Poetry

Apocalypse 10

The place we were, a plain; the time was dusk;

The ground was tangled grass, like baby heads

That twist your ankle. If you were to ask

What was in front, it looked to me like woods.

Behind was like a curtain or a mask

With no depth and no distance and no lights

Or like a 404, an error screen

The world wide web throws up for what is gone.

“The zombie human souls did not do this,

They have not disembodied all physics,”

I said, and then my guide and Lord, Jesus:

“You are correct. The violent attacks

That many of them did these past few days

Were just the self-expression of those folks.

They were reborn, and most refused to come,

And most who got this far have seen their doom.

“Vast numbers simply did not have a soul

And they are gone. An equally great horde

Produce, consume, consume, produce, that’s all.

They were that army, when they were restored,

And soon gave up, died, thinking this was hell.

The truly living don’t find things so hard.”

Now we had trod through marsh, a mile or so,

Until that wood I mentioned lines ago.

We went inside, a forest temperate.

It was a tangled mess for the most part.

At length a clearing dappled us with light

And rays shone through the branches of a sort

Reminding me of gothic temples that

In vaults and sweeping heights, create by art

The holy altar and the holy screen

Where God meets savages in the tree green.

A man was in the clearing. “Here, a man

I made him and designed him, homo sapiens.

In Africa he first welcomed the sun,

And moved out slowly with the generations.

Reborn he excels.” As if on a son

My master smiled on him and as it happens

He saw me and approached. “His limbs are thin,

And straight, his body upright, and his chin

“Is small, the teeth small and crammed in his mouth.

His arms are weak, his hips are insecure.

A mammal’s heart is hidden underneath

When it is prone and walking on all four.

The other animals when they give birth

Produce their offspring ready and mature

But man, whose pelvis is all distorted

Is always weak at birth due to his head.

“The cranium is large to house the brain

So human young are born unfit for life.

They cannot think or walk, their naked skin

Ensures they need the attention of the wife

And that the first years are spent with their kin

Emotions are crucial, certainly love.

When fully grown his hands easily break

And are not powerful but rather weak.

“They’re good for writing not for climbing trees,

And short of muscle. By his third decade

His back is giving trouble and his knees

All under pressure from the weighty head,

Make him an old man in his mid-thirties.

In time, the homo sapiens cooks his food

To make it soft, so that he does not chew

The whole day long as other mammals do.

“And so, freed from the cud, he looks beyond

And goes exploring, tooled up, with his fire.

This homeless wandering man and fire brand

With brain and heart and soul and with desire,

The coalescence of which in the end,

Compose the thing of which you are aware:

A thing on trial, handcuffed and yet most free

Close to his God still and yet far away.”

My master gave this elegy of praise.

He praised both his creation and his nature,

For God himself joined with the human race

And made man to be part of God’s adventure.

To see as God sees, and do what God does.

But then something occurred which broke this rapture,

When someone else came in that forest nave

Which caused the man to startle and to leave.

And in addition, arrows in the air.

The one who came was the advance party

Perhaps, reconnaissance. He found me there

And said: “Evagrios the Solitary

Is who I am. And I know who you are

You are that Jason making poetry.”

And I: “How do you know?” And he: “Not by

That gift of foresight or telepathy

“Which unity with God is said to bring.

Rather, I saw your children at the start,

And they explained and told me everything.

Before you ask, I’ve nothing to impart

Except that they avoid this suffering

And carry a ‘Get out of jail free’ card;

That’s all I know.” And I: “Thank you, thank you.

A man was here, and left when you came through.

“A first born who God made and has described

As handcuffed, but what epithet is this?”

And then the saint said: “Laziness and pride

And hate, and envy, and covetousness,

And lust and gluttony, are deep inside

And all apparent in the lot of us,

Extreme attachments, extreme obsessions

Derived from simple need they become passions.

“Who does not need affection in the bed,

And yet it turns to lust; who does not eat

Yet there are feeders who are gluttons made.

And so on. And that’s why I set about

With absolute encouragement from God

To make the monastery, and why I taught

John Cassian to teach this in the West.

But being solitary is the best.”

He spoke, we walked together for a while

And arrows that I’d seen cut through the air

Began to fall behind us and to fall

Toward that stripling I described before.

And seemed intended to hit me as well.

And men came after, and I was aware

That these were suffering from hate or wrath.

“Sir,” I said “When the great Duke of Monmouth,

“Determined to remove the second James,

The king who nearly turned England to Rome,

When Monmouth’s men failed to attain their aims,

The hanging judge, Judge Jeffreys, of Wrexham

Went round the country punishing their crimes,

Bypassing law and simply killing them.

I think that he, there, in the front is Jeffreys.

Is this the case?” I said. My lord replied “Yes”.

“And I wish I could take an arrow, too

And stick it in him with my own bare hands

Without a bow. The rebels that he slew

Were later heroes, free men of these lands

Who made the Bill of Rights what it is now.”

I said this, and my master: “Where this ends

Will see the judge lie down still full of wrath,

He won’t survive. Be calm and take a breath.”