Poetry

Judgement 23

We came to the church door and went inside,

That master of my younger years and I,

At Manchester’s Cathedral. If you had

Made pilgrimage there in the years gone by

At evening in the city, you would have heard

The priest say evening prayers with nobody,

His only company was the alms box

His prayers ascending in a low mass voice.

Or maybe see there, out of charity,

The priests invite their enemies to chant

Islamic things and calls for loyalty

To foreign lands, for muslim government.

Right there in Manchester, that great city,

Famous for rape gangs doing what they want

To children with their drugs and third world ways

Accepted as allowed in those bad days.

But now the place was full of little ones.

Here were the martyrs butchered in God’s place

By Herod, killer of the first born sons,

While the infant Christ fulfilled the prophecies

And stayed in Egypt. So, in their thousands

These innocents, with no defence, and ours,

Our girls who were abused, were gathered there

Whom nobody had helped in days of yore.

There were no tears; they laughed and were at play

With things to eat and games and a teacher.

White shining light was playing subtly

Around each innocent ideal creature

Revived and comforted, at last happy.

The walls reverberated with laughter,

The shrieks and shouts children are apt to make,

While silent guardians watched them for their sake.

It was Ascension Day, remembering

How Jesus left and rose into the skies

And like Elijah stayed forever young,

Undying in the boundless depth of space.

It seemed these children, like the whole building,

Was scaffolded, upraised by energies,

A power or action which makes them so real;

The light was foam of the great power in it all.

As in that film where the old wizard says:

‘A force supports and binds the galaxy

Together, guiding people on their ways,’

So, round each child and young girl I could see

A solid light form guarding each of these,

Inwardly, too, like sap inside a tree,

Shielding and leading them toward the good;

The light shape was the part I understood.

It is said that paramedics cut the chest

Of that Princess of Wales who died in France;

They squeezed her heart to counter its arrest,

Massaging it, or else she had no chance;

Just so, I saw a power in every breast

Which gave kindness and life to these infants.

I saw it streaming from the sanctuary

And saw it lead up to the high roof tree.

Its source was outside, from a procession.

Reader, I was astonished seeing this.

I looked toward myself, and looked a down;

My heart was pierced or massaged in such wise.

And seeing how the Spirit and it alone

Kept me alive, I felt the same surprise

That St Teresa of Avila knew

When she was pierced at heart and through and through.

Unable to bear such reality,

My head all light and spinning, in offense,

I went back to the door, to get away.

There, someone took my pack from me at once,

And took a burden out and put it by,

Then, taking the last rock with special tongs,

Put that into my mouth, that I should eat.

And then the angel opened up the gate.

Outside was nothing; Earth had cracked and gone.

On separate ways the pieces gan to scatter.

There was mere empty space where Earth had been,

And slabs of rock were like those stones in water

They put in streams to put your feet upon.

Or like the shards of stone strewn like old litter

Along a headland at the ocean’s edge

Which form a kind of causeway or a bridge.

I could not leave, too terrified of falling

And drifting into space with no return.

A man stood by the door jamb for those failing,

As I was failing, being yet to learn.

“I know your state of mind and what you are feeling.

Know: good and evil is from contemplation.

That’s what the Tree of Eden truly was:

The fruit gave Adam power to freely chose

“To meditate or not to meditate.

While doing so is good, not doing is bad.

Avoidance of it is our fallen state.

So, we must learn, and it is very hard.

And people much prefer to hesitate

Or even run away from what’s inside.

And then they fear, as if stripped of their dress.

But grace and light can clothe that nakedness.”

“Who are you?” I said, holding to the stone,

Scanning the dark. Far, far away the sun,

Massive in space, which space made my head spin.

My fingers and my toes were gripping on.

“I counselled and enforced for a great man,

As Chancellor, and Cardinal in one,

I was the Church and State in Henry’s reign,

And sat in the Star Chamber way back when.

“My death house, a sarcophagus in black,

Was never fated to be used by me.

The king stripped me of it when he took back

What I, Archbishop, earned immoderately.

They gave that tomb to Nelson. Let us speak

And cure your fear of falling.” And then I:

“I know you, Wolsey. I am not afraid

Of anything but God, but here is God.

“I see these endless spaces and despair.

It seems to prove his anger is on us.

I cannot move, and will not go further.

I am afraid to see him face to face.”

And he said: “Let me tell you, you feel fear,

When things go wrong as was in Henry’s case:

He took one thousand years of piety

And wrecked it in three years, as well as me.

“I used to kneel at Walsingham in thanks

To Mary, both in private and public,

In meditation. Everybody thinks

That it is calming. It is nothing like.

By contemplation one ascends the ranks

To get the intellect that’s free to take,

The vision and prevision which founded

The world, and that on which the world is grounded.

“See him, there. That’s Caractacus of Powys

Taken to Rome in triumph and to death.

They strip him of his rags and give him powers

Which are the proper clothing of us both.

That clothing is the Spirit and it is ours.

People are dark and homeless and are loath

To be sustained by it, but since the start

It has sustained you, you just didn’t know it.”

Indeed, there was an old king dead ahead

Where Wolsey pointed, upright in the rubbish,

Where beings put a coat over his head

Of an ideal substance. Let’s establish

I followed after him and where he led,

And in the coming chapters that I publish,

I’ll show what I saw of the Holy Ghost

And what its energy consists in most.