Poetry

Judgement 18

The colour of the sky was red like blood

The bright sun light slowed down in all that smoke;

Outgassing from volcanoes slowly poured

Over unsteady ground which cracked and broke

Revealing hot stones swirling deep inside

Between the fissures in the bleeding rock.

Such air could not sustain you very long

Like air from car exhaust pipes in your lung.

I was in York; if you had used a watch,

And measured distance over time and space

You would have found I had not travelled much:

The land was crushed together in one place,

So, Constantine’s birth place was within reach

After an hour. Respecting time, I guess,

At higher gravity time seems to slow

As physics proves to those who want to know.

And just as Stephen Daedalus once walked,

In Joyce’s masterpiece, from Sandycove

To Dublin and his trip went unremarked,

So, I left Pembroke for St Thomas’ grave,

And then went north, something I state as fact,

And this in few days, I counted them, five.

Now to a guarded realm of calm and peace

My footsteps led me, York Cathedral's close.

On that hallucinatory island,

As on the others, people sought safety

And they were judged. See, so you understand:

They curled their bodies round, between each knee

They put their head so it would touch the ground -

Elijah’s posture praying, what time he

Prayed God for rain; so, in a circle shape

They prayed, and from each one bright light shot up.

The light was tangible from each of them,

Like brightness from a lightbulb filament

Which radiates but does not burst in flame,

Just so they were, bent over and silent.

It’s said the lonely cowboy without name,

The rider free in his own element,

A gun and bible alone what he owns,

Is the ideal man of Americans;

These pilgrims were as lonely as all that,

And few in number. Few had come this far.

Three other people were there, each upright,

Who moved among them. “You,” one said, “Stay there.

In life what were you? Tell us from the start.”

The three were round me; this was my answer:

“My name was Jason. But I would as lief

Not have to tell you much about my life

“The memory of it makes me feel regret.

The story of my failures and my people

Makes me resentful, better to forget.”

Then one of them said: “I was a disciple

Of Christ, my name is James, and it is right

That being such and knowing him is ample

Description of me. This is Simon Peter,

And John is here, both follower and writer.

“But everything that happened has been told

By Peter who dictated what Mark wrote.

St Paul wrote down the things which I withheld.”

I noticed that each man had in his coat

A rolled up letter, as if they were called

To allegorise and symbolise the part

They played for Jesus. “Master,” I replied

“Why do you stay here and not go ahead?”

“We choose to stay to give the dead the vision

We had of Jesus on the Mount of Olives

With Moses, suffering Transfiguration.

They curl their bodies tight and circle themselves

To let their intellect have no confusion,

Then it observes itself and only observes.”

“What is the intellect?” was my reply.

“The energy or else activity

“Of thought and mind, but separate and one.

Just as a working man who fixes roofs

Has tiles to work with, and up there alone,

He is an individual. When he moves

And works then see that neither tiles nor man

Are that activity that works and moves

When he is working. Thus the intellect

Is the energy of thoughts when you reflect.

“You see the man, but when you see his skill

And see him work, that is his energy.

A thing at once both the man and yet still,

A wonderful power flowing outwardly,

An influence and freedom, like the will.”

Now James bowed to his friends, and said goodbye.

And walked with me toward the Minster doors.

Now, at that time in space the ancient course

Of comets and of random rock and dust

Was fading, and familiar settled paths

Of all the asteroids which in the past

Had their own routes, had started sharing Earth’s,

Colliding with us, shattering the crust,

And making craters; throwing up new births

Of hills and valleys. Chunks of gold and tin

Dug in the ground which men were apt to mine.

I saw them with their dust tails flowing back

Within the heavens, purple as a bruise,

While those night wanderers made a reckless track

Against the solar winds and plasma rays,

Like Haley’s comet, that first made its mark

When it was sewn into the tapestries

By William First’s court ladies in Bayeux

When his invading barons won his war.

“The intellect has one sense of its own

That’s in addition to the sense of sight,

Smell, hearing, touch and taste. It is this one:

The sense for seeing uncreated light,

The energy which is purely divine.

Nobody claims to see or know our God;

With Dionysios, we do reject

To know God with the human intellect.

“But we do know the world extremely well,

And He sustains and loves it all the time,

With care and great attention all the while.

In everyone he works and is at home,

And this activity is felt by all,

But dimly, blindly. We saw it in him

When Jesus woke us on the mountain ridge

When God made space for Christ in his image.

“At every instant he brings world to be.

And his activity is everywhere.

The direct sight of God’s own energy

By intellect lodged in the purest prayer

So it is in the heart, opens the eye.

What’s life, but slowly being made aware

Of all creation acting just for you

To make you learn and feel that energy?

“He could not be observed in plenitude.

No way. That fire would burn you into ash.

Your intellect and body are not made

For that. But this white heat, this, at a push,

The white heat of endless solicitude,

We see as God’s activity.” I wish

This chapter could be longer but my scheme

Requires me to proceed to the next rhyme.