Poetry

Judgement 24

In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart

Dreams are made. In the workshop of the stars

Outside the firmament’s receding vault

God traces out designs and his ideas

And has his storehouse for his works of art

Eternal forms, immortal fixed beauties

Previsioned, fore ordained, and in his mind

Before the world was, and after its end.

I saw his factory shop as I was sucked

Toward the singularity of space

And time. Where with a hammer he attacked

And smashed and shaped potentialities.

I saw the ideas. But God will not be mocked

I did not see him. He is too great for us.

I saw his design drawings in the skies

As, in life, they were actualities.

The Spirit takes the idea and makes it be

It comes down lending flesh and blood to it.

Just as it gave itself on the Mersey

When we went there to plead for the spirit

Each January where the river meets the sea

And where the docks and ship yards stand upright

Among the dirty ruddy warehouses

And other relics of the ancient days.

From the chaotic waters where I was

I saw the rectilinear massive tower

Of Liverpool, shaped like a great warehouse

O how it used to move or to appear

To move across the skyline before us

When we were driving, me and Galya,

Around the docklands near to Birkenhead

It was unreal now, this, reconstructed.

Swimming around in that chaotic flood

Of space and time collapsing to a dot,

Were other people, doing as I did,

And, in their clothes and wearing all their kit

Like soldiers crossing a river they appeared,

All swimming hard, afraid of being shot;

As we crossed great cold rivers in Brecon

In little teams of eight, so were these men.

“To make the actual real from the potence

The Spirit lends movement,” a swimmer said.

“The Spirit is gone from the cosmic dance.

The world collapses.” Going by his side

I looked into his face and saw at once,

Jacques Derrida, the teacher and the guide

I read and followed every way I could

When I was young while searching for the good.

“I am finding going further difficult,”

He said, “So bad at swimming, lacking power.

I have no skill for order. That’s my fault.

Denying any ground or first mover,

Or any boundary for the things I built,

I have no form of stillness anymore

I was mistaken. I am going to drown.

What’s strong and good must have a firm outline,

“Not deconstruction.” So he spoke, or cried.

I did not put my hand out helping him

But made the sign of the cross, then I replied:

“I did you wrong, and won’t help, out of shame.

I wrote your story just before you died,

And never asked permission for the same.

I’m sorry, teacher, and I got you wrong.

What can I do to help you to be strong?”

And he: “You were not wrong about my works.

It was I who, in love with grace and form,

Year after year undid it in my books.

Damning perfection and doing it harm.

How beautiful the ordered polis looks,

A great lord with his clients thronged round him,

His castle door the place people go to

Superb, indifferent to poverty.

“Gracious, decent and good the life like that.

Such the ideal in all sublunary things,

The Byzantine decorum I still hate,

Or rather hated. the greatest of my wrongs.

I see it now, since I am so unfit.”

He gasped like someone trying to fill his lungs,

And sank below the unseen water line.

I put my hand out to take his in mine.

But, both in empty space and empty time,

It was as if he was a mile away.

I tried three times, but I could not reach him.

“Lucretius, De Sade, and Seneca,

And Hegel, there, in this cloacal gloom,”

He pointed. Then I: “Have they got so far?

Confessed hard core atheists to a man,

Did all the tests and trials not wear them down?”

Derrida said, and smiled: “God of all men

Gave uncreated gifts of divine type

To all, like intellect and prevision,

So all can come and go in his workshop.

I knew the ideas and knew their origin,

My fault was that I tried to smash them up.”

“You did not do so in an obvious way,”

I said: “I hope you’re going to be okay.”

There was De Sade, released from the Bastille,

He cried from his high window: “French men, hear,

They’re killing all the prisoners! Set me free!”

I went to him: “Hey, you, greatest monster,

Explain why you desire to live and be.

You planned a universal world disaster

Wherein the entire world would burn and die,

Fulfilling nature’s laws.” Then he to me:

“Give me a break. Experimental thoughts.

That’s all they were. I was a poet aesthete.

Don’t think you know what goes on in men’s hearts.

I was condemned for paying a prostitute,

To use the secret or the backward parts.

That’s how it happened. Now I have to wait.”

I moved on. There was genius Faraday,

And Maxwell, kings of electricity.

And this reminds me. When Great Britain falls

Do not give up. Do not die. Carry on.

Scavenge alternators from old vehicles.

It is a dynamo, so when you turn

The spindle then it turns the copper coils,

The magnet causes electrons to run,

And spill invisibly out of the tabs;

This will save labour, and life, too, perhaps.

And bury seeds in soil which does not flood,

Thick loamy clay soil laced with sand or grit,

And yet is moist. Wheat, oats, and corn in seed,

When planted, grow. And use animal shit

For phosphorous and potassium that you need

As plant food. Work, and work at a reboot

Of human life on earth if you are still there.

Get knowledge and survive, wherever you are.