Poetry

Resurrection 6

But why does paradise seem so familiar?

In the annihilation there were features

Common to this place, just the same as here.

Am I the common ground of these adventures?

“And you already knew the eternal there

When you were loyal to God in little matters

Of the terrestrial life,” the scientist

Said while I conjured memories from the past.

“You read my mind, and know what’s in my thoughts?”

I asked him. “No. But I have felt the same

And recognise that look on someone’s face.”

And should I hide from you, reader, the frame

Around which I am building paradise?

No, let me tell you, all of this poem

Is hanging on the liturgy we do

On holy Christian days, as I can show.

The singing of the second Antiphon

Was sung by angels just precisely then

And ‘O Lord, save thy people and bless thine

Inheritance. Forsake not us mere men

Who hope in thee,’ I heard, as anyone

Who goes to church may hear it said and done.

Then England’s great philosopher turned round

And in the smoke, and light, and to the sound

Of other chanting, found, as it were, a door

And went inside beyond the altar screen

And to the other side, for all I saw,

While someone else emerged and entered in

Who came out from the side door as it were.

At once I recognised it was my son.

I went to him and gave the kiss of peace,

And shook his hand, and viewed him with my eyes.

See how in heaven there is liturgy

Like on the earth, so in the afterlife.

“You who led me to God when just a boy,

Have come to be with me and see the proof

That what the church taught was never a lie.

I have my girl, my boy, I have my wife.

The house for us to live in needs a roof.”

He said, “Then do it.” We began to laugh.

“Then we’ll explore and then we’ll cultivate

This new found land. The two of us and her,

My sister.” In a whisper I replied:

“But is it really her? She knows much more

Than I do, and she teaches.” Then he said:

“Her runny nose, her tangled tomboy hair.

It’s not that she is wise, but you are stupid.

We’ve been here ages, and you got here late.

“But everyone is Godlike in their soul.

The eternal self is clear in the ones we love.

Unspotted, clear and obvious after all

Like when you sit and pray to God above

You do it without any kind of goal

Not waiting, not watching, making no move,

Without time, and without theology,

And you can catch God looking back at you;

“So people who have not put up a guard

Or cultivated some dissimulation

No personality in which they hide,

Shine with the eternal value of creation.”

“So let me dig around to get some slate,

And make the roof, and then make conversation,”

I said and left him. Outside on a hillside

The scree of rock had made a kind of landslide

And tiles which I could cut and dress for use.

Now, as I went up there by the dry pool

And past where roses grew next to the house

I saw one that I met before in hell

Or in the apocalypse, and asked him this:

“Are you here? Are you here in heaven as well?

Of course, it’s you! But I am ashamed to snatch

Your time again, great poet, it is too much.”

And he: “There is no limit on the time.

You are not so low down in the hierarchy

That I refuse to see you, so be calm.

We are the same, and equals, anyway.”

It was the one who made me write this poem,

The greatest English master, TSE,

He joined me, in his double breasted suit

As I went upwards to collect the slate.

“Apparently, I have to travel now,”

I said, and he: “In exile for a while

As I was, and to clear the path for you,

And find the good world, good and eternal.

Go find some other people working, too

And classes in a church, a state as well;

There find your place, working with the elite

To ascend toward God’s throne as their poet

“As I did in my exile. Take them with you

The children and your wife and your culture

The family is what ties it together:

The state, the church, the personal adventure

All into one and either them and neither,

The resurrected past, the unborn future.”

“I’m going for some stone behind this hill,”

I said. So we walked half a mile.

These rocks are friable, easy to break

They fall apart in thin and lightweight sheets.

To turn from sludge and compressed silt, it took

A hundred millions years to make these slates;

And though they are found beneath this mountain peak

They once were under sea. The earth mutates

And pushes up new worlds from down below.

But we did not discuss this, I just knew.

Now at the summit, where the scree broke up

There was a woman sitting solitary

Dead still, much like a cairn on that hill top

And lonely like a twisted hawthorn tree

Whose eyes were closed as if she were asleep

Or like a person trying not to cry.

“My dear one, Annwyl, it is me, it’s Nain,”

She said, “Look here, you have become a man.”

The years she was alive I was a child

And she was huge and spoke a foreign tongue

The Welsh which made her seem so hard and wild,

But then I saw that I had done her wrong,

How she embraced me tenderly and smiled,

And how the light played round her like a ring,

And formed a halo. “That was all my joy

To see you healthy, strong, my little boy.”

“And go out like my father used to do

As you are now, a pioneer in heaven.

Your greatgrandfather was the spit of you,

A working class man, no stranger to travel,

From Maesteg to Blaenau to Anglesey.

Could not speak English, and that was his trouble.

But you can rise, twice born you were, I saw

I watched you, though you could not be aware

“Twice born, at seventeen you seemed to die.

But I was watching, praying for you here.

At old Yale Grammar School you went astray,

Or what was left of grammar schools that year,

And how you suffered hard to make your way

Learning Latin and Greek in your despair,

Alone, for no reward. But you were wise

And made your way here, up to paradise.”