Choosing a Name

My little son, I have cast you out

To hang heels upward, wailing over a world

With walls too wide.

My faith till now, and now my love:

No walls too wide to hold that, and no depth

Too great for all you hide.

I love, not knowing what I love,

I give, though ignorant for whom

The history and power of a name.

I conjure with it, like a novice

Summoning unknown spirits: answering me

You take the word, and tame it.

Even as the gift of life

You take the strange old name you did not choose

And make it new.

You and the name exchange a power:

Its history is changed, becoming yours,

And yours by this: who calls this, calls you.

Strong vessel of peace, and plenty promised,

Into whose unsounded depths I pour

This alien power;

Frail vessel, launched with a shaw] for sail,

Whose guiding spirit keeps his needle-quivering

Poise between trust and terror,

CID CORMAN

And stares amazed to find himself alive:

This is the means by which you say I am,

Not to be lost till all is lost,

When at the sight of God you say I am nothing,

And find, forgetting name and speech at last,

A home not mine, dear outcast.

ANNE RIDLER

THE BEARER

The faring was wide; thus rose an Atlas

between the straits of a kiss and a kiss.

The sphere was a flavor of light, a star

darkened by centuries from its neighbor.

At first the mountains were soft and the peaks

runneled snow, cleansing the rough evergreens,

the rocks unclenching. Then, the winds loosened

winter: sky expanded an ice-gray mass,