Father George Welzbacher uses his room at the Leo C. Byrne Residence in St. Paul to read and write poetry. It’s where he put the finishing touches on a poem he had been working on for 44 years, “Galactic Shepherd.”

Father George Welzbacher uses his room at the Leo C. Byrne Residence in St. Paul to read and write poetry. It’s where he put the finishing touches on a poem he had been working on for 44 years, “Galactic Shepherd.” DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

Last month, Father George Welzbacher made the final revisions to his poetic magnum opus — “Galactic Shepherd: Time’s Charioteer.” For 44 years, he had written, reconsidered, reimagined and re-written his eight-page poem. In his 93rd year, it was finally finished.

Father Welzbacher, a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, is likely known as a poet to only a few. But his 71-year career as a teacher and pastor is legendary.

He did graduate work in ancient and medieval history at the University of Chicago and taught at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, where many of his students quipped with pride that they “majored in Welzbacher.” He was a beloved teacher of Latin and German at St. Thomas Academy, now in Mendota Heights. He also served as a pastor at parishes across the archdiocese and is currently a weekend associate at Holy Family in St. Louis Park. Hardly an inch of space in his current home, at the Leo C. Byrne Residence for retired priests in St. Paul, is not covered by a stack of books gathered in his remarkable career.

As a boy growing up in St. Paul, “always in the shadow of the Cathedral,” in his words, Father Welzbacher was inspired by his mother, Eileen Hanley. “She was a fine pianist and painter,” he said, “but my love of poetry and poetic sense of wonder was her greatest artistic gift to me.”

It was a love that was to last a lifetime.

As a child, he memorized poems his mother had written, adding in high school Shakespeare’s sonnets, Shelley and Keats. As a young priest, he noticed that men often spent their morning shaving time in useless daydreaming. He believed he could do better, and was inspired by a story that Cardinal John Henry Newman had learned Italian while shaving. Father Welzbacher decided he would devote his time in front of the shaving mirror to memorizing poetry.

His powers of retention proved prodigious. While shaving, he memorized all 433 lines of T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland,” long portions of Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” and many works of the 17th– and early 18th-century metaphysical poets, as well as classic French and German poems.

“I understood early on,” Father Welzbacher said, “that the best way to understand a poem is to memorize it. Only then can you begin to appreciate the subtlety of word order and rhythm, especially with a trailblazer like Eliot.”

“When you can carry inside yourself the meaning, word order and rhythm with ease,” he explained, “it is then that the poem gets in your blood.”

He added: “To live with poetry every day is to have beauty always close at hand.”

As the years passed, Father Welzbacher added creating his own verse to his shaving routine, and the seeds of what would become “Galactic Shepherd” were planted. But time for poetic reflection and crafting was short, given his extensive priestly duties. To seriously pursue the poetic muse, he said, he knew he needed more focused time.

The opportunity arose in 1978 when he took a three-month sabbatical. That year also coincided with Pope St. John Paul II’s election as pope, and Father Welzbacher took inspiration from the fact that Karol Wojtyla had been a remarkable Polish poet long before the world came to know him as St. Peter’s heir. That year, Father Welzbacher began the poem that would occupy his artistic imagination for the next 44 years.

In “Galactic Shepherd,” he strove to capture the entire architecture and trajectory of God’s essence, he said. This included the Divine silence before the Creation, Christ’s incarnation, the agony of the Crucifixion and the beatitude of future unity in God.

He wrote and re-wrote the poem countless times, striving for a poetic meter — a rhythm — that was wild, free and majestic as the waves of the sea, and made clear God could not be “placed in a box.”

“I wanted a meter that made clear I was dealing with the infinite, which is not limited in any way,” Father Welzbacher explained. “I found that rhythm in the ocean’s immensity and its variety of moods, ranging from tranquility and beauty to great power and storms.”

For years, he wrestled with the poem’s opening lines. In seeking to depict “the Word” — a beginning that had no beginning — and God’s silence prior to Creation, he sought an image, not of sleep, but of all-knowing comprehension, beyond reason, of what is and what will be. After decades of effort, he explains, he found the right words only recently:

Conceptual Silence! Whence

Of Intellection Sheer

His Comprehension Sure! Whose Song Spontaneous

Commands a Plenitude Sublime!

Wherein decreed, whirls forth in dance

(so bestowed Necessity, so encompassed Chance)

The multitudinous tumult of Time!

Kept strict its pace, its shout, its chase

Keyed

To a marshalling rhyme!

Sprung from a Joy Everlasting, His the Response

Everlastingly heard,

Springs,

Ever wakeful,

THE EMBLAZONING WORD!

“These were the most challenging lines of the entire poem,” Father Welzbacher said. “Over many decades I struggled down many dead ends trying to adequately express the essence of God the Father and God the Son throughout time and with no beginning. I finally found the key in a statement by St. Ignatius of Antioch, who described a ‘silence of the Father’s mind, from which the Word emerged.’”

It was when this “silence” came to mind, combined with an image of a silence that is “conceptual” — all-knowing, intellectually full and complete to itself — that he knew he had found what he was looking for.

“After decades of work, my poetic instinct told me in a flash that these were the right words and that this was the right sound,” he said.

In the past year, Father Welzbacher was still making changes to the poem, sometimes almost daily. Some were subtle, perhaps significant only to the author’s nuanced eye and ear. One of the last, however, was also one of the most important. On the title page, he changed his name from “George Welzbacher” to a pen name: “George Hanley Welzbacher.” (His actual full name is George Anthony Welzbacher.) By adding “Hanley,” his beloved Irish mother’s maiden name, he intended to ensure his poetic summa honored the woman who first kindled his love of poetry.

“I confess there was some relief when I finally finished it,” Father Welzbacher said. At long last “it was a relief to know that I had done my very best to reach my poetic goal.”

What was that goal? “Nothing less than to give my personal thanks to the Lord for all he has done for me,” he said.

Those who have had the privilege of hearing Father Welzbacher read “Galactic Shepherd” —including only a small number of Holy Family parishioners and a few others — will likely always call to mind the marvelous mahogany timbre of his voice and his precise, evenly paced pronunciation of each word. Through his reading, the poem becomes a kind of “song” in verse that transforms poetry into worship. “Galactic Shepherd” reminds its readers again that the drama, imagery and cadence of good poetry can illuminate the veiled mysteries of the Christian message in extraordinary and unexpected ways.

“What I tried to do with ‘Galactic Sheperd,’” Father Welzbacher said, “is to offer to God my thanksgiving. If it arouses in others a greater love for the Lord, it would greatly please me.”

The creation of this remarkable poem was not ancillary to Father Welzbacher’s priestly mission; it was integral to it.

“This is not some sideline or hobby,” he said. “It’s central to my song of praise to the Lord.”


“Galactic Shepherd: Time’s Charioteer”

A ricercar for the Incarnate Word

George Hanley Welzbacher

“For that Wisdom, being Uncompounded, hath power to do all things, so doth it reach from end to end, mightily!”
The Book of Wisdom 7:27 and 8:1

“He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”
Colossians 1:17

Conceptual Silence! Whence
Of Intellection Sheer
His Comprehension Sure! Whose Song Spontaneous Commands a Plenitude Sublime!
Wherein decreed, whirls forth in dance
(so bestowed Necessity, so encompassed Chance)
The multitudinous tumult of Time!
Kept strict its pace, its shout, its chase
Keyed
To a marshalling rhyme!
Sprung from a Joy Everlasting, His the Response
Everlastingly heard,
Springs,
Ever wakeful,
THE EMBLAZONING WORD!

Swift to Whose praise in swirling thunder
Of choirs
Swells vast with wonder
What resounding accord!
Thus to hail Who thwarts the fury of a Pride
Relentless raging, lifts high in command
A constraining sword!
Whom vast legions of Light, their plighted trust
His grace engaging, salute
As recognizant Lord!

Swift-Salient sure, plumbs Who such Measureless Deep,
All-instantaneous Whose course tenacious spans
Of Light
What Shoreless Sea! Reigns Lord Consortial
He
As Alone the Begotten
Of an Ageless Might,
To which Light Unbounded
Full this His Likeness Bright,
All ablaze in glory
Forth Who Radiant springs: the Resplendence
Of a Radiance Prime!
Born to Him Who so knows as gainsays
The gainsaying,
The Consentaneous Lord Marshall of Time!

Sire’s writ affirms wields Who Sire’s mace!
Whence, fierce-endowed in pulse and pace,
Time’s cadenced rage
Of appetition began!
While in the song of nascent choirs
Ascending swift in a swirl of gyres
Love’s theme magistral
In sovran déscant ran,
Grand Craftsman, Lord, reigned He!
Of Changeless Light in Empire
Sure
Who promenades
In glory!
To Wealth Unbounded, Wealth Undistrained
The Enraptured Heir!
Through Whose bright realm no thrift austere turns dear
That
Story,
Nor terms’ assize nor pow’rs’ surcease
Casts shadow there!
Past need, past care, of such
Dominion fair
Full height sustained!
In Gift Entire of Uncompounded Strength
All
Purpose gained,
Who yet stoops gently low! If
Inexpugnable, O Unchallengeable! Lord so engendered

The Unapproachable there,
Here who obeys Time’s
Sway
Sleeps so
Young Lord Compassionate,
In Love’s complaisance Who,
Self-surrendered, smiles,
Thus far dissceptred,
Born so to us, our Prince, our Peer,
In contravening, in superveniet
Plan
Deigning here,
Lord Unconfounded, to span
Soft-slumbring Lamb, fierce
Rampant Lion,
Reigns He our Scion Most Sapient,
In His wiles ever wakeful:
Pledged Blood-ransom, Doomed Huntsman of Man!

In Whose craft found resourceful,
Winds His way ever sure
Through Death’s maze He the Master, steadfast strong
To endure —
Swathed now in lowlier
Birth, read there Wreathed Writ
Of Man’s
Worth —
Such clamant pain as shall lure
Death undone! Evoking plenty
From dearth,
Shapes He high heaven of earth, the estranged
Grown dear, from banished far
Changed near!
Constates the kingly-cunning, acknowledged wise
In His ways,
Hell’s Challenger bold, Man’s Champion Keen,
Pain’s Willing Familiar, efficaciously brave!
Of so Almighty a Father
In rapt recognizant gaze:
Lord Melodist of UNVANQUISHABLE LOVE!

LOVE UNSURCEASING!
Of that Vigour annealed* whence,
Tongued in Fire Unconsumed,
Stands revealed, stands imparted
Cogent Measure to us
This Their Withinmost, Their Commutual BREATH!
Consurgent SIGH! O VOICE OF ECSTASY SERENE!
BOND INSEVERABLE
Of a Concord Supreme,
Whose Yield Everlasting: Full Dominion TRINE! Wherewithin EACH
In grand Severalty Condign
Reigns Exultant,
Such Their Fellowship Blest!

Unfalt’ring True
Such Source assessed, makes so us new
HIS Name confessed!
Whose swerveless Might, forever same,
Awakens rest,
The wild soothed tame!

Wherewith cleansed pure
As ages run, in concert sure
With the THREE-in-ONE, the forlorn
Changed welcome guest —
As of old the out-
Cast, of high state
Quite dispossessed, just so all lame
Went he
That now
Springs free —
By LOVE is seized, snatched aloft, swept up on high!
Throughout exhilarant drift
Of sustentive flight
Held solicitous-fast
In grasp of talons BRIGHT
Of HIM
Who in fierce reply, forth eagle-swift, forth
From startled sky, once
Hurtling downward, plummeted
Down, down, down, indeflectible
Down,
Inevasible down,
To leave so at the last despoiled
That ONE most furious foiled, known his boast
All spurious failed,
That in Heaven’s as in Man’s despite,
All affrontive bold
Came coiling cold, came Prince
Of Shame,
Came Scribe of Blame, came despotic
In vertiginous night, that twisting,
Slithering lecherous WORM, in ingravescence
Of malice
Most inveterate firm, if in this
Perseverant alone,
Of whose wound from of old we are healed,
Death’s
Titled claim, Hell’s vaunted hold
Repealed!

Thence freed,
Whence found need to rejoice, in bold deed
Pay we heed to such VOICE
As shall us
Thus now marvelling teach:

No dizzying steep, no heart-staggering deep! No, nor aught that can be told
Of Uncontained
In —
fi —
ni —
ty!
Shall in aught evade, shall amaze
His
Reach!
Whose glance effectual
From Eternity’s height, impartial,
‘gainst Nature constraining none,
Pursues, unbaffled, His
Victories won! Binds future, binds
Past
In one vast swirling
Dance
Of bliss sustained, secure displayed, held sure the yield
Of Consortial Serenity
In the blaze
Of His Justice foreseen!
High Lord Encompasser of all Time’s boundless
Deep! In one swift sweep
The Sounder bold
Of Eternity’s
In-
circumscriptible
Sea!

* “Annealed” is used here exclusively in the sense “to set afire.”