New Testament 9

[Armonia Bunda]

OSiadhail gives us a double feast. First, 'Psalter' unites lyrical, beautifully crafted poetry with deep, urgent and questioning love of God and of life. Then 'Gospel' gently and perceptively draws us into the stories of Jesus. The combination opens up a way of wise faith and mature love, alert to both the personal and the public challenges of our time.

Many devotional poets have explored the great lyric themes of love, age, nature, art, and loss. Few have had as much fun in the process as O'Siadhail. Tender, exuberant, and physical, these poems celebrate the richness and variety of an inner life focused on spiritual experience, within a consciousness that also 'cannot get enough of earthly things.' This is a joyous collection, full of energy, self-acceptance, and hope.

Love and prayer are the intertwined themes of every poem in this book, which demonstrates that praising God well is less a spontaneous act than the work of a lifetime spent in faith. O'Siadhail shares the Psalmists' unapologetic subjectivity, the immediacy of their prayer, their insistence on the actuality of a loving relationship with God, perceived in part through suffering. Here the mature poet prays for 'years to leave love's legacy behind,' and this book is part of the fulfillment of his wise desire.

After the brilliant inventiveness and seminal achievement of his The Five Quintets, Micheal O'Siadhail now 're-reaps delight, bearing sheaves' in Testament, a new harvest of poems. Its two-part sequence, 'Psalter' and 'Gospel,' awakens us to the fresh possibilities of God's reviving presence in our lives. Out of the despair and suffering in his life, the poet memorably sings 'a whole choreography of praise' to the Lord for the gift of continuing life and love in these daring and captivating reckonings with and re-imaginings of scriptural texts from the Psalms and the Gospels.

The distinguished poet Micheal O'Siadhail has given us no less than a spiritual classic in his Testament, which will captivate and move readers in many future generations. After a lifetime's writing of poetry, which has garnered numerous awards, he has now--in his own words--given us a magnificent 'coming out' about his love for God, and has written openly in the form of psalms about the faith that lies, often hidden, in his work. Like the ancient Hebrew Psalms, he offers us a dizzying range of emotions--praise, joy, regret, perplexity, sorrow, hope--and where there is complaint there is also a confidence about having conversation with the Lord of the Dance whom he has called 'Madam Jazz' over many years. Speaking in the first person on behalf of us all, his psalms are rooted in a deep experience of life and a relishing of the natural world; they are expressed in innovative language and compelling images which are intensely lyrical and conceptually satisfying at the same time.

In Testament, the poet-psalmist's 'I' voices a deeply personal struggle before God: 150 painful-yet-healing steps, from loss, grief, and protest before a God who is not yet present to the defining push-pull of confession and wonderment, remorse and hallelujah before the God whose love is unveiled and veiled again through the eyes of emergent faith. The personal drama performs a spiritual call: that each 'I' that marks the other's absence may, through longer or shorter struggles, release its veil and find this Lover waiting.

This book with 150 poems inspired by the Psalms, and 50 inspired by stories from the Gospels, is Micheal O'Siadhail's dialogue with the transcendent. It is a book that is both analeptic and proleptic in that O'Siadhail looks back at a life well lived, as well as looking forward to love, experience, and old age. At its core this is a conversation with God: 'Now in my mid-seventies, I dare to be more open.' This is achieved through a use of language that shows a poet at the peak of his powers, as he praises, rails, doubts, probes but ultimately basks, in a relationship with God. His complex use of rhyme, rhythm, assonance, and pararhyme bonds the lines together and makes the couplets, tercets, quatrains, and quinzaines of the poems into remarkably solid, yet fluid, structures. There are hints of John Donne in the Holy Sonnets here as God becomes a presence in the lyric dialogue of the poems, while the philosophical influence of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets is here to be seen. It is a valid, fluent, and complex testament to the poet's relationship with the divine.

Micheal O'Siadhail stands tall in an illustrious line of Christian poets through the centuries. Conceptually savvy and artistically brilliant, his poetry is breathtaking in its range and beauty. In this new book, O'Siadhail offers a powerful improvisation on classic biblical texts. This book reflects a rich and profound example of a 'scriptural imagination' at work. Take and read... and savor.

Testament creates a feast of songs and meditations that extends the lineage of poetry enriched by deep engagement with the search for transcendent, parabolic, and salvific paths to God. In this way, O'Siadhail's artistic achievement takes its rightful place with the poetry of distinguished predecessors such as Herbert, Donne, Hopkins, and Auden.

Mrs Sofie Kapy von Kapivar, whose address is known to the Anglo-Oesterreichische Bank in Vienna, is entitled to an annuity of 6000 florins .W. which will be paid to her by the aforementioned bank, and to this end I have deposited in this bank the amount of 150 000 florins in Hungarian sovereign bonds.

Miss Elise Antun, residing at 32 Rue de Lubeck, Paris, is entitled to an annuity of two thousand five hundred francs. In addition, she is entitled to be repaid forty-eight thousand francs of capital that belongs to her and is currently deposited with me;

My former servant, Joseph Girardot, of 5 Place St. Laurent, Chlons sur Sane, France, is entitled to an annuity of five hundred francs, and my former gardener, Jean Lecof, residing with Mrs Desoutter, receveur buraliste, Mesnil, Aubry pour Ecouen, S.& O., France, will receive an annuity of three hundred francs.

All of my remaining realisable assets are to be disbursed as follows: the capital, converted to safe securities by my executors, is to constitute a fund, the interest on which is to be distributed annually as prizes to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. The interest is to be divided into five equal parts and distributed as follows: one part to the person who made the most important discovery or invention in the field of physics; one part to the person who made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who, in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction; and one part to the person who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses. The prizes for physics and chemistry are to be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences; that for physiological or medical achievements by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm; that for literature by the Academy in Stockholm; and that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be selected by the Norwegian Storting. It is my express wish that when awarding the prizes, no consideration be given to nationality, but that the prize be awarded to the worthiest person, whether or not they are Scandinavian.

As executors of my testamentary dispositions, I appoint Mr Ragnar Sohlman, resident in Bofors, Vrmland, and Mr Rudolf Liljequist, of 31 Malmskillnadsgatan, Stockholm, and Bengtsfors, close to Uddevalla. As compensation for their attention and efforts, I grant to Mr Ragnar Sohlman, who will probably devote most time to this matter, one hundred thousand crowns, and to Mr Rudolf Liljequist, fifty thousand crowns;

Finally, it is my express wish that following my death, my arteries be severed, and when this has been done and competent doctors have confirmed clear signs of death, my remains be incinerated in a crematorium.

We, the undersigned witnesses, attest that Mr Alfred Bernhard Nobel, being of sound mind and of his own free will, signed this document, which he declared in the presence of us all to be his last will and testament:

While I was in sin, it seemed very bitter to me to see lepers. And the Lord Himself led me among them and I had mercy upon them. And when I left them that which seemed bitter to me was changed into sweetness of soul and body; and afterward I lingered a little and left the world.

Afterward the Lord gave me and still gives me such faith in priests who live according to the manner of the holy Roman Church because of their order, that if they were to persecute me, I would still have recourse to them. And if I possessed as much wisdom as Solomon had and I came upon pitiful priests of this world, I would not preach contrary to their will in the parishes in which they live.

because I discern the Son of God in them and they are my masters. And I act in this way since I see nothing corporally of the Most High Son of God in this world except His Most holy Body and Blood which they receive and which they alone administer to others. And these most holy mysteries I wish to have honored above all things and to be reverenced and to have them reserved in precious places. Wherever I come upon His most holy written words in unbecoming places, I desire to gather them up and I ask that they be collected and placed in a suitable place. And we should honor and respect all theologians and those who minister the most holy divine words as those who minister spirit and life to us.

And after the Lord gave me brothers, no one showed me what I should do, but the Most High Himself revealed to me that I should live according to the form of the Holy Gospel. And I had this written down simply and in a few words and the Lord Pope confirmed it for me. And those who came to receive life gave to the poor everything which they were capable of possessing and they were content with one tunic, patched inside and out, with a cord and short trousers. And we had no desire for anything more. We who were clerics used to say the Office as other clerics did; the lay brothers said the Our Father; and we quite willingly stayed in churches. And we were simple and subject to all.

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