Poetry

Apocalypse 22

The undead had been digging for their friend

His soft familiar voice drew to the centre

Of earth, but he’s not there, he’s in the mind.

“And now he’s dead.” This part of my adventure

Sees me make like a swastika, run, and

I trembled, I was scared as they came after.

“Why are they zombified, empty yet moving?”

I asked my master. And he: “We are leaving.”

Ensuring that I followed after him

He led me onward, my beloved Lord.

And then: “These ones,” he said, “have used their time

In converse with the succubus inside

The devil whispering counselling them.

But that familiar demon that they heard

Is gone. So they move slowly and they eat

Rotting and longing for their parasite.

“They hated intellect,” he spoke. But as

The saying is: out of the frying pan

Into the fire, Scylla and Charybdis,

So we two found ourselves chancing upon

A flat landscape of burning torchlit trees

And setting them on fire a mounted man

On horseback nonchalantly killing them -

We call them sycamores where I come from.

And those small oaks and thorn trees hard as nails

Which populate the hills were being binned

Those solitary trees of darkling Wales

Where moss and fungus join them to the land

Where other comfort and attachment fails.

“Who is that setting fires?” I asked my friend

And he: “The servant of God, ap Ioreth

Who had the castle built at Criccieth.

“Coeval with the king Richard the First

Who used to shout ‘For God and for my right’

When urging on his army. See them burst

In plasma fire when they degenerate

From carbon tree to gas and then cinders.”

“But why?” I asked, and he: “You still ask that?

It is God’s wish his servants kill the trees

And demonstrate their hope of paradise.

“These are like trees he planted in the east,

The trees of thought which grow within the soul.

It’s time to leave them and to lay them waste.”

The ancient lonely great prince burned them all.

Now, talking in this way, we stopped and paused

Stupidly, for the undead mob was still

Making its brain dead open mouthed way

Though getting burned when it had touched a tree.

And coming after us with outstretched fingers

And missing teeth and ragged bloody skin.

“What class of men and women passed the dangers

The hellish levels I myself have seen

Only to fail here?” I asked. “Managers

The elite class of educated men.

The universities produced so many.”

“I had not thought Satan had got so many.”

As if a black and sweet soul had informed

The living tissue of their flesh in life,

That’s how they lived. But do not be alarmed

For there were some educated enough

Who were not the undead; they were unharmed.

If you will read or hear I will be brief,

For while their mouths and hands were getting near

A human voice arose and caught my ear.

He came out of the bodies, breaking free.

I did not recognise him, many years

Had passed. “You don’t remember? It is me,

The canon at Christ Church, mentor of yours,

That time at Oxford there at Trinity.

You were just home from Iraq. Heidegger’s

Philosophy was what you wrote about

You had to leave us for an Army shoot.”

And I: “I won that rifle shooting match

But lost my chance to make friends at Oxford.”

“See there,” he pointed to a zombie wretch,

“That’s Rowan Williams with his wretched horde,

The day when England died was on his watch

He led the people so far from the Lord.

Can you believe the words: ‘I renounce Satan’

Were excised from the service of baptism?

“But Satan did not think to renounce them.

So much so that the cleric in the flesh

Was not himself: the devil lived through him.

Like Tudor kings they claimed that they were Welsh

But could not help abuse, and wrecked their home

So the appearances they gave were false.

They preached that to be a true Christian

Was just to ask: ‘So, what would Christ have done?’

“That creed throws darkness over everything.

The truth is, of Christ’s actions one alone

Has any application: look within,

With stillness and the desert be at one.

But there’s no time, the undead are coming.”

“I regret that I did not turn again

To see you in the other life,” I shouted,

But he had gone and left me isolated.

It was not difficult to get away

The tattered clothes and leprous flesh were slow

And as a boat in water moves slowly

When the rower swings the oars back then below

And heaves the oars again repeatedly,

So there I saw a man make his way through

Gritting his teeth, pushing the dead aside

A man with strong arms and a shaven head.

And I knew who it was: “You’ve got this far?”

The scars around his chest and neck were healed

I left my master’s side and ran back there

To see him living made me uncontrolled,

I threw my arms around him unaware

Of tears that fell. “Surprised, Jase? But of old

I was a better soldier.” Though I tried

I could not speak, but only cried and cried.

“I was convinced for years we’d meet again,

Until the day the BBC broadcast

That you had died. Not in Afghanistan

But in Llanelli, grieving and depressed.

They said you raved about a black demon

They shot you rather than make an arrest.”

That’s what I said, trying to make some sense.

I did not have to wait for his response.

“My town, all towns, in 2016

Were unfit for ex-soldiers, though they made us.

No place, mate, no church, no occupation.

And yes, I saw the devil that’s inside us,

And had no clue about meditation

Or cure. The civvies put it down to madness.

Before long we were at each other’s throat,

Society, the state, and all that shit.

“And when I woke with all hell breaking loose,

I knew exactly what I had to do.

Look for my master, and use inner force

To aim for God, and move both fast and low;

I’d failed to find the path with any ease

In life, in death I found it, so let’s go.

I have my Christ now, Jase. But where was he

In life, in Britain? Nowhere I could see.

“No King Arthur to rule over the peace,

No interest in inner true beauty,

No benevolent king to rule stillness,

Teaching the eternal world as it ought to be.

But democratic and demonic force

Like that lost soul, Volodomir Zelenskyy.

I’m moving on, mate, I go best alone.

I’ll see you the other side,” and he was gone.