Gerard Manley Hopkins was an innovative and scholarly poet, if mostly unpublished in his lifetime. His unquiet poems, with their vivid descriptions in sprung rhythm still resonate with me. As an individual, he was a depressive, diminutive and devout man, out of sync with his world. Thus, he remains somehow familiar, and supremely current, except he was consumed by Medievalism, Catholicism, and for a while, Christina Rossetti. His father was a poet too, even published a book, but I can’t find it on Project Gutenberg.

Any-who.

I re-purposed his work because I could. He’d probably condemn me for it, but you know, he’s not around to complain, so here goes.

Just women justice, sure, but there’s musts too,

To keep our goings in accord with the Graces;

Act in Goddess’s eye what in Goddess’s eye we are —

Kore, Demeter, Hecate — for She works in all places,

Adding strength to limbs, and knowing in eyes not hers

For the Mother through the features of all faces.