Poetry about the Baptismal Covenant? Why not?

In 1969 when Dorothy Day asked me to paint the Beatitudes on the basement wall of the Catholic Worker in the Lower East Side, I did the best I could. When someone really good asks you to do something, don't walk off whistling. You never know what kind of spirits watch from backstage. I learned that if you spend an hour or two a day painting four or five words from the Beatitudes, each word will fold out into something more lush than you might expect.

Miss Day specified the Phillips translation ("Happy are those who claim nothing..."). She meant the message for the people who came each day to get a bowl of soup, a piece of bread and a cup of coffee, one of the gifts given to the poor by the Worker for over 75 years now.

When John Lane Denson asked if I had any poems on the Baptismal Covenant, the question came like Dorothy Day's from somewhere in outer space. Still, I had to try it, to rub up against the BC and see what kind of sparks might fly. That's what poetry is about.

Along with the Beatitudes, the Baptismal Covenant expands like an accordion, and though he would not admit it (might not even know it), Lane was teaching me. Because he does it so naturally, so comfortably, I suspect him of channeling for some stray saint. My poems attempt to pass on what I received from him.

On most days the process of writing poetry opens doors into myself and out of myself. When I'm lucky, it brings me into others as well. I pass through astonishing events every day, even when everything is utterly ordinary. My role is to keep my eyes open, watch what happens, and do what it tells me to do.

--RobCogswell

[The Covenant Journal, Number 26, September 2007 All poetry in this issue is by Robert Cogswell.]