(In)Quietude

by Bret van den Brink

(In)Quietude
by Bret van den Brink
 
In that friendly, fiendish solitude
 	That turns upon itself and finds a waste,
Contemplation wars with inquietude,
 	As with the one who after vapours chased.
 	The quiet that the spirit yearns to taste,
Like those of the water and the earth,
With heaven's quiet shares a common birth—
 	Our quiet in their music might be traced.
 
Seek stillness in the body and the soul
 	Till the blood scarcely murmurs in the veins,
      	And the corporeal warmth is nearly fled,
And one’s heartbeat echoes the church-bell’s toll
 	From a mile off; then pleasures come of pains,
      	And one may realize why Christ’s eyelids bled.

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Bret van den Brink is a poet and scholar from Rosedale, BC. He received his BA (Hons) from Trinity Western University, and he is currently pursuing his MA in English at the University of Toronto. His article “Beatrice Nest, White Goddess: Romance and Ecology in A.S. Byatt’s Possession: A Romance” was recently published in The Robert Graves Review. He co-hosts the podcast Mandatory Media, and sometimes he writes for Radix Magazine.

“Across the Lake I” by David B. Milne. 1921.