she is the candor of God's light, the expression of His simplicity

From the NASA Space Advent Calendar which is HERE.

 The barred spiral galaxy NGC 1073, found in the constellation of Cetus (The Sea Monster). Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is thought to be a similar barred spiral, and the study of galaxies such as NGC 1073 can help astronomers learn more about our celestial home.
(NASA/ESA)

O blessed, silent one, who speaks everywhere!

We do not hear the soft voice, the gentle voice, the merciful
     and feminine.
We do not hear mercy, or yielding love, or non-resistance,
     or non-reprisal.
In her there are no reasons and no answers.
Yet she is the candor of God's light, the expression of His
     simplicity.

We do not hear the uncomplaining pardon that bows down
the innocent visages of flowers to the dewy earth.
We do not see the Child who is prisoner in all the people,
and who says nothing.

She smiles, for though they have bound her,
she cannot be a prisoner.
Not that she is strong, or clever,
but simply that she does not understand imprisonment.

The helpless one, abandoned to sweet sleep, the gentle one
     will awake: Sophia.

All that is sweet in her tenderness will speak to him on all
     sides in everything, without ceasing,
and he will never be the same again.
He will have awakened not to conquest and dark pleasure
but to the impeccable pure simplicity of One
     consciousness
in all and through all:
one Wisdom, one Child, one Meaning, one Sister.

-Thomas Merton,  "Hagia Sophia' II. Early Morning. The Hour of Prime.  Collected Poems pp. 365-366 

those men of war, with big cigars and cars

From the NASA Space Advent Calendar which is HERE.

 Resembling a nightmarish beast rearing its head from a crimson sea, this celestial object is actually just a pillar of gas and dust. Called the Cone Nebula (in NGC 2264) -- so named because in ground-based images it has a conical shape - this monstrous pillar resides in a turbulent star-forming region. This picture shows the upper 2.5 light-years of the Cone. The entire pillar is seven light-years long. 
(NASA, Holland Ford (JHU), the ACS Science Team and ESA)

O the Lord is good
To the steady man
He is good
To the man of peace.

But I stumbled, I stumbled in my mind
Over those men
I did not understand
Rich and fat
With big cigars and cars
They seem to have no trouble
Know no pain
I do not understand those men of war
Strong and proud
Rich and fat
The more they have
The more they hate
And hate rolls down their skin
Like drops of sweat.

I stumbled, I stumbled in my mind
Over those men of war

Full of power
Rich and fat
The more they have, the more they hate
And they jeered
At my people
Showed their power
Rolled their pile of fat
And my people
Listened to their threat
My people was afraid
Of those men of war
When hate rolled down their skin
Like drops of sweat.

My heart was sore
Seeing their success
"Does God care?
Has He forgotten us?"
Lord, I nearly fell
Stumbling in my mind
About those men of war
It was hard to see
Till you showed me
How like a dream
Those phantoms pass away.

-Thomas Merton, "The Lord is Good", (Psalm 71) Collected Poems, pp 775-776 

O night of deepest praise

From the NASA Space Advent Calendar which is HERE.

 The giant elliptical galaxy in the center of this image is the most massive and brightest member of the galaxy cluster Abell 2261. Spanning a little more than one million light-years, the galaxy is about 10 times the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy. The bloated galaxy is a member of an unusual class of galaxies with a diffuse core filled with a fog of starlight. Normally, astronomers would expect to see a concentrated peak of light around a central black hole. The Hubble observations revealed that the galaxy's puffy core, measuring about 10,000 light-years, is the largest yet seen. The observations present a mystery, and studies of this galaxy may provide insight into how black hole behavior may shape the cores of galaxies. The immense gravity of the galaxy warps the light passing by, smearing out the images of background galaxies, as seen by Hubble.
(NASA, ESA, M. Postman (STScI), T. Lauer (NOAO), and the CLASH team)

O night of admiration, full of choirs,
O night of deepest praise,
And darkness full of sweet delight! 
What secret and intrepid Visitor 
Has come to raise us from the dead?
He softly springs the locks of time, our sepulchre,
In the foretold encounter.

-Thomas Merton, "The Dark Encounter", Collected Poems, p. 113'

There is no where in you a paradise that is no place
     and there
You do not enter except without a story.
To enter there is to become unnameable.

Whoever is there is homeless for he has no door
     and no identity
with which to go out and to come in. 

Whoever is nowhere is nobody, and therefore cannot exist
     except as unborn:
No disguise will avail him anything

Such a one is neither lost nor found.

But he who has an address is lost.

They fall, they fall into apartments and are
     securely established!

They find themselves in streets.  They are licensed
To proceed from place to place
They now know their own names
They can name several friends and know
Their own telephones must some time ring.

If all telephones ring at once, if all names are shouted at
     once and
all cars crash at one crossing:
If all cities explode and fly away in dust
Yet identities refuse to be lost.  There is a name and number
     for everyone.

There is a definite place for bodies, there are pigeon holes
     for ashes:
Such security can business buy!

Who would dare to go nameless in so secure a universe?
Yet, to tell the truth, only the nameless are at home in it.

They bear with them in the center of nowhere the unborn
     flower of nothing:
This is the paradise tree.  It must remain unseen until words
     end and arguments are silent.

-Thomas Merton, "The Fall",  In the Dark Before Dawn, pp. 184-185  

the knowing night

From the NASA Space Advent Calendar which is HERE.

 A planetary nebula in the making of a proto-planetary nebula. A dying star (hidden behind dust and gas in the center of the nebula) has ejected massive amounts of gas. Parts of the gas have reached tremendous velocities of up to one-and-a-half million kilometers per hour. Shown in blue is light from hydrogen and ionised nitrogen arising from supersonic shocks where the gas stream rams into the surrounding material.
(ESA & Valentin Bujarrabal, Observatorio Astronomico Nacional, Spain)

In my ending is my meaning
Says the season.

No clock:
Only the heart's blood
Only the word.

O lamp
Weak friend
In the knowing night!

O tongue of flame
Under the heart
Speak softly:
For love is black
Says the season.

Midnight!
Kissed with flame!
See! See!
My love is darkness!

Only in the Void
Are all ways one:

Only in the night
Are all the lost
Found.

In my ending is my meaning.

 - Thomas Merton, "The Night of Destiny", Collected Poems, pp. 634-635
  

How long we wait, with minds as quiet as time

From the NASA Space Advent Calendar which is HERE.

 A team of astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reported the discovery of a fifth moon orbiting the icy dwarf planet Pluto on July 11, 2012. The moon is estimated to be irregular in shape and 6 to 15 miles across. It is in a 58,000-mile-diameter circular orbit around Pluto that is assumed to be co-planar with the other satellites in the system. Provisionally designated S/2012 (134340) 1, or P5, the latest moon was detected in nine separate sets of images taken by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 on June 26, 27, and 29, 2012 and July 7 and 9, 2012. This discovery increases the number of known moons orbiting Pluto to five. Pluto is at center, and, counterclockwise, from top left, are its moons Nix, P5 (very small), Hydra, Charon, and P4.

(NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter, SETI Institute)

How long we wait, with minds as quiet as time,

Like sentries on a tower.

How long we watch, by night, like the astronomers.

Heaven, when will we hear you sing,

Arising from our grassy hills,

And say: "The dark is done, and Day

Laughs like a Bridegroom in His tent, the lovely sun,

His tent the sun, His tent the smiling sky!"

How long we wait with minds as dim as ponds

While stars swim slowly homeward in the water of our west!

Heaven, When will we hear you sing? 

How long we listened to the silence of our vineyards

And heard no bird stir in the rising barley.

The stars go home behind the shaggy trees.

Our minds are grey as rivers.

O earth, when will you wake in the green wheat,

And all our cedars sing:

"Bright land, lift up your leafy gates!

You abbey steeple sing with bells!

For look, our Sun rejoices like a dancer

On the rim of our hills."

In the blue west the moon is uttered like the word:

"Farewell."

-Thomas Merton, Collected Poems, pp.89-90 

silence that is a fount of action and joy

From the NASA Space Advent Calendar which is HERE.

 A nearly perfect ring of hot, blue stars pinwheels about the yellow nucleus of an unusual galaxy known as Hoag's Object. This image captures a face-on view of the galaxy's ring of stars, revealing more detail than any existing photo of this object. The entire galaxy is about 120,000 light-years wide, which is slightly larger than our Milky Way Galaxy. The blue ring, which is dominated by clusters of young, massive stars, contrasts sharply with the yellow nucleus of mostly older stars. What appears to be a "gap" separating the two stellar populations may actually contain some star clusters that are almost too faint to see. Curiously, an object that bears an uncanny resemblance to Hoag's Object can be seen in the gap at the one o'clock position. The object is probably a background ring galaxy. 
(NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA)

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity,
a dimmed light,
a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness.
This mysterious Unity and Integrity is
Wisdom, the Mother of all,  Natura naturans.

There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity,
a silence that is a fount of action and joy,
It rises up in wordless gentleness and flows out to me
from the unseen roots of all created being,
welcoming me tenderly,
saluting me with indescribable humility.

This is at once my own being, my own nature,
and the Gift of my Creator's Thought and Art within me,
speaking as Hagia Sophia,
speaking as my sister, Wisdom. 

- Thomas Merton, Hagia Sophia, Dawn. The Hour of Lauds, Collected Poems, p. 361

I also want to add this Lax poem from "Circus of the Sun" here:

In the beginning (in the beginning of time to say
the least) there were the compasses: whirling
in void their feet traced out beginnings and endings,
beginning and end in a single line.  Wisdom danced
also in circles for these were her kingdom: the sun
spun, worlds whirled, the seasons came round, and
all things went their rounds: but in the beginning,
beginning and end were in one.

And in the beginning was love.  Love made a sphere:
all things grew within it; the sphere then encompassed
beginnings and endings, beginning and end.  Love
had a compass whose whirling dance traced out a
sphere of love in the void: in the center thereof
rose a fountain.

- Robert Lax, "The Circus of the Sun - morning" 

a new world is born

From the NASA Space Advent Calendar which is HERE.

 A composite color infrared image of the center of our Milky Way galaxy reveals a new population of massive stars and new details in complex structures in the hot ionized gas swirling around the central 300 light-years. This sweeping panorama is the sharpest infrared picture ever made of the Galactic core. It offers a nearby laboratory for how massive stars form and influence their environment in the often violent nuclear regions of other galaxies.
(NASA, ESA and Q.D. Wang UMASS, Amherst)

Go tell the earth to shake
And tell the thunder
To wake the sky

And tear the clouds apart
Tell my people to come out
And wonder 

Where the old world is gone
For a new world is born
And all my people
Shall be one.

So tell the earth to shake
With marching feet

Of messengers of peace
Proclaim my law of love
To every nation
Every race.

For the old wrongs are over
The old days are gone
A new world is rising
Where my people shall be one.

So tell the earth to shake
With marching feet
Of messengers of peace
Proclaim my law of love
To every nation 
Every race.

And say
The old wrongs are over
The old ways are done
There shall be no more hate
And no more war
My people shall be one.

So tell the earth to shake
With marching feet
Of messengers of peace
Proclaim my law of love
To every nation
Every race.

For the old world is ended
The old sky is torn Apart.
A new day is born
They hate no more.

They do not go to war
My people shall be one.

So tell the earth to shake
With marching feet
Of messengers of peace
Proclaim my law of love
To every nation
Every race.

There shall be no more hate
And no more oppression
The old wrongs are done
My people shall be one.

-Thomas Merton, "Earthquake", (Isaiah 52), Collected Poems, pp. 701-703