Poetry

Judgement 25

I saw stuff, electricity, photons

And radio waves and nuclear gamma rays

Hurry toward the centre all at once.

How do we send out radio on its ways

For internet and wireless telephones?

The world’s end and the holy end of days,

Which I was watching, makes me want to write

About how photons answer all of that.

A strip of copper can shed energy,

These little energies, these particles,

Which either have place or velocity

But not both, and can pulse like water flows.

Give to the copper electricity

And have it tied to ground so that it goes

Around a circuit. Make it oscillate

In steady frequency, and get it right.

But how to do that is for later on.

I was at the cathedral on the stairs

And went inside. I saw a massive throne

It was a judgement room among the stars

A court room set in deep oblivion

A thousand million archetype ideas

Arrayed around the Lord is what I saw,

A thousand million angels gathered there

All of the world was there as mental thought,

Around that seat, and this is who was sat:

The guide who led me, my most trusted guide,

And yet it was not him in flesh and blood,

But like a ghost. When I looked by my side,

Emperor Justinian I recognised

And others gathered at the back of me,

Chrysostom, and great Basil, Gregory.

They did not wait, but gave this loud command:

‘Confess what happened to you coming here.’

So I said: ‘When I was alive, I sinned.

Like everyone, I died sometime somewhere.

At work I was, and when I came around

Jesus was there and put aside my fear

Because he said, that when I followed him

I’d see my children and regain my home.

‘And my beloved ones had prayed to him

To save me. So we walked. There was a river

I crossed it, with the prophets of old time

And thinkers who I thought would live for ever.

So many people, I avoided them.

And all their doubts and all of that parlava.

Once we had disembarked from that safe boat

I saw so many more fall to the side

‘The world was rolling back to the past,

Time’s arrow antithetical; and space

Refigured past events to lay them waste.

Four horsemen started making it a race

Forcing us dead ones to do what they wist,

To hunt the living things, and cut down trees.

They did the work of making earth collapse

And things we know from the Apocalypse.

‘But I avoided all this bloody work

And following my guide, I went ahead.

So I observed and got involved in talk,

But moving quickly through the unlucky dead,

Unmoved by fear or passion for my sake,

Because I knew my friend was by my side.

Satan was there, and a great trumpet blast,

The sign that fallen life was gone at last.

‘Six times ten million years I had traversed.

My friend departed when as Christ Destroyer

He laid the entire creation all to waste

And left me to go on alone from there.’

That’s what I said in that throne room. I paused.

‘Go on, finish the song,’ one said. ‘So far,’

I said, ‘I had been running to paradise,

But from that point there were no obvious ways.

‘I started looking for a festival

On blessed islands formed like ancient churches.

The other pilgrims and survivors all

Where put to work of sleep there. There were stages,

Each one a dream island where an angel

Instructed us to suffer many ages.

But this was easy, and I had good luck,

Except the weight I carried on my back,

‘It only took five days to reach this room.

This is the eleventh feast. I feel alone.

Because it seemed to me not many came,

And sometimes that I am the only one

To keep on going backwards into time,

Despite the other pilgrims being men,

With greater intellect and skill than I.

It seemed to me that I had company

‘As if the graceful way I moved forward

Was fated, and assisted by my hope.

It’s true I had some hope of a reward.

The annihilation never did let up,

And more and more the idea of God the Word

Shone so lovely, it never seemed to stop,

And so I carried on, wanting to know

Until this room here, with the rest of you.’

I spoke. Then the Byzantine emperor

Who listened to that story carefully,

Replied: ‘The man who came in through that door

Who suffered and acted in that story

Was someone else. It was not you at all.

A hypostasis of the Trinity.

It was the Holy Spirit pushing you

Creating you again ever new.

‘See, how there is no outside to this point.

We’re at the singularity of light.

The throne, the room, the angels, are the end.

The world compressed into a tiny dot.

You’re not here. No-one’s here.’ So he explained

How only God was really real, and yet

I was still there as well. And then began

The experience that you have on a mountain

When you have reached the summit on your own;

Like how it feels to reach the end of war.

The four of them approached me with a crown

And then the angels sang as a choir.

At once I felt exhausted and fell down,

And, overcome, I wept tear after tear

For all that I had seen and had endured

And then to have this kind of a reward.

When I had dried my eyes and found some power,

I looked toward the altar and the throne

But they were empty. At the old church door

When I looked there, was Jesus, he had grown

All flesh and blood again. That’s when I saw

He opened it on the absolute unknown,

Then said: ‘Because it’s gone and nothing is.

Let’s go and make it new, the two of us.’