Poetry

Judgement 1

The Second Coming was my theme before

When Christ came back to earth at the world’s end;

Now I who sang those chapters must do more:

I sing the Judgement of those who remained.

Like me, they ran, listening to their Saviour

And grabbed at safety using head and hand,

To save their lives. But that test being over

A new one starts in a world which lasts forever.

After my master, Christ the destroyer,

Who had assumed that final giant shape,

Had carried me beyond the lake of fire,

He took a human form, and looking up,

He followed where his eyes looked in the air,

Ascending to the sky. Then I did weep

And mourn the loss and experience grief,

I do assert it, but I must be brief.

I was alone then, where England had been

Before it had been rolled backwards in time.

Or maybe Wales, specifically Brecon

Which, by my reckoning, is where we came

When the apocalypse was almost done,

And when my master left me, heading home

Into the heavens. It was lovely there

Peaceful and healthy lying on the shore.

The trees let light through like stained glass windows

In gothic churches, and the big dark trees

Were like the columns that cathedrals use

To make those temples stand for centuries.

The half light and the quiet and the buzz

And birds and insects brought back memories

Of Sundays with my kids, when for example

We went together to a Christian temple.

I closed my eyes a while but not for long.

‘Once Minos sent the condemned to their level

Curling his tail to indicate their rank,’

A sort of upright lizard-looking devil

Was at my side, a horrid reptile thing.

‘Don’t be disgusted I am a coeval

With this age. I’m a terrible lizard,

A dinosaur.’ I observed and considered.

It had a large wide mouth and scaly skin

And eyes at either side of its large head

And looked like an aggressive big chicken

Without a beak, but with some teeth instead.

‘While earth,’ the dinosaur began again,

‘While earth existed, Minos decided

What punishment a soul suffered. But here

God speaks directly to you in your ear.

‘The land is your land, and you’re judged by him

Not by the foul animals of hell.

God’s Holy Spirit himself is your doom.

He’ll make you ramble on or make you still.

And learn the ideal logos as a psalm

Learn the commandments here in this temple.

This is the afterlife in the judgement stage.

It is arranged to educate like Church.’

And I: ‘A talking dinosaur for Christ!’

And it said: ‘Older lizards learned to talk.’

And I: ‘Who could have known that God had blessed

The giant dinosaurs to do his work?’

And he: ‘Yet men alone take Eucharist.

While aliens think, and animals can bark,

Humans alone were made in God’s image.’

Then I said: ‘Help me on my pilgrimage.

‘Where has my guide gone? Tell me.’ He replied:

‘You do not hear him? Others say they do,

Who came this way before you, in their head.

They say he shouts in a fortissimo

Communicating uncreated light

And grace sometimes to dishumanise you

So that you become God in theosis.

But what do I know? I just fossilise.

‘You saw my fossils, not bones, when the land

Along the place they call Jurassic Coast

Collapsed leaving my skeleton behind.

Not spirit.’ There were others like this beast,

On either side my path on either hand.

‘Go forward. Straight ahead to the first Feast.

They are acquainted, those who abandon

The pathway, with things meant for God alone.’

‘What things are meant for him and not for us?’

I asked this dinosaur, and he replied:

‘Oh, being eaten, entering an abyss,

Or eating nothing until you are dead;

Dying of thirst, drowning, and things like this.

Unbearable experience that for God

Is easy but which men find much too strong.

So be observant as you go along.

‘And listen to your conscience talk to you.’

So I commenced my pilgrimage. The sun

A great electromagnetic array,

Whose energy is simply the photon,

Was burning nicely; some was bounced away

Back into space by layers of ozone

Which sail a thousand miles above the seas

And bounce the radiation back to space.

Now space is cold, near absolute zero

But I will tell of temperature anon.

If you read this, you may well need to know,

In a post-apocalypse situation,

The science and technology we knew

And I will help. But not in chapter one

Of this new book. I looked out for God’s voice

And there it was, in the silence and stillness.

As I was heading for the interior

Of this strange country by the prescribed road

I saw another lonely dinosaur:

‘See that,’ he pointed, ‘the light up ahead?

It is the light projected from a star

Above a cave where you will find your guide.

He is inside, asleep with his mother.

Stay on the path always when going further.

‘You undergo the twelve parts of a test.

Each test is in a town of your homeland;

The first, in Brecon: the Nativity feast.’

I thanked this creature and traversed the ground

Along the path while making my way fast.

In life more pain than pleasure will be found.

Think: the pain of being eaten is intense

And what eats you while eating has its pains.