Those of you who have been around awhile and had some exposure to the counterculture of the 60s will certainly know the name Daniel Berrigan, Roman Catholic priest and peace activist. He died Saturday at the age of 94. Arrested many times, as recently as 2006, he was once imprisoned for two years after he burnt draft files during a protest against the Vietnam War. One of his partners in crime was his brother, Philip, who also served time in a federal prison.
You can learn more about Berrigan in this NY Times obituary.
According to Wikipedia, until his death he taught at Fordham University and served as its poet-in-residence.
It seems apropos in the wake of his death and on the last day of National Poetry Month to present this poem by Daniel Joseph Berrigan:
A Dark Word
As I walk patiently through life
poems follow close –
blind, dumb, agile, my own shadow;
the mind’s dark overflow, the spill of vein
we thought red once but know now, no.
The poem called death
is unwritten yet. Some day will show
the violent last line,
the shadow rise,
a bird of omen
snatch me for its ghost.
And a hand somewhere, purposeful as God’s
close like two eyes, this book.