Poetry

Apocalypse 2

Just as a man who works the day then night

And then when day breaks carries on his working

Indifferent to sleep but resolute

To finish an invented thing he is making

Will start to see things and hallucinate,

So as we walked along I was mistaken.

“Who are you? Where from? Tell me where we are.”

The atmosphere thick like a public bar.

Those were the anxious things I said, meanwhile

He gave no answer. In the gloomy light

Which fires threw on our walking mile by mile

I saw the towers of Wrexham up ahead

The parish church in that late gothic style

Mansions and walls untouched and still complete

As if the bombs had never knocked them down

But time had reversed, rebuilding the town.

The red chimneys still affronted the sky

While there were terraced houses under them

And fancy pipeworks of small industry.

Even though the dead made desultory home

And lay unhappily along our way.

In 1918, to Jerusalem,

Came TE Lawrence liberating it

And so my leader seemed to me like that.

Calmly he walked, as if he did not care

And scruffily as if despite being lazy,

By accident he won that holy war.

Just so, my leader seemed to find it easy

To see the bodies strewn across the floor

And evidence that the dead were going crazy

And had arisen from their holes and graves.

He spoke at last, when we had reached the Groves.

“Here space is time, so as we walk onward

Time also moves, and when we halt time stops.

As I created the world with my word

So now, I draw it back into collapse.

But slowly, retrograde. It is too hard

To take the world from you except in steps.

All of creation is reversing now

For you. Behold, I am making all things new.”

So he, and I: “At last, I realise.

I have not lived, here nobody survives!

And this, my country comes back in reprise

With living corpses rising from their graves

Is just as finished as imperial Greece

When Athens ruled, or Venice ruled the waves.

And you, I know who you are now, my lord

I’m not consoled, though, I am not consoled.”

“I am not happy, I don’t understand

Why I have lived to see destruction

Why I have been saved for the final end

And why the laws of time which should press on

Are being mangled up by your own hand.

What will you do to me? In my fashion

I would prefer to die.” I said, my knees

Gave way, and then we went on through the trees.

8 The man-made and the God made things were in spate

The human things were disappearing fast

The things of nature spreading at the same rate.

And at the place where there had used to rest

The cenotaph I found nothing of note.

Just tangled bush and native tree forest.

“You want to kill yourself, and to release

In your way. That could never be the case.

“Let me communicate again what is going on

We are going to make our way out of all things.

A stubborn man like you, a common man

You have failed to follow me out of all beings

You had your own will, your life was your own

When you were called by me before your sins

Were thick and heavy and you had no faith

You went your own way right unto your death.

“You had no hope in future life with me.

You would not trust me talking to your heart

And worst, you were cold as machinery

And took the opportunity to hurt

When it had been the time for charity.

And now, when I dispose of every part

Of the created world and throw aside

What does not know me, I would leave you for dead.

“Watch as that streak of light moves West to East

That is the sun cycling around the globe

I make it move like that, or slow or fast.

It is nothing to me whether it move

One way or other; but into the past

I am taking you, and not from any love

Which you have generated mirrored

Which is the image of the Father and God.”

I will not tell you how I felt that time

Or what emotions filled me with despair

When he said this, but still I lacked the shame

To stop me asking: “Why then are you here?

Have you decided to forgive my crime?”

“There are two children who have prayed somewhere

I know that place, but you are less familiar

With that place, but for them, I am going to tell you.

“The children told my mother how you tried,

And she petitioned me to take you in.”

We trod the ground out of that waste and void

A dark land now, where my birth place had been

I was embarrassed to much in my pride

But touched his coat in secret like the woman

Who was cursed with bleeding. “Don’t feel dejected,”

He said: “I’ll tell these stories, so you are corrected.

“That church you went to, stood near Liverpool

That shrine to Saint Elizabeth, the wife

Of Alexander Second, Duke of Moscow

That archduke, and that arch conservative.

When nihilists murdered him for his harsh rule

The saint picked up his body out of love

And calmly did so, to be killed at last

By those same killers. You will face this test.

“And Nicholas, apostle to Japan

Who turned five times ten thousand men to Christ;

Among the first, a samurai and man

Who brought a sword to kill him and be first

To murder for the state; that man turned, one

Of Japan’s foremost sons of God, baptised.

So, take my shoulder, it is the first hour.

And follow God with heart, and mind, and power.”