Poetry

Resurrection 9

The afterlife is where the kingdom is

Beyond old age or early cruel death.

That’s where it is. And it is not like this

Demonic trackless waste without a path.

Nobody does a bad thing when he knows

The entire consequence of what he doeth

But here we all do wrong because we lack

The wisdom that would keep us each in check.

The afterlife is also like this one

At once the kingdom that Jesus promised

Yet also like the world where we were born

So there is power and virtue and justice

And governance and old tradition

All eye to eye with God joyfully mixed

In heaven. Now at Flint, the castle there

A ruin once, ruined beyond repair

As everything in time must fall apart,

As England did, I was. I came to Flint

A pilgrim. A man’s body from the start

Is made for running, made for the long hunt.

If anyone should want to make an art

Of his own body, know it was designed

For running and long distance endurance.

It’s what we’re made for; it is not by chance.

Man’s body is the image of our God

A single minded long term plan was laid

For hunting over a long period.

The soul is slow and steady. It was made

To travel and develop, slow, upward.

The soul is slow to learn, but reaches out

Into the distance meditatively

And running on two legs upright, lightly.

The cult of feeling that the Romantics

Encouraged made them try to learn to feel.

But these emotions felt, and all those kicks,

Are not virtue. Love is love of the ideal.

Man is a little godhead when he thinks.

He is the centre of the world for real

To be the centre of it is his joy

And joy’s reflective and comes thinkingly.

The thinking man feels pain when he is constrained

Or dominated by some circumstance;

No longer free or godlike, he is pained.

But this is true of running and endurance

That all things fall apart except the mind,

And so as to endure his existence

He must learn to embrace humility,

Humility is endless, as they say

So we came to the castle or the palace

We pilgrims. I was led by little children

It was not like at Basra, not like that place

When one dark night in Iraq in the autumn

Four hundred men retreated, giving notice

Leaving the keys behind to Mahdi gunmen

A deal we did when we could not afford

To stay there. To support that shame is hard.

No, not like that, but to return in victory

To come back and to make use of the keys.

Just so. Not like Iraq where our Rory

A politician, Rory Stewart was

Caught running from a town, by his own story,

When kingless men decided against peace

Knowing their land was leaderless and lost,

And chose to fight, regardless of the cost.

Yes, here was justice, builded by the sea.

The meeting of the river with the sea

A great abyss which always gives the lie

To all ambitions, vast and waste it lay

And beating on the walls of Flint. Nearby

The Green Knight stood observing us as we

Were at the gates, the green man of the Wirral

Familiar with the town and Holywell.

And there were banners of St George the saint

Of England, and St Augustine of Kent

And Gregory the Great there where we went

Along the path beside the battlement

And flowers were there, native and reticent

Eyebright, all white and dripping wordless scent

The Yellow Rattle rare and strange for sure

Almost extinct one time, not any more.

I said: “Is this the nothing that I saw

When I was following the practices

Of the life of stillness, the holy prayer?

The vision is like the visions which arose

Toward the edge of sleep, stood at the door

Which leads from world, to nothing, then to this?

When I was praying, then I learned justice,

There learned humility in quietness.

“Yet this is not a vision, this is real.

It’s like the darkness of the quiet mind

Sprung into life.” And she said: “After all

The Spirit did not want to leave you blind

But hid this other kingdom from you well.

The mind revolving merely round and round

From heart to head from head to heart until

The two were one, eventually full

“Of God’s commands, and that is what you need.

And now, after that trial, we see in full.

The promise of the prayer comes when you’re dead

And most completely living, after all.”

Now at the gate we met a sort of crowd

Of men from those parts. But I cannot tell

For all the guilt I feel, will not repeat

The accusations they threw at my feet.

Just this I will recount of what they asked:

“Why did you let our country go to seed

And throw our efforts onto stone and dust?

You were alive when rich ones stuffed with greed

Bought up our country. And a greedy host

Descended on the land, of muslim creed

Or of no faith at all, and ate the flower

Of wealth we handed down. What you do that for?”

Because I had no answer then for these,

Who damned me for the age when I was living,

The common men of Wales who grew like grass

And made a virtue of their mere surviving

And passed the land on to us, I must pass

And make no record. Everyone is having

The same discussion with his conscience, now.

Suffice to say, the dead wanted to know.

Inside the walls, into an upper room

The Green Knight led us; there I first laid eyes

Upon a woman young and so handsome

That she aroused in me a sharp desire

But I have more to say on that whilom

And of the star shaped ceiling in the air,

That sword beside her and the loss of power

I felt when beauty struck at me through her.