Poetry

Resurrection 2

"What shall we make first?" "We should make the light,"

Her voice asking the question, and my answer.

Whereas there had been black now there was white

And with the measured movements of a dancer

Her prompt and my response: "And after that,

To separate the waters of the heavens a

Firmament?" "Yes." And so, there was a sky

Suffused with light and colour by and by.

"Hang on, where's God? I thought that He did this?"

I said, and she: "We’re making it together."

"Don’t let me mess up making Paradise,

Grant this o Lord. Tell me, are you my daughter?"

"Do you think I am, do you recognise my voice?"

"I don’t know." "So, what shall we make next, father?"

"The land is next, I think, in Genesis,"

I said, then there was solid ground and space,

And geometric bodily extension

"Do I appear as you remember me?"

"Yes," I said, but I was afraid to mention

The child was not my daughter or my boy,

But only seemed, as if with that intention,

To look like me, or one of my family.

"Come on, then. Let’s continue to create."

And I: "But is this real? Or duplicate?"

"It’s real. The light, the sky, the land, the lot.

You all ask for the same type of new life.

There's only one true world." And then I said:

"Am I dead?" And the child: "Here we are safe

Here we are in eternity with God

And we're reborn and living well enough."

She seemed so serious, as a child at play,

And smiling with a kind of serious joy.

"But where have all the other people gone?

Real people that you cannnot fabricate.

I want them near, so we are not alone.

I would give up this power, skill to create,

And say to God ‘Okay, Thy will be done,'

If he could make and then co-ordinate

Me and real other people in this place."

She said: “His will be done?” and I said: “Yes”.

"Then, by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit

And by the Theotokos always Maid,

Bless the Lord." Straightaway, faster than thought,

The place was transformed, and it was remade.

One moment past it was an empty desert

With us two people, little girl and dad,

And now a place like Greek Elysium,

Where Homer says the heroes make their home.

“Ah, o my soul, it looks like Paradise,”

I said, and she: “Let’s walk and take the air.”

A long time since I saw a place like this,

It was like spring in south Snowdonia,

The Western Isles, the White Isle of the myths,

The Blessed Island where the blessed are.

Sunlight from the true sun was pouring down

To illuminate and warm my skin and bone.

Great cliff faces with loose scree and few trees

But there were forests lower down the hills;

Soft winds were playing on the tangled grass

With evidence of sheep; and waterfalls,

Streams and paths for exploring many ways.

There were great chasms cordoned off with rails

Heading beneath, to the centre of the land

As deep as those mountains rose on the ground.

"What is it for?" I asked, "For enjoyment.

The whole world is created once again

With every animal and every plant:

The pink heather, and berries mingling in,

The smooth newts moving round, the hawks at hunt,

And if you sit, the bumble bee is seen

To suck the flowers, also the honey bee,

Beneath the open blue changeable sky."

We sat down. "Here all things are learned in sequence.

To learn so as to finally, face to face

Meet up with what or who made existence -

The Father, the creator, of this place;

No suffering servant by his appearance,

No longer as it was as if by chance,

But everlasting and almighty God

Who was once lowly and once had to hide.

"Because his creatures could not bear to look."

"Yes, I see, girl," I said. "In many mansions

With maths and gymnastics, and with music,

As Plato’s school is described, that he mentions

In his Republic. He wants it so much."

We sat, she put aside my apprehensions.

It would be like the lost and distant years

Of childhood: time that's lost and disappears.

The freedom and the excitement of my time

When I was just a child is lost forever,

That happiness and hope is just a dream

Whose joyfulness is something I dissever

My self from when I do not give a damn,

And fall to thinking that my life is over.

"Will it be like in school, is it a chase

To learn and struggle and to win the race?"

I said, and she: "Like the Elysian Fields

Where Greeks went after death to practice what

They most enjoyed in life, with swords and shields

And philosophy and the rest of that.

Or like the Happy Hunting Ground that yields

The buffalo to red skins after death.

Or like Valhalla, where they raise a toast

And do the things they liked to do the most.

"Such things were dimly seen and intimated.

They only darkly saw the afterlife.

The truth is, those who never hesitated

To love and look for God and act all tough

And get this far, they will be elevated

To true theosis, if they are good enough."

Whether this child was God, or just a girl,

Was undetermined, which was just as well

Because I realised I had to serve

And follow where the adventure was to lead,

And in this Paradise I would observe

And act and exercise and learn to read

The will of God here, reading leaf to leaf,

And learn such crucial stuff as men once stowed

In space craft Voyager when they still had hopes,

Things that you would recall at world collapse.