Today, we continue our series Verses for Vocation: Poems on the Sacred in Everyday Life and Work.

This week, I set myself the challenge of writing a sestina, a verse form originating in the work of twelfth-century troubadour Arnaut Daniel, in what is now southern France. Rather than rhyming, a sestina follows an intricate pattern of final-word repetition, with six stanzas of six lines each using the same six final words, but in a different order each time. Here’s a visual representation of the structure:

Well-known sestinas include “Hallelujah: A Sestina” by Robert Francis and “A Miracle for Breakfast” by Elizabeth Bishop.

[Thanks for reading. This post continues our series Verses for Vocation: Poems on the Sacred in Everyday Life and Work. Check out our other posts on faith and work and spiritual growth for more resources on living an integrated Christian life. Subscribe to get the next post in your inbox.]

Hold Fast the Gift

If I lose my soul to gain the world, what do I profit?

All the world can give, of course! What a bargain. Let’s put to rest

These scruples, soften the needling conscience. To eat, work.

Pluck the wise, unblemished apple. Feast on what’s yours; it’s what you’ve earned.

Let the thorns and thistles test your mettle. Show that you presume on no one’s gift.

Your strong hand has watered. You have planted. Spare no sheaf of harvest for the weak.

So I’m advised. But by the pricking of my thumbs, my own hand falls weak.

It shakes and lets slip a bushel, spoiling the profit.

How am I to reckon such a failure: waste or gift?

For fruits that fall forgotten by the roots may yet enrich a gleaner ‘fore their rest.

Am I to curse the joy of feasts unless they’re earned?

Old or young of toothless gums may yet suck the marrow out of life, though they not work.

It’s true that few are fitted for the golden work,

Solid in the testing fire that proves wood, hay, and straw so weak.

But even so, each radiant one still claims, “What I have, I have not earned.”

All is gift, and in all these forgotten things a hidden profit,

A sure reward, the heart softened into metal even purer than the rest.

O, spin my straw to gold, I ask no greater gift!

Sunk, solid, like nails fast in the wood: This gift,

This breath for putting my back into the work,

For sighing at shift’s end to take my rest,

For crying for another hand when I am weak,

For laughing at my vanity when turning modest profit,

For saying “grace” when the kings of the earth say “earned.”

Still, I remember those shining numbers on the screen, silent witnesses to what I’d earned.

A paycheck feels so different than a gift,

Each a papier-mâché piece of my cloud-borne palace; the profit

Proves the heft I heave up there, the weight of all my work.

When it comes down to earth, will it really crush the weak,

Or justly crumble in a heap, a witness to all the broken labors that robbed me of my rest?

What else? To be free of it. To shelter in the Sabbath rest,

To cease division ‘twixt what’s given and what’s earned,

To wring out every drop of strength but laugh that I am weak,

To cast my lot with the hangers-on and hold fast the gift,

The Gospel-crossed odds of death in taking up the work,

To scorn the shame, the tree, the profit.

When I am weak, that’s when I most profit.

The prophet’s earned his keep; despise not the work.

Come away with me and rest; hold fast the gift!

Explanatory Notes

• “If I lose my soul to gain the world”: An allusion to a question posed by Jesus, recorded in several places in the synoptic Gospels
• “To eat, work.”: An allusion to 2 Thessalonians 3:10
• “the wise, unblemished apple”: An allusion to Genesis 3:6
• “thorns and thistles”: An allusion to Genesis 3:18
• “Show that you presume on no one’s gift.”: An expression of self-sufficiency, as in, for example, the idealized “giftless” economy in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged
• “Your strong hand has watered. You have planted.”: An allusion to 1 Corinthians 3:6-9
• “Spare no sheaf of harvest for the weak”; “fruits that fall forgotten by the roots may yet enrich a gleaner”: Allusions to Torah restrictions on harvest practices to allow gleaning by widow, orphan, and foreigner
• “by the pricking of my thumbs”: A quotation from Shakespeare’s Macbeth 4.1.44. The next line is “Something wicked this way comes.”
• “suck the marrow out of life”: An allusion to Henry David Thoreau’s Walden; the original phrase is “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”
• “the golden work / Solid in the testing fire that proves wood, hay, and straw so weak”: An allusion to 1 Corinthians 3:12-15
• “All is gift”: A paraphrase of St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s statement that “Everything is a grace.”
• “O, spin my straw to gold”: An allusion to the abilities of the titular character of the German fairy tale “Rumpelstiltskin.”
• “the kings of the earth”: An allusion to Psalm 2:2
• “a heap, a witness”: An allusion to the heap of stones that Jacob and Laban set up as a witness to demarcate their respective territories after Jacob had left Laban and his unjust presumption on Jacob’s labor; see Genesis 31:43-54
• “The Gospel-crossed odds of death in taking up the work”: An allusion to the teaching of Jesus on “taking up” one’s cross, recorded in several places in the synoptic Gospels
• “To scorn the shame, the tree”: An allusion to Hebrews 12:2
• “When I am weak, that’s when I most profit”: An allusion to 2 Corinthians 12:10
• “The prophet’s earned his keep”: An allusion to 1 Timothy 5:17-18
• “Come away with me and rest”: An allusion to Mark 6:31

Series image: The Stevedores in Arles (Coal Barges) by Vincent van Gogh, 1888.
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