Poem for Ridván by Robert Hayden

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.... And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

Bahá’u’lláh in the Garden of Ridván

Agonies confirm His hour,

and swords like compass-needles turn

toward His heart,

The midnight air is forested

with presences that shelter Him

and sheltering praise

The auroral darkness which is God

and sing the word made flesh again

in Him.

Eternal exile whose return

epiphanies repeatedly

foretell

He watches in a borrowed garden,

prays. And sleepers toss upon

their armored beds,

Half-roused by golden knocking at

the doors of consciousness. Energies

like angels dance

Glorias of recognition.

Within the rock the undiscovered suns

release their light.

                                    Robert Hayden

Robert Hayden was born Asa Bundy Sheffey in Detroit, Michigan.  Because he was nearsighted and slight of stature, he was often ostracized by his peer group. Hayden read voraciously, developing both an ear and an eye for transformative qualities in literature. He attended Detroit City College (Wayne State University), and left in 1936 to work for the Federal Writers' Project, where he researched black history and folk culture.

He was raised as a Baptist, and later became a member of the Bahá'í Faith during the early 1940s after marrying a Bahá'í, Erma Inez Morris. He is one of the best-known Bahá'í poets and his religion influenced much of his work.

After leaving the Federal Writers' Project in 1938, marrying Erma Morris in 1940, and publishing his first volume, Heart-Shape in the Dust (1940), Hayden enrolled at the University of Michigan in 1941 and won a Hopwood Award there.

In pursuit of a master's degree, Hayden studied under W. H. Auden, who directed Hayden's attention to issues of poetic form, technique, and artistic discipline, and influence may be seen in the "technical pith of Hayden's verse". After finishing his degree in 1942, then teaching several years at Michigan, Hayden went to Fisk University in 1946, where he remained for twenty-three years, returning to Michigan in 1969 to complete his teaching career.  He died in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1980 at the age 66.  from Wikipedia

The Most Great Festival: We must risk delight.

Every year at Ridvan I repost this poem by Jack Gilbert.  It seems to me to be the perfect summation of  this Most Great Festival, even though it has flies in the nostrils.  We do live in a sorrowful world.  God sent His Best Beloved to us to give us Glad Tidings of Great Joy and we put Him in prison and exiled Him, because that's just what we do.  "Moreover, consider the hardships and the bitterness of the lives of those Revealers of the divine Beauty.  Reflect, how single-handed and alone they faced the world and all its peoples, and promulgated the Law of God!  No matter how severe the persecutions inflicted upon those holy, those precious, and tender Souls, they still remained, in the plentitude of their power, patient, and despite their ascendency, they suffered and endured."    Baha'u'llah DID suffer, and yet our Most Great Festival celebrates the 12 days of His life when roses were piled high on an island in the river Tigris, and nightingales sang louder than the music of the river itself.  His family and friends knew He was full to the brim with Beauty, and their eyes, their beautiful eyes, saw only that Beauty.  Those 12 days, which started and ended with a rowboat crossing the Tigris, contained enough joy and beauty to sustain Him, and us,  through many lifetimes of sorrow.  

A Brief for the Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

— Jack Gilbert

"Ridván" means paradise, and is named for the Garden of Ridván, outside Baghdad where Bahá'u'lláh stayed for twelve days after the Ottoman Empire exiled him from Baghdad and before commencing his journey to Constantinople.^[2] It is the most holy Bahá'í festival, and is also referred to as the "Most Great Festival" and the "King of Festivals". (from Wikipedia)