Gold ground. White horse.
The lance always descending,
the dragon always caught —
not slain, not winning,
that suspension my daily bread,
the point perpetually
at the point of.
I returned to it as to a chapel,
the dragons within
held by that stasis,
by what the icon
promised and kept.
Then —
the gold ground shifting,
the lance no longer
quite descending,
the dragon lifting —
St. George,
for the first time,
imperiled.
The always
became
was.
I am undone.
He formed him
from the ground—
clay still wet,
clinging.
He bent close.
spent breath passed—
spittle,
the damp of earth
at the mouth.
And the man lived:
warm,
hungry,
leaking already
what he would lose.
This was not corruption.
This was the gift.
Sand—
before sight,
before consent,
light broken among grains,
each scattering its claim.
Heat intervenes:
lightning’s instant law,
the long travail of fire,
a stone descending
without regard.
What shatters
learns another order.
Glass remembers
its former dust.
In the mirror
a tower stands—
not stone,
but color
held by lead,
raised through fracture.
Harps flank it,
strings held still,
as if sound itself
were waiting
to be spared.
Notes lie as sand lies,
each apart,
each complete,
owing nothing
to the whole.
Or else the chord
was always present,
and hearing is the art
of consent.
Reflection is not the self,
but the hour
when the many
are allowed
to hold together.
By Donald S. Yarab
When the rains come … the dust shall become mud,
When the rains come … the mud shall become mire,
And the feet of the proud shall sink to the ankle,
And their words shall cling like clay to their tongues.
When the rains come … the roofs shall tremble,
The cisterns shall overflow their stone mouths,
And the low places shall remember the sea,
Calling out to the deep from which they were torn.
When the rains come … the idols shall dim,
Their painted eyes veiled in silt and silence,
And the temples shall weep through broken eaves,
For their gods shall not answer from the thunder.
When the rains come … the earth shall be heavy,
And the hearts of men heavier still;
The widow shall draw her shawl to her face,
And the child shall forget the taste of dry bread.
When the rains come … we shall huddle together,
Beholding the waters erase our names from the doorposts,
And none shall boast of his harvest,
For the river shall take what it wills,
Bearing all things toward the forgetting sea.
When the sun is restored … the waters shall fade,
When the sun is restored … the mire shall break and sigh,
And the earth shall stir beneath the plough,
Breathing again as if reborn.
When the sun is restored … warmth shall come first,
A balm to the chilled and the shivering earth;
Green shall rise from the broken furrows,
And the people shall bless the light.
When the sun is restored … the fields shall swell,
The ears grow heavy, the vines bend low;
And laughter shall echo in the threshing floor,
Till the grain lies fuller than the granaries can hold.
And in the noonday brightness the sparrows fell silent,
For they knew the hour would not endure.
When the sun is restored … the rivers shall dwindle,
The soil yawn open like a parched mouth,
And famine shall creep from the roots of plenty,
Taking the firstborn of abundance.
When the sun is restored … the hearts of men shall fail,
Their tongues cleaving to the roofs of their mouths;
And the widow shall weep no longer,
For her tears have been taken by the wind.
When the sun is restored … we shall gather at the well,
Staring into its empty throat,
And all shall return to dust,
For from dust were we raised, and to dust we descend;
And we lift parched hands, as if exalting to heaven for rain,
That the circle may begin again.
When the silence falls … the people shall gather,
Not in joy nor mourning, but in stillness;
And the priests shall stand before the altar,
Their hands empty of offerings.
When the silence falls … the incense shall not rise,
For no prayer shall remain upon our lips;
We have cried out in the rains and cursed in the drought,
And now we have no words to give.
When the silence falls … the children shall ask,
“Why do we come to this place?”
And the elders shall have no answer,
For the stones themselves have forgotten their purpose.
When the silence falls … the priests shall look upon each other,
And see their own faces as through water;
They shall remember the prayers they learned as boys,
And wonder if the words were ever heard.
When the silence falls … we shall see what we have built—
Altars worn smooth by our hands,
Bowls that held grain and oil and blood,
All the bargaining of our fathers with the sky.
When the silence falls … no voice shall descend,
Neither blessing nor judgment from above;
And we shall know that we stand alone,
Between the rain we fear and the sun we cannot bear,
Waiting in the house we made for a goddess
Who has not spoken in living memory.
“The poem is the cry of its occasion, / Part of the res itself and not about it.” — Wallace Stevens, “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven”
By Donald S. Yarab
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.ain is projected outward—what is blackened within stains the world without.
It is easy to imagine the critical response already. Some heir to Harold Bloom’s anxiety-of-influence throne would ascertain that I, the creator, am anxious, insecure, prone to nail-biting—that I found it necessary to express my anxiety in more apparatus than poem, drowning the verse in scholarly scaffolding because I lack confidence in the work’s ability to stand alone.
Such banal criticism would miss the point entirely. If I were anxious about critical reception, if I were truly insecure about the poem’s merits, I would have foregone apparatus altogether in sure foreknowledge of such harsh rebuke. The apparatus exists precisely because I am secure in my intent, my method, and my purpose. I am not writing for elite pedantics and pedagogues who jealously guard their interpretive privileges, but for myself and any who wish to partake of poetry’s riches, whatever their opportunity to swim in the canon’s depths.
The truth is, those who argue against apparatus are those who would have poems essentially confined to an elite club, complete with secret handshakes, symbols, and degrees of membership. Like Skull and Bones or the Masonic lodges, traditional poetry criticism has long functioned as an initiatory society where full membership requires years of study, the right mentors, and familiarity with increasingly obscure reference points. The “let the poem stand on its own” argument sounds democratically pure but functions as cultural gatekeeping, preserving poetry as the domain of those who already possess the cultural capital to decode allusions, recognize forms, and trace influences.
When critics rail against apparatus, they defend a system where interpretive authority belongs to those with the “right” education, the proper literary pedigree. The poem becomes a kind of shibboleth—if you do not immediately recognize the echoes of Job, the inversions of Augustine, the liturgical cadences, well, perhaps serious poetry isn’t for you.
My apparatus dismantles that exclusivity. It offers initial guideposts to anyone willing to engage, no secret handshakes required. This is cultural hospitality, not anxiety—a deliberate act of democratization that makes visible the materials from which the poem emerged.
A poem does not emerge from nothing. It rises from what might be called a nexus—a convergence of memory, reading, experience, and the particular urgency that calls forth language. In composing Lacrimae Sanguinis, this nexus became especially visible: biblical lament tradition, Thomistic theology, contemporary spiritual desolation, and liturgical rhythms that have shaped both prayer and protest for centuries. But rather than hide this genealogy, I choose to make it visible as part of the poem’s offering.
The nexus is not a conscious construction—it cannot be willed into being. Rather, it emerges when conditions are right, when reading and experience have prepared a space where seemingly unrelated elements suddenly reveal their hidden kinship. The Latin refrain lacrimae sanguinis did not arise from scholarly deliberation but from convergence, where liturgical memory met contemporary anguish.
Within this nexus, meaning arises through interaction—the dynamic tension between elements that resist easy synthesis. The “unholy trinity” of hate, greed, and fear stands in deliberate tension with Augustine’s conception of divine Trinity, not as simple inversion but as recognition of how spiritual language can be perverted by the very forces it seeks to name and resist. The line “He turned His face—and we, our backs” emerges from interplay between the Aaronic blessing and the lived experience of mutual estrangement.
The apparatus participates in this interaction by creating dialogue between poem and source. When I note that “silence is not peace, but exile” resonates with Isaiah’s Deus absconditus, I do not suggest the poem merely illustrates the biblical text. Rather, I propose that ancient prophetic cry and modern spiritual dislocation illuminate one another—that meaning arises in their interaction, not in either alone.
The apparatus reveals process without explaining away mystery. When I show that “He turned His face—and we, our backs” emerges from tension between Aaronic blessing and contemporary estrangement, I do not solve the line’s meaning—I multiply its resonances. The reader now encounters not just the line’s immediate emotional impact but also its dialogue with liturgical tradition, its inversion of expectation, its theological implications. The apparatus does not reduce mystery to mechanism; it shows how many mysteries converge in a single moment of language.
This transparency serves poetry’s deepest purpose: not to mystify through obscurity but to reveal the actual complexity of experience. When sources remain hidden, readers may sense depths they cannot fathom and mistake inaccessibility for profundity. When sources become visible, the true marvel emerges—not that the poet knows obscure references, but that these disparate materials can achieve such unity, that ancient texts still speak to contemporary anguish.
Finally, reflection—not as conclusion but as ongoing process. The apparatus serves this reflective function, helping both creator and reader recall not just sources but the quality of attention that makes encounter possible. By showing rather than hiding the poem’s genealogy, it acknowledges that interpretation is always collaborative, that meaning emerges from ongoing conversation between text and reader.
This method emerges from confidence rather than defensiveness. When apparatus functions generously, it says to readers: here are some materials that were present when this poem emerged, but you are free to make of them—and of the poem itself—what you will. This represents confidence in both the work’s integrity and the reader’s capacity for independent meaning-making.
Critics will object that apparatus risks over-determining meaning, that by naming sources I constrain interpretation. This objection misunderstands how meaning actually works in poetry. The apparatus does not tell readers what to think about the convergence of Nietzschean pronouncement and prophetic lament—it simply makes that convergence visible as one layer among many.
Consider the reader who recognizes the Aaronic blessing inversion without consulting footnotes, discovers resonances I never anticipated or intended, and finds connections to their own liturgical memory. The apparatus does not prevent this encounter—it enriches the conversation by adding another voice. Meaning multiplies rather than contracts when more materials become available for interaction.
The real constraint on interpretation comes from ignorance, not knowledge. When readers miss allusions entirely, they are trapped in partial understanding. When sources become visible, readers gain freedom to accept, reject, or build upon the connections offered. The apparatus functions as invitation, not limitation.
We live in an age where what was once common cultural knowledge—biblical narratives, classical philosophy, liturgical traditions—can no longer be assumed as shared reference points. This is not a failure of readers or education but a consequence of cultural acceleration. Neither poets nor readers can be expected to carry the full weight of cultural memory. When canonical works become unfamiliar, when classical allusions require explanation, apparatus serves not as condescension but as courtesy.
The apparatus preserves a record of one moment’s convergence—the nexus as it appeared when the poem emerged—but it cannot and should not constrain future encounters. It functions as invitation rather than explanation, creating conditions for ongoing dialogue rather than settling interpretive questions once and for all.
What emerges is method as interpretive generosity rather than critical control. The apparatus offers tools for encounter while acknowledging that even the creator does not exhaust the poem’s meaning. The poem, once written, becomes available for encounter rather than possession, even by the one who wrote it.
This hospitality extends to readers at all levels of familiarity with the sources. Those who recognize the allusions immediately may find additional layers in seeing them made explicit. Those encountering Augustine or Isaiah for the first time receive invitations to explore further. Those who prefer immediate encounter may ignore the scholarly apparatus entirely. All approaches are welcome.
In this way, creative method and interpretive philosophy align. Both resist the fantasy of complete control or final understanding. Both acknowledge that meaning emerges in relationship. Both find fulfillment not in closure but in the ongoing conversation they make possible.
The apparatus, properly understood, serves this conversation. It is not the last word on the poem’s meaning but an invitation to the kind of careful attention that allows meaning to emerge. Like the poem itself, it creates conditions for encounter rather than commanding specific responses.
This is method in poetry as in interpretation: not a tool of conquest but a lens through which the materials of experience might reveal some of their hidden connections. The nexus forms, interactions unfold, reflection deepens—and occasionally, if conditions are right, something emerges that was not there before. Something worth sharing with anyone willing to receive it.
