Poems of Francis Gurney Okie   

Francis Gurney Okie was a manufacturer of printers' inks in Philadelphia when he wrote a supplier of sandpaper in Minnesota asking for samples of sandpaper which would not tear apart when used under water. The company's name was Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing. Okie received a letter from an officer of that company, William McKnight, informing him that the requested product did not exist. McKnight invited Okie to come to Minnesota and eventually to join the company. In time, Okie became research director of what is today known as 3M, one of the world's largest suppliers of tapes and other coated materials. This was in the early 1920s.

Working for 3M, Okie developed a product known as "Wet-or-Dry" sandpaper, which was the company's first big commercial product. (It was the "acorn" from which a giant corporate "oak" grew.) Another which followed during that time was a product known as "Scotch tape". Wet-or-Dry sandpaper was widely used in manufacturing processes. The ability to sand a metal or wood surface under a stream of running water cut down on dust in the air which, in turn, greatly reduced cases of the lung disease known as silicosis. It gave a major boost to occupational safety.

Francis Okie retired from the company in the 1930s. He spent most of his remaining years writing religious poetry. Until his death in 1975, Okie lived with his family in a large house on White Bear Lake. Each day he would sit at a table with pads of yellow paper checking out proposed verses through a mathematical discipline known as Gematria. This is an ancient, mystical equation of numbers with the alphabetic letters in words in the Greek and Hebrew alphabets. Okie's English-language verses each had to add up to a certain number or he would not use them. His particular number matched the numerical count of the line "He that hath understanding" in Revelation 18: 13. The author of Revelation had invited persons knowledgeable in gematria to identify the beast (or Anti-Christ).

This practice, which lasted for more than thirty years, began when Francis Okie had a mystical vision. It was the period when Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany; he and others were frequently discussed as candidates for the Anti-Christ. That time of troubles passed but Okie continued to work on the numerical verse well into his 90s. He did not use a calculator but counted the numbers in each line by a process of manual addition.

What we have here is, then, the product of a painstaking creative process. These verses are precious jewels which remain of Francis Okie's remarkable life. They were published in a limited edition on the occasion of his son's 50th wedding anniversary.

Here is a sampling:

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A HIGH metaphysical Millenium is here

And another cycle.

A beginning and end of people

A depopulation

Sudden coming death and life resurgence

and high recrudescence In the spirit,

And a being not ourselves

Which is the ancient of days.

 

THE BEING wakes us of a morn

Saying, listen and apprehend

What parable brings to mind

In the language of numbers,

God’s language of symbolism.

 

Here is the Father counting

In the sprit counting

Into consciousness

Articulate apocalypse.

 

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Molding the sapphire throne,

Strewing him stars,

No dearth in guidance hinders long

Earth’s ray inviolate.

 

All this and more at revelation’s hour

Waits upon motion

And alphabetic relativity.

 

By SIX, six, six

In sighs and portents die

Named of a grand cycle of the sky

God’s revelation from on high

Is in language of the stars.

 

The son’s science of phonetic

Is arithmetic in rhythm.

The decibels of sound united,

Aid ghostly strength,

And the esoteric echo of the doom,

Abstraction counts,

Is in the language of the stars.

 

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TIME AND PLACE together and the goal

Mark at the wheel’s full circle

The stars’ grand climacteric

Relating to divine event,

 

Off his scroll of heaven’s book

Who reads by indirection,

Meditating on the stars

How symbols might become

The instruments of grace,

 

Reminiscent of tongues

In memory’s deep concerns,

a rhythmic alphabet diffused,

From which all languages derive.

 

AS NUMERAL and sacred word

In his belief conjointly spell

The supreme criterion that best defines Jesus,

Long in the sky of Chaldean learning,

Carried from the past to be,

Unto Greek and Hebrew song,

Lingual felicity’s basic key,

 

Line by line and link by link in cipher,

Punctuating light and fire

To the miracle of tongues,

Punctuating spins

The fabric of our counting.

 

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Is the loom of language lost?

Read on, thou child of measure.

 

IF YE WOULD read the emblems

If ye would read the dragon

And if you would read the danger,

As feeling a thing before it happens,

Search the high scripture

By the pole star’s light,

Read, through the aid of Gematria

Dream, beside the spring of dove,

And the emblem of the eagle in the sky.

 

And to search history

Take the pen and write from

Motion and an empty space,

Aloof from the world, the echo

Whence comes the Lord Messiah.

 

ERE SAINT or any image speak

Before a wheel with spokes

Spins out the parallel,

Behind the face no man dare see, burns

Earth’s ray inviolate.

 

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HE THAT HATH the love of the Lamb

Who draws this parable

In parable he issues forth,

St. John the Divine speaking,

Ideal his melody of silence sings,

Ideal the gateway of the Lord.

 

Gentle John of Patmos ancient,

Blessed aid in quiet waiting,

He knows a language of creation

Of the rhythmics of the Lamb.

 

Here is a door opened and a key

To the miracle of tongues,

A long forgotten wisdom

Once a searchlight of the soul,

 

So in signs and wonders,

John shows the way.

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