Poetry

Resurrection 33

Comfortable and full before the fire

Sat in the old chair sipping at my pipe

In the front room, while Galya did the dishes

And the children pleased themselves with this or that

And the barometer was showing rain

It was impendent to recall the past

In purity of intellect and feeling

And follow the instructions I had been given.

To remember God had intervened in time

And in my life and taken part in history

As man in sign that he could rescue us.

He took our shape, drawing on the ideal

The predesigned and predetermined form

For all eternity the draft of us,

To save us from the mess of our mistakes,

Our own or those of others as may be.

Showing how to be, to clear the mind of care

And to see clearly. God showed man his nature.

Christ, innocent and secretive in life

With the immortal mind, unmoved and still;

A stillness of the heart and a clear mind

A Godlike stillness which allowed the sight

For a fruitful land, a peaceful wealthy place

An idea that is actual in time.

A country with a king to uphold the law

And people who live without interference;

Replete with children born from generation

Of man and woman in their strong desire,

A dual desire; and an unbreakable law

To care for them, an ideal iron rule

To love their own tribe. That is in the parents

And in the children love and gratitude.

A parliament of talking commoners

With delegated power to work things out

Discussing obligations, most of all

The nation’s arms and defence of the culture,

Its national security and wealth.

And private property and private life,

Freedom of thought and decency in talk,

Where innocence and freedom are the rule.

A nation of that kind, a pyramid

Of great men and a ladder to ascend;

And the means of falling for the incompetent.

That’s what God made, the best ideal land.

He made the centre of this paradise

The single soul, the centre of the world:

The me, the I, the Dasein opening

Through which whatever is must come to be.

You, Father, you, creator, you have sent

The Holy Spirit to ensure we are

As that ideal has shaped things for all time.

Help out your Church, to keep us on the track

Where you revived only the souls that want

To live here. Show us mercy if we stray;

Keep us unselfish and in gratitude

Composed in soul and focused on the truth.

So we defeat our enemies and live

Productively in peace and gentleness.

You made love, which alone brings us together

The fundamental law of all creation

To bridge the gap between the sovereign man

The individual single royal soul

And others. Love also draw us upward

Toward you, over such an endless space.

This strange imperfect land that we inherit

Let us perfect it with diligence and work

And application of the appetent brain.

Refine the mind to focus and to silence

So as to see this everlasting life

And put the mind into the unruly heart

To receive grace and think the greatest things

And act as well, in such a pleasing way.

Our history before the final end

Is summarised like this: decline and fall

Into confusion and to evil things

From which you saved and rescued me, just as

You raised me from the dead when the earth died.

But rescue came from the Orthodox Church

Which is the haven of the soul, the retreat

And harbour and the saviour of the race.

A history of kings and saints, who are

Our guardians and our guides have lived inside

The Church, in memory and before God.

Building eternal virtues in dead men

Ideal comportments in our faulty souls

Ideals and real ideas inside the heart

That’s what the virtues are. The Church taught them

So any intelligent man can take them on.

And by the doing of the sacraments

The Church has cleaned us up ready for this –

This happy afterlife made for the few.

Many were cast out, and many were called

But few were chosen. That is who we are,

Who rose out of the purging cleaning fire

Which damned and swept away the wretched ones

To leave the blessed in this remade place.

You made the ordered universal cosmos

Projecting it as perfect from the first

And made it beautiful and regular,

To include Wales, that’s my apportioned part,

In its incomparable fertility

The dignity and silence of its hills

Where there are dotted castles I have seen

And places where I learned the point of things.

And dangerous seas which lap us all around,

Unsurveyed oceans and uncharted lands -

All this old earth, as ideal in its form,

So complex and intricately compounded

That nothing can be thought that could be greater.

It moves around the sun and paces out

The seasons and the days and blessed nights;

Such the fantastic mysteries you made.

A home for us, which you have understood

In time which exceeds all our comprehension;

A homeland and a place of peace and safety,

Because you know how it is to be man,

So limited in what we can achieve.

You spoke in human words, you lived and died.

And finally you made this best of worlds

To stay with us both now and ever more.

THE END