Poetry

Judgement 16

The hole was like those wonders that they build

Full with the merchant classes who do nothing

But shift the money round. The hole was filled

With human bodies falling, gasping, breathing

Their last words, which were not plaintive and wild,

But optimistic, chipper, twee, and soothing

The burden of their voices was ‘goodbye’

As said by people optimistically.

As when a man says ‘Vale’ to his wife

When nipping out for something from the shop:

‘Bye’, ‘see you’, ‘too-rah’, or ‘have a nice life’.

The bodies fell and yet the sounds came up

Astonishing it was to hear this stuff,

It seemed so meaningless and kind of cheap.

“They volunteer for their annihilation,”

I said, and then the last of the procession.

Those who remained, if they had not gone wide

And vanished in the darkness, seemed to crawl

Toward the hollow tube and drop inside.

“They think it’s God, they think the animal

Is God. So, they replaced our Holy God

With politics and the political.”

The thing was slouching with its boneless limbs

Behind the main lines, looking for victims.

And all the human zombies after it

With rainbow flags and peace signs here and there;

But in the end they went down in the pit.

As I looked down I saw them disappear

And yet burst into flames after a bit.

When rocks from outer space in the atmosphere,

Engage with air by friction, there is heat:

The air takes fire and burns the meteorite.

Just so those bodies with their pointless talk.

But I confess I do not know their story

Or what occurred to them within the dark

Out of my vision’s range. But do not worry.

And then I saw the final creature stalk

It came forth at the end, big as a lorry,

A beast with wings and feathers on its sides

And four legs, and a human face besides.

“The Gryphon,” was the name my master gave it.

Alongside was a man wearing a crown.

It found the octopus and stood above it

Then rolled it in the hole and beat it down,

Then sealed the gap with fire. Now my beloved,

Save Heidegger, I found myself alone.

“What shall we do, now?” That was how I spoke.

“You know, they used to cense the church with smoke,

“And all the people gathered in public,

And yet the Holy Spirit made a point,

Of making you to pray alone, just like

A man drinks at a pub for enjoyment

But also, if he is an alcoholic

He drinks in private, to his detriment,

So we, in hardship used to meditate

Intoxicated by that holy state.

“We recognised the paradox answered

Which Kierkegaard posed, which puzzled us so much:

How being isolated is absurd

And yet the holy message of the church

Is this: to follow Christ and to be God.

For, that is simply such an overreach,

To have your own mind and some self command

And yet be selfless, on the other hand.

“We used to say that we should, kind of, die,

And enter in communion in silence,

By visualising death, so that you see

The angel cutting you with vehemence,

Killing you softly. This is not the way.

Rather, we do not die by violence,

That is as wrong as that imagining

Which young men fantasize in their longing

“For sexual union, where the self and other

Are lost in one. Do not imagine death.

It is a crime to massacre your brother

And equally to suffocate your breath

And kill yourself, yourself you should not smother

Even in the thought, and this is also sooth.

Instead, reflect on this, your worthless sin,

Instead of actual annihilation.

“A sinner is like one who is dead sick,

And yet his sickness will not make him die.

A man confessing sin is just as weak

And open to combining with the Most High,

But he can be revived and be brought back,

‘Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy,

On me, a sinner’ is the prayer one says,

With special stress laid on the ‘sinner’ phrase.

“You’ve seen what happens when the proud, self-made,

The millions moving for their empty grave,

The grave they dug in their confident pride.

But we don’t die like that. Now let us move

And catch up with that passing fair parade.

Because we know we sinned, we will survive

Because again, we know that only God

Can hear this and forgive.” That’s what he said.

And I said: “I appreciate this lesson.

But I must be offensive, and must ask,

How, while you taught, you made public profession

And when you wrote things in private notebooks,

You frequently denied any confession

And said theology was not a worthy task.

You were a hostile witness to God, then,

So what has changed, and how were you forgiven?”

And he: “You went to see the mountain hut.

When it was dark, and I had gone to my rest.

Why did I build that place. Please, it was not

To do some skiing, or walk the forest.

I worked at purifying the spirit

And never once became materialist.

So, when our eyes were opened from our sleep

The decades after rolling down the slope

“To hell and the infernal punishment,

I found myself already fully trained

To hear the angel’s call, and what it meant.”

“So you were given a chance to live at the end?”

I said, and he replied “Yes”. So we went

And followed in the path, some way behind

That Gryphon, making out of Canterbury,

At last toward the next stage of the way.