Poetry

Resurrection 17

We had to cross the straights to carry on

To Anglesey and to Beaumaris tower.

Immediately I found myself alone

A sudden awful loneliness and fear

A soldier feels when he is action

Additional to the coldness of the water;

It was as if I fell into a dream

Where things which are impossible take form.

We had to swim to reach the white island

There was no bridge. A thing with massive wings

Electric blue and red on either hand

It spoke with some authority in songs

Both near and far away, when it explained:

‘Depart, the Catechumens depart,’ and other things

While gesturing toward the other shore

I waded in, and then they were not there.

The children disappeared, it was far worse

Than I can demonstrate in poetry

And far more frightening than my metaphors

I was alone in my anxiety

And fell to panic for what seemed like hours

Then, finally I said: ‘Lord have mercy’

And kept repeating it while swimming out.

It’s hard for me, my bones were never light.

There is no air in me, my bones are dense.

And so I sink. My arms and legs were going

While in my mind I measured the distance

And trembled at the thought of simply dying

And drowning in the abyss full of my sins

And panicking and thinking and still trying

Similar to the way I count and measure

The feet, the rhymes and numbers of a chapter

(From this time forth I will no longer care

How many chapters, or how many lines,

To please my audience. This is eighty-four –

I’m going to please myself, if that makes sense.)

So, I was swimming, thinking, looking before

And looking backwards to where I was once,

Floating on the abyss totally lost

Without the ones I loved, to my great cost.

It did not cross my mind that endless time

Or that eternity has no beginning;

Beaumaris Castle, like Byzantium

Sat on the shore. Should I begin explaining

How this old ruin means to me ‘wisdom’?

That’s what I thought to keep myself from drowning

Thinking and grasping at the open seas.

How Britain could have given it to Greece

As we gave Cyprus, Thessaly and Crete

And could have let the Greeks have Istanbul

If there were men enough and faith to beat

The Ottomans when their old empire fell

At British hands, and if we had done right

We should have taken Constantinople.

I drowned in thoughts of this kind as I swam

Striking the water with a tired arm.

I think that prayer protects against despair

And think it gives the power to water walk.

While I am in eternity in prayer

Thoughts and events can’t ever make a mark

The past and future are resolved there.

The mind is timeless. Should there be a shark

Brought on by time and space in the abyss?

But time and space originate in us

They take their origin inside the unskilled mind.

So, in a sense, all time and space are unreal.

Christ told it straight: his mission in the land

Was driving demons out from his people.

And if I ended washed up on the sand,

A lifeless body, I was sure to fail

Because the demons in me dragged me under

The passions, thoughts, concerns, that make mind wander.

The greatest challenge England ever faced

Was when the Armada sailed, blessed by the Pope

To invade us, and to render us oppressed.

Spain represented Catholic Europe.

Our pirates went out fighting, but the rest

Was done by God who made a storm rise up

To smash the Spanish fleet and save the day;

And I was saved, too, in another way.

A man came walking to me on the water

“I am casting demons out by the power of God”

He said, and: “Demons linger around matter

And cause your soul and mind to run to seed.”

And I, “Please take me to my son and daughter,”

But he replied: “That is not what you need

But rather a great epic struggle now

Is taking place inside your simple soul.

“And that is why you have to be alone

The greatest task, the greatest adventure

Always unfinished, never ever done:

To make the soul eternal and dead pure.”

I made it to the further shore just then

And seemed to drown at first in some new horror

Of endless time, endless unbounded space

Stood on hard standing and no boundaries

Friendless and homeless now for ever more

And horrified, unless I could be still

And strong and clean in mind. From that bleak shore

I saw the towers of Constantinople

Or else Beaumaris, I could not be sure.

St Paisy Velichovsky, I know well

That it was him, approached me after that

To brush oil on my forehead, hands, and feet.

But how I knew him and what we discussed

I leave that to another part of this.

They say the kingdom is taken by force.

If you’re in the material world cosmos

You need to know how great power is released

From chemicals, from solid and from gas;

Such force as breaks up rocks and knocks down stone

You, out there, hear me tell you how it’s done.

Mix nitric acid and ammonia,

And heat them up to boiling. They explode

In presence of things apt to burn in fire.

You’ll find ammonia hidden in a load

Or urine. Catch the gas which comes from there.

But making nitric acid can be hard.

You need to synthesise sulphuric acid

And mix it with saltpetre. It is hard.

For sulfur acid, take the rock “fool’s gold”,

You bake the fool’s gold and collect its gas.

Add that to chlorine gas, which can be called

Forth from salt water, if you try to pass

Electric current through it. As I’ve told

Chlorine and sulfur gas make sulfur acid.

Now mix this with saltpetre for the nitric.

But how to get that is the real trick.

Saltpetre can be found in some manure;

Get one huge pile of it, add straw and ash

And add some urine. Leave it for a year

And let it cook, don’t let rain water wash

It all way, but cover it. After a year

Pour water through it, give it a good flush,

Now filter through potash that fetid water.

And dry it out to get your own saltpetre.

From fool’s gold, from manure, and from urine

From ashes, potash, years of fermentation,

From gas and acid, shit, straw and from brine,

Electricity, and experimentation,

Make an explosive that will get you in

Through any wall, or break in any nation.

But, see the heavenly city I have seen

By doing prayer to break right into heaven.