“Time stops when you chitchat with a chickadee.” —Amy Tan
Prelude: On Listening
In the hush between leaf and sky, there is a voice so small it might be mistaken for silence. The chickadee does not demand attention—it offers it. A syllable, a tilt, a breath. To chitchat with a chickadee is to enter a covenant of stillness, where time unspools not in hours but in notes. The woodland, too, listens. Not passively, but with intention. Each twig, each shadow, each gust of wind becomes part of the suite.
This is not mimicry. It is not translation. It is communion.
The movements that follow are not merely poetic verses. They are echoes of a moment suspended—where the human voice meets the avian, and both are transformed. Let the rhythm guide you. Let the silence speak. Let the chickadee lead.
I. Staccato Echo
Chit—chat. A tilt of the head. Chit—chat—chat. A secret is said.
Two notes, then three, then four. Time halts— the woods hold more.
You speak— it answers in kind. Chit—chat— a song half-defined.
II. Patterned Rhythm
Chit—chat, the head tilts, two notes, the forest stills.
Flip—flit, the quick wings, three calls, the silence sings.
Hop—skip, the bird goes, four notes, and onward flows.
III. Playful Whimsy
Hop—skip, branch bends—delight. Two chirps, then gone from sight.
Flip—flit, the sky’s small clown. Three notes, then tumbling down.
Chit—chat, a friend at play. Four calls, and off—away.
IV. Meditative Stillness
Time—stills, the bird draws near. Two notes, yet more to hear.
Breath—hushed, the forest waits. Three calls, unlocking gates.
You—pause, your soul takes wing. Four notes, and all things sing.
“He shall cover His face, that He see not the land; He shall cover His eyes, that He see not this people.” — Paraphrased and theologically inverted from Isaiah 47:3
Hate, greed, and fear—forces both ancient and renewed—walk our world masked as necessity, embraced by many with cultish fervor. Their dominion is not imposed but invited—enthroned by a generation that traded justice for the comfort of certainty, mercy for the illusion of control, and truth for pestilent lies that fester beneath the tongue. In such an age, we speak of freedom while erecting altars to power.
Lacrimae Sanguinis (Tears of Blood) offers no balm. It is not a prayer for deliverance but a record of recognition—set in four movements, each marking a descent through abandonment, distortion, silence, and despair. Divine silence, once borne as mystery, now echoes as judgment. This is no resolution, only the slow, unredemptive unfolding of what we have chosen not to see.
John Martin, The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (c. 1852) oil on canvas, 136.3 cm × 212.3 cm (53.7 in × 83.6 in) Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne
Lacrimae Sanguinis 2025: A Lamentation in Four Movements
By Donald S. Yarab
I.
Lacrimae sanguinis, Animae nigrae hominum terram maculant. They walk not as men, but as shadows unshriven, Each step a silence, each breath a wound. The ground groans beneath the weight of the fallen, And justice, long buried, forgets her name. No trumpet sounds for the guiltless slain, Only the whisper of blood in the dust.¹
Lacrimae sanguinis— The blackened souls of men stain the earth.
II.
Hate kindles fires no rain can quell, Greed carves its name in the marrow of kings. Fear is a vulture, circling unborn hopes, Its wings beating lies into trembling hearts. These three—unholy trinity—march undenied,² And temples crack beneath their tread. Where once stood gardens, now only ash— And the breath of God withdraws in sorrow.³
Lacrimae sanguinis— The blackened souls of men stain the earth.
III.
No voice comes forth from the cloud or flame, The heavens are sealed in unyielding hush.⁴ The stars avert their gaze, and time forgets its course— Even the winds have ceased to speak His name. Altars stand cold, their offerings stale, And the priest no longer lifts his hands. The silence is not peace, but exile— A stillness too vast for prayer to fill.⁵
Lacrimae sanguinis— The blackened souls of men stain the earth.
IV.
He turned His face—and we, our backs.⁶ Not in wrath, but in weary disdain. The mirror cracked, the image lost, And we wander, eyes open yet unseeing.⁷ We build our Babels in crumbling dust, Raise thrones upon bones, call ruin law. Light knocks, but we bolt the gate from within— And call the silence proof He never was.⁸
Lacrimae sanguinis— The blackened souls of men stain the earth.
Footnotes:
“Shadows unshriven” / “Justice… forgets her name” — Cf. Psalm 82:6–7 and Isaiah 59:14–15. Echoes of prophetic lament over moral collapse and unreconciled souls.
“Unholy trinity” — An inverted image of Augustine’s De Trinitate: hate, greed, and fear form a perverse sacred order.
“Gardens turned to ash” — Evokes Eden undone. The breath of God (Genesis 2:7) has withdrawn.
“The heavens are sealed” — Amos 8:11–12; Lamentations 3:8. Divine silence as the most damning judgment.
“Silence… not peace, but exile” — Apophatic void, not luminous unknowability. Cf. Isaiah 45:15: Deus absconditus.
“He turned His face” — Inverts the Aaronic blessing (Numbers 6:24–26). A divine turning not in anger, but in sorrowful withdrawal.
“Mirror cracked” — A fall from incomplete vision (1 Corinthians 13:12) into permanent distortion.
“Call the silence proof He never was” — Resonates with Nietzsche’s “God is dead,” here framed as mutual estrangement, not denial.
Note: The image of the soul as stained through inordinate attachment finds classical expression in Summa Theologica I–II, Q.86, Art.1, where Aquinas defines sin’s stain not as a substance, but as a privation of the soul’s brightness—a metaphorical shadow cast when the soul cleaves inordinately to created things, against reason and divine order. In this lamentation, the stain is projected outward: what is blackened within stains the world without.
Northcoast Antiquarian 