Poetry

Apocalypse 23

The pilgrim routes were secondary road.

The wells Saint Patrick used had gathered litter.

When I was young, "Now here’s a bag of weed"

They said to youths, to awaken our grey matter

And point us like an arrow at the world.

But I write now in later times and better.

"Where are we, do you think?" My God asked me.

And I: "I’d guess ten million years, or twenty?"

I like to think it was the Lleyn outcrop,

That semi-island or peninsula.

We had walked for days, pausing only to sleep;

And if I saw another traveller

He hid himself as if he was a crab

Hiding from me in the crepuscular.

For there were people scuttling about

Solitary I saw them in the night.

I took no notice nor asked who they were,

And yet it irritated me a lot,

And so began this stichomythia:

“Who was that man, hiding and being rude?”

“That man knew well how the world is God’s idea.”

“What? How each thing has a concept in it?”

“Precisely so. All things were made perfect

From an idea in God’s pure intellect.”

“Are people in his intellect as well?”

“The ideal man, and every variation.”

“My life, my private life, in full detail?”

“The Book of Life contains a full description.”

“So I am in the Book?” “No one at all

Is not there and arrived at this position.”

“But I was free to drop out and to die?”

“My father saw you in eternity.”

“So I am free, and yet he foresaw this?”

“God’s mind sees past and future all at once.

So, yes, though you are free and free to choose

He knows you with this absolute transcendence,

And sees your future. And yet what he sees

You might see, too.” “Just give me half a chance!”

I said, and, animated by the thought

Of having such a mind, I shouted out:

“How does one get this mind or superpower?”

“How does one be the mind which brought forth time?

One climbs in holiness, one becomes pure.

One avoids sin, he fights it. You can climb.”

“The meek, merciful, persecuted, poor

Is that how they appear?” “That describes them.”

“And how does one be meek?” “By violence

On heaven. Stillness, watchfulness and silence.”

“And how does one be still, get to that place?”

“By sitting down, of course, and praying God.

The Spirit comes then, with an act of grace,

And one will sit and drink, eat the Lord’s food.”

The dialogue that William Butler Yeats

Spoke through his double, Robartes, when he stood

Upon the bridge, explains that thirty lifetimes

Are not enough to learn these simple wisdoms.

“The people hiding here do so for shame

At having spent their lives searching to know

What was so easy. Speak to one of them.”

And as a bankrupt thinks of death as though

It was a better place, he makes his home

In the Thames most often, going down below

And does not struggle while his lungs and mouth

Fill with the comfort of the watery death

And he lingers on the bridges of city

And longs for comfort that he sees down there

Because he played and lost in life’s roulette,

Just so I saw a man stand and prepare

To jump. He was alone like a hermit

But unconsoled, without the Comforter.

Were we at the re-entrant dock for Bardsey

Where Mary’s well rises above the sea?

“Here we shall find them stuck, who knew the creator

But did not know his Church or speak his creed,”

My Lord said this then led me to the water.

The sea was coming in, the wind blew hard

Harder than it should be. “It doesn’t matter,

And yet, this place is not as I remember it.

The tide was never this high. Am I right?”

“Soon all of Britain will be under it.”

But reader, I have told you there is a well

Next to the dock where the saints drank saltless drink

When they set out to Bardsey. To distil

Pure water, potable and clear, I think

Is something you should know, so I will tell.

Collect sea water in a metal tank

Now make it steam by boiling it with fire.

Collect that steam, it’s drinkable water.

Three days without some water and you’re dead.

And yet, you need a gram of salt daily,

To keep your brain right, or you will go mad.

The salt permits the electricity

To flow, which in its turn permits your head

To contain thoughts. So when you boil the sea,

Retain the salt. The Romans had salt mines

Near Chester. There is salt in meat proteins.

Forgive this digression. There was a man

Stood at the cliff edge facing the abyss;

The gloomy endless sea went up and down.

I thought that he would jump, yet he saw us,

And shouted: “You there, get along, get on!”

He ran toward me, shouting: “Not this place!

You want to kill yourself? Try to get past.

Hear what I say. I know. I’m Doctor Faust.”

“You’re Doctor Faustus, dramatized by Marlowe,

And Goethe? Who, for science and for pay

Exchanged the life of stillness and his soul?”

And he: “That’s me. Released from hell today.

And I advise you, stay on your patrol.

You reject God but it’s you you betray.”

And I: “You have me wrong. I want to speak

To anyone who isn’t strong but weak.”

And he: “I have one here,” and off he went

Toward the cliff face and beneath a rock

From which he pulled a man so reluctant

That both were struggling, the one pulled back

The other dragging him. “Please, my intent

Is just to ask you who you are, to talk.”

Then seeing me, he seemed to acquiesce

And shouted: “I was once Thomas Ellis.

16 “Before the age of forty I had known

The Liberal idea and the cause

Of Celtic independence with Gladstone

And Lloyd George. And though David led those wars

Against the Kaiser’s German Philistine,

Our aim, we two Welshmen, was and still is

To separate the Welsh, Scots, and Irish,

From England, even if they all perish.

“Today, the end of time, the day the ocean

Consumes the land entirely, I have seen

That Liberal ideas, so much in fashion,

Have caused the world’s end, the end of Britain.

Because the end of this beloved nation

Determined God to pull the plug on man.

The British Isles, including all of Ireland,

Were God’s, and perfect. What I cannot stand

“Is that I rubbed my name out of the Book

Because we thought that breaking up the land

Would make us prosperous and bring us luck.

No stillness was enough. The orphan and

The widow weren’t enough. We undertook

To grasp the entire country in one hand

And shake it into government control.

O sorrow, what mistakes I made, awful.”