This is a poem which sort of came to me out of the blue. The other day, I casually wondered in writing whether the joy that Christ talks about in John’s gospel is in fact pain transfigured. I thought about how we always say in Orthodox circles that there is no crown without the cross. Is joy, then, what comes as pain purifies or is purified? It sounds a bit sadistic when you put it that way, but I don’t think it has to be. Everyone has pain of some sort in life. Our very fear of death or fear of failure, or indeed, our fear of being superfluous, is pain. So, while I don’t think we should go looking for pain, I think that Christ can take our pain and do something with it.
Also, this poem is about the name of a plant I really like and which I found first in a Walter de la Mare poem called Fare Well. I thought I’d play with the idea of Traveler’s Joy as a plant as well as, well, the joy of a traveler on life’s crazy road. I hope it takes you somewhere, even for a little while.
Traveler’s Joy
The way of stone and steep may weary the wanderer,
May bruise and bring the heaven-haunted heart to breaking
By its love and longing for the one thing it lacks,
Communion, like the alchemy of sun and rain on rose,
With that which is its sundered source and end.
Yet, if the traveled road be true,
It’s footing firm-founded even amid thorns,
Then, steps no longer stumbling, will stand at gaze
The weary one, a mortal on the edge of immortality,
Incarnate death new-sealed beyond its dying self.
The traveler’s joy is tried for truth,
Proven by pain and tested by tears.
Its fertility flourishes where fire has passed,
No forests of false piety to pinch its roots,
but only water welling up from woe
To green the pathways of the heart,
And twine its wild hedgerows in wedding-bonds of blessedness.
Share this post