Poetry

Judgement 28

Exiled from Florence, on the losing side,

Dante went begging. Sometimes his daughters

Caught up with him and comforted their dad,

But he was on his own most of his years.

And Jesus’ family thought he had gone mad,

And though they came to him with overtures,

He went on with his ministry alone.

Me, I was with my wife and my children.

Galya was with me. Who is Galya?

You don’t find peace in someone else’s lap

That’s not the highest end of our desire.

Desire is endless, and you can’t escape

In someone who just cancels what you are.

Desire a little while just goes to sleep

In someone’s arms, forgetting what it feels,

And then wakes up desiring something else.

And do not think I find in her the ideal

The spotless beauty of a human face

Embodied in a person and in full.

The intellect is active in this case

And beauty makes you intellectual

So that your heart begins to want the source

Which gave birth to the ideal. Therefore beauty

And love of it heads for eternity.

But extra-temporal good will not be found

In actual people. Rather, she is this:

The happiness of someone being around,

Bringing your slippers and keeping the house.

And that’s enough for people, in the end,

A simple life of typical virtues,

Distinct from one another and the same,

Because you share a past and what is to come.

At the speed of light, photons move through the air

As radio waves. To collect and hear these

A metal strip they call an antenna

Must be charged with electromotive force.

It will collect them from the atmosphere;

Those radio waves will make a current pass

Through the antenna, running to the earth,

Then a capacitor and choke, through both.

A choke and cap, tuned properly in size

Will resonate exactly with a source

Of radio transmission. So what is

A capacitor? And what amplifies

The signal? I should tell these mysteries,

In future chapters, showing all the ways

To reboot all the knowledge that was lost

When humans suffered nuclear holocaust.

In this allegory and this report,

Jesus was taken from the city square

Beside the big cathedral, to the court.

The charge against him would be tried in there,

Before an audience and a magistrate.

Now all the people who had got this far

Went after, thousands of them in a crowd,

And with the priests and bailiffs that him led.

“The Last Judgement,” the children said to me,

“See how he gave the world its rules and law.

And yet the people do things differently.

While he is weak and lowly more and more,

The people want, and get things their own way.

He is defenceless, inward, cold and poor,

As God is in himself in divine love.

The world is upside down, seen from above.

“The saint knows this, and withdraws from contact.

The fool knows that the wise are upside down.

The hunchback with his body bent and wracked

Is physical and natural perfection

In this dark kingdom, if men would reflect.

But they do not.” While walking through the town

Toward the Castle, if you follow me,

We tried to understand reality.

“You mean,” I said, “the deepest mind of all

Would be accounted stupid by the world

Because the world considers God a fool

To have made and loved, and died, meek and mild?

So that the iron law and golden rule,

Which men believe in, is not really gold,

But dross? Yet, all men cannot be beggars.

To put the fool in charge would make things worse.

“So how should a society be made

Which answers to this riddle: left and right

And up and down reversed, to honour God?”

“But wait,” the boy said: “We are at the site

Where they will try him.” There my master stood,

Upon a dais in the empty street,

And there the court officials had their chairs,

And witnesses and men from newspapers,

With all the population looking on.

“They’ll question him, and make him seem guilty.”

It was around the place where I have seen

The thieves and destitute of my city

Gather to talk before they go within

And face the law and beg for some pity.

“Such homeless and corrupted men we are.

And all the greatness of the world is here.

“I’ve seen it trampled under as I came

Through all the stages of history’s path

And seen us all fail, every single time.

If our society put God to death,

How shall the weakest things be most sublime?

How shall a governor put what is beneath

In a superior place and at the summit?”

And she: “There is a level and a limit

“Constraining human kind to always fail.

The saint will never be in charge of things.

A monarchy is what’s most suitable.

And noble orders of mysterious ranks,

Where everything is good and beautiful.

A social order of concentric rings.

Great wealth in few hands, clients at the gate,

Restrained manners, ordered and intricate.

“Let wealth be earned by mere inheritance.

Let all acts be intended and decent.

And in this way the other-worldly ones,

The elite, the elect, the fool, the saint,

The best of us, can carry out the dance

Before the Lord as He has always meant.”

I said: “An outward solid tyranny

To let the inner world flourish and be?”