani are widely available on-line.)
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(c) sallyyoung eslinger 9/15/2023
Thanks be to God—-
Musing Lately
Let’s just say
with my husband now having heart troubles and my
being old (& bedridden while waiting for my new prosthetic-leg) makes for on-going thinking, remembering, observing, reflecting, tentatively concluding, believing
how the ineffable ultimately rules…and one’s
language (for all its commanding need to be used with a true Love ) finds w
o
r
d
s
to be less than their expressive task f
a
i
l
(despite even some i
divine inspiration)
n
g
to cast some light brighter
than the humble votive’s flame flickering in the heart —
Or more than the one tear — felt but unseen' — in the corner of the eye, bringing along its cathartic story …ready to fall down over the cheek…
Or to realize (especially after 40 years togerther) that devotion lives well beyond a 3-word statement in heights carried there by a tried, spiritual touching of our auras in the room: lives aligned for better or worse in the profound music that our closeness creates. The poems are born in being or feeling before the written.
(c) sally young eslinger 7/13/24**
In my youth, i was a devotee of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. (Beckett even sent me a hand-written letter in response to one i sent him.). I pretty much memorized “Waiting for Godot.” Joyce and Beckett both saw words dissolving — into the ineffable. Some powerful poems lead us there, but that there, I’ve found is in the unspeakable.
We paid the price for hasty choices made
and cried our tears for dreams put to the blade.
The lessons learned a hefty price we paid.
Against our woes, we rail — the urgency to bail.
Excuses very stale — comparisons must fail?
With truthful knowledge, man must themselves arm,
protecting him from possible great harm,
as ignorance deceptively would charm.
Lament will take its toll — do travel to-wards goal.
Some silver tongues extol — their lavish lyrics roll.
Plumose-like memories that tease then fade.
A fair comparison to current ails,
the signs of growing rapprochement disarm.
Ineffable the mysteries of t’ soul.
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© SUZETTE SONNET—SUZNET for short (9 April 2021)
A 14-line sonnet of alternating triplets and couplets, concluding with a quatrain.
1. Rhyme scheme: aaa (b1–b2)(b3–b4) ccc (d1–d2)(d3–d4) abcd
2. The triplets are iambic pentameter [*/|*/|*/|*/|*/].
3. The rhyming couplets are iambic hexameter and include an internal rhyme, namely [*/|*/|*/—*/|*/|*/] (alexandrines).
4. Concluding with a quatrain in iambic pentameter that summarises the poem in a rhyme scheme set by the triplets and couplets.
5. The volta is at L9. OR the couplets may define pivots within the poem, ie a tilting or shifting in the mainline of thought. When the latter is employed, it needs to be uniform throughout the poem.
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LEXICON
ineffable: (adj) too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words.
plumose: (adj) (biology) having many fine filaments or branches which give a feathery appearance.
rapprochement: (n) (especially in international affairs) an establishment or resumption of harmonious relations.
Like a stalking hoarse,
Have endured shrewd days and night,
Like the physician ampoule,
Ready on my skin to pour.
flights from ignorance left these
Strawberry marks,
Eyes glued on the object
compelled to the hard brown wooden logs in art,
And the iron in room "G02".
Friends and enemies unrelenting
awaits enticement,
numberless distraction as obstacles on my path,
beckoning to the banquet of misery,
as this dangling reputation slowly pace along undeterred.
ego gangs gauged and chokes to loose the prize
avalanche of invisible darts piercing from home and abroad,
but I, a pretty piece of flesh,
Stand aloof to watch a drama
With the ointments of the supreme being
Within my bowels,
Those that see the seals, demand the cause,
Of quietude in this world of madness.
As I stood aloof to watch the wretch mirth turns to mourn
Ah weary watcher, like you, I am a mere voyager,
on the route where the delight of the peasantry
Is wept into oblivion
There are dangerous curves
As we advance,
there are dangling arrows,
The old serpent is not dead,
he hides in ambuscades
The road becomes deeper and deeper,
The shades of the precipices fall bleaker and bleaker.
The clouds gather overhead,
Doleful voices
The way hardly discernible in this gloom
The path is dreary,
our feet too often wobble,
Heart ambushed by fiercest lust,
Yet, Firm stand I.
Not in my natural element
O, to find the words that describe
How I feel In my beloved's eye.
Like a mighty lion before household cat
As fierce champion to his victim before a spat
Roaring ocean before modest pond;
A tornado upon a city soon-to-be-gone.
O, to find the words that describe
How I feel when cast a glint from my beloved's eye.
If only I might draw up proper rhyme
A verse to do justice to Beloved, in due time.
I pray thee, let it bleed out on this page, my mind,
To let one see how it is she stirs this chest of mine.
Yes, indeed, mighty lion to lowly cat;
Fierce champion to opponent he would snap;
Roaring ocean to man-made splash;
Twister upon the village it would dash.
You see the emotion my dear, my darling, in my chest doth cause to swell?
One would say to great pleasure and joy it should to me compel.
And, yea, alas, it would, if at all,
If it did not speak of me as ineffably small.
For lion, ocean, champion; I am not he.
But cat, splash, and broken-one-to-be.
Nor twister, with harsh voice and fretful gale, am I
But rather the village laid waste in the blink of an eye.
The fragmented truth of all truths
synonymously changes within themselves all the time
without changing the absolute rigid whole truth
ineffable insoluble mystery of existing truth
Do you hear the hillbilly truck driver singing,
while the Black man's driving the slapped low ringing
in the background and you say I'm rigid in my points-of-view,
but these dead seem to still hold their sway over you?
Do you think the tree is white, too, remember
our perennial cure, the yard quitting its slumber,
so do things like flowers mean a thing anymore anyway,
like these mums that are wilting away on the tray?
Did the nurse put down the remote on the table
out of reach I am sick of the daytime babble
and your sour-faced glower that might steer me clear of a fray
or chance asking what might put you out of your way?
If there is love
lend me a drop
and allow it to explode
into this Ocean within...
or
Spare me an Ocean of love
Where I can drown and be myself no more...
...and I'll return it to you tenfold
When the Loss is Ineffable!
By Jean Bosco SIBOMANA
Win-lose game occurs in many situations
And bargainers made it a standard saying
When involved in various negotiations
To come up with a common understanding
We lose property and it seems normal
We lose money and this is at least bearable
We lose friends and it becomes abnormal
But losing a one’s mum is truly unendurable
Mother means a lot in everyone’s life
She is the source of our existence
She is the provider and source of life
Missing her is losing our essence
We owe all from that priceless creature
From the time we are fetus in her innards
To the time we seem master of the nature
But alas, most of us treat her with disregards!
We cannot bargain to agree upon a price
encompassing free services with no gratitude.
But she is devoted to offering sacrifice
Her death is a loss to the multitude
You could not believe she truly passed away
Your thoughts are still telling you she is alive
In your dreams you see her, but goes back right away!
But the reality is that she will never be able to live
Life is a cycle and we will have our round
As there is a time for birth a departure from life;
Let’s remain stoic and keep the same bound
And wait for our fate to eternal life
Giving up struggle,
with love let’s snuggle;
our heart joyful thus,
aboard God’s bliss bus.
Plot not loss or gain.
Striving is in vain.
Touch divine cherish;
all else will perish.
Love quenches our thirst,
felt as a bliss burst,
if we’re here now still,
aligned with God’s will.
Bliss rapture untamed,
just cannot be named.
As heart lotus blooms,
soul heavenwards zooms.
02-August-2022
Her ineffable iridescence transcended my trepidations.
Her scintillating semblance was a hammer to the heart on my sleeve.
Shattering my shamefulness and unlocking my ululations,
But now I am bereaved for my lover chose to leave.
Now my concubine is chimeric and my feelings have faded.
Wash away my world but preserve the past memories in my mind.
Leave me to languish in our eternal estrangement.
Involuntary spasms of bliss delight,
though the norm, always takes us by surprise,
so sudden the surge by day and by night,
rapture sublime mind cannot weigh or size,
teleporting our presence to new highs.
With all our nodes aflame in body prism,
it seems we’ve transcended every known ism.
encircled by thought
no matter how well meaning
emotion not love
love undiminished with time
purring bliss rapture sublime
04-January-2021
*** Poetry Ineffable ***
Today I happened to have come upon
a young woman reading her poetry
in a foreign language that I do not know,
but in her softened, intimate tone
her spoken poem
pulled at my imagination,
and strained forth sympathies,
which her voice stirred in my heart —
her phrases sometimes sounded with hesitation
that could be interpreted as bordering
on a tearful confession
…or a cached tale from her experience
intended to share a precautionary warning
that haunts
through its hushed, gentle telling
all best kept in poetry’s deep well,
in that rising music
of composed syllables, to affect
like jewels lustrous
even in beams of subtle light —
quite understood
beyond the particular
words chosen.
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(c) sally young eslinger 6/2023
Thanks be to God