Poetry

Judgement 17

When infantry go forward from their base

They stick to roads, and check them as they go,

A couple of their soldiers first debus

And use their eyes to look for mines. Just so

The path we took had been made safe for us;

And all the British infantry I knew

Were carried to their jobs in armoured trucks

Long iron columns rolling on their tracks

Which leave deep ruts in mud, easy to see

And likewise there, the track was obvious

Made by that visionary company.

It was the fifth day. Depopulated place

A land without a sign of industry

Dead land, a dead place without factories

Without an agriculture or employment

A zombie living dead environment

Back in the mist of time the rich class rose

And turned the land to industry and filth

The earth was mined and burned for a purpose

And when the land could not deliver wealth

They left it, like a ghost town, a ghost place

Taking with them the money got by stealth

And leaving roofless warehouses on shore

Leaving the ruins for the workless poor

A land that dare not speak the name of Christ

Without community, or work, or worship.

Just so, my England, and the ancient West

A pile of rubbish in a great rubbish heap

A slate grey sky cut by a lightning burst

That’s what I saw then, and did I wake or sleep?

The barren skyline seemed to give me proof

Both of the old life and the afterlife.

“Where men divorce, and women freely kill

Their infants in the womb. No generation

To make an army, or to work with skill;

Place without fathers, beaten empty nation,

With offshore riches, offshore work as well,

So that we grew up rootless in our fashion

Collapsed defeated land without future

And nameless hoards punished us for our error.”

I spoke like that, lamenting on the state

Of world back then, and world as it appeared.

The philosopher didn’t hesitate:

“But there is Hope,” and “Listen to my word:

There’s Hope, and what is wrong will be put right.

This ruin is the vengeance of the Lord.

In Germany they saw the same abyss

After the first war, and that awful loss

“And, rather than insist that any Fuhrer

And Parliament must each Commune weekly

An atheistic socialist endeavour

That they called Nazism held the key.

It was the Twilight of the Gods forever.

It was the world’s end. That is what we saw

Across the West. Inform me, how did you

Decide to turn, and go the other way?”

So, I said: “I just felt God watching me,

At times he shouted to me, face to face.

And at a moment of extremity

When Hope was hopeless, and I had no choice

I answered him, and learned to bend the knee.”

“The hard reality and emptiness

Of soulless ordering and pragmatic goals

Will bring men back to Being when night falls.”

Like this we talked, but mostly did not speak,

Until we came to where Ely once was.

And beauty that would force your heart to break,

The anti-gravity Cathedral towers

Where standing yet, golden, in the world’s wreck.

And nearby I could see old Cromwell’s house,

Empty and locked up. That was when a guide

An angel took my hand. I went inside.

When I looked back my friend was stood alone

And smiling to me. Like the other places

The nave was full, and in the maze of stone

Thousands of people looked and turned their gazes

Toward a vision where the altar had been.

Out of the annihilated empty spaces

Where no men lived but everyone was dead

A little girl was born purely for God.

My eyes were captured by the cosmic game,

I do not know how long. Eventually

I started looking round me in that room

And unlike other sinners usually

Who suffered something, these suffered no doom:

“What’s going on?” I asked one near to me,

“The Lady’s day of birth. We are to learn

How someone can, an entire lifetime, burn

“And fire the chaff of world and earth to ash

To love and be with God alone,” he said.

“Because existence happens by his wish,

Then such a concentration that she did

Is what we learn or learn to do afresh.”

And I: “What is your name?” But these words had

Just left my lips before a guardian

Was leading me by force back to the fen.

My backpack, which my shoulders hardly felt

Was lifted from me and a stone removed

And then refitted. Then, out in the cold.

The Gospels say, that Lord God Jesus saved

By the despatch of Spirit to the world

It seemed to me that what this means was proved

By how I then walked miles without a map

And yet I made it owing to my Hope.

The faith in him is love of something weird

It is outside existence, in the heart

Within the meditating loving head.

It did not hurt to be thrown in the dirt

Nor walk alone, the end of time toward.

At Lincoln three towers stood and did their part

Declaiming three in one divinity;

In there, the Annunciation. Not for me.

I was allowed to see, then was pushed away.

And then another isolated walk

Inspired by faith and Hope, to Coventry.

The bombed out roofless church was put to work

To mourn the death of that same saint Mary.

I saw them praying there as it grew dark:

“Mother of God, pray for us now and at

The hour of our death,” her to invocate.