Poetry

Resurrection 20

The biggest most useful secret in England

Is never shouted down and not denied

The most recondite hardest thing to find

In books and lecture rooms is never taught

Even so it is the genius of the mind

Infinite pound notes don’t compare to it

I’ll tell you, I survived to tell you this

About the routine pursuit of stillness.

2 That youngest follower who had laid his head

Upon the chest of Jesus in his day

He was with me, and this to him I said:

“Why do we sit and meditate and pray

Twice daily? To prepare for being dead?

Outside distraction, still, why is it we

Conjure the heart to stop its constant talk?

Preparing for the day when there’s no work

“To be as pointless as the unemployed?

The dark is awaiting everyone who dies

And everybody dies and is destroyed

Each man goes dark no matter who he is

And is forgotten. But when I have prayed

I am reconciled and familiar with this

I see the final home and make my bed

Is that why praying does me so much good?”

St John replied, that master of the truth:

“If praying was itself the point of prayer,

Then sure, the silence and the little death

The corpselike sitting upright on a chair,

Would be a simple emphasis on breath.

But what it does is, it makes you aware

Of how even in the darkness and the pits

Of despair, how your logos mind persists.

“Where no light is, where vision fails, persists

The conscious mind which lives on spookily

Something which never dies which still exists

Like the alien in the film, shapeless shadow,

Acid for blood and all that. It insists

That somehow it will never pass away

The mind is desperately in love with being alive

And knows it must, at all costs, just survive.

“Because, unlike the world, the consciousness

Is everlasting. That is what you learn

When you are praying. Everything is dross

Except the undying logos in a man.”

“How shall I understand these mysteries?”

I said. And he: “There’s just one solution.

As a humble man who didn’t have a bean

Who was annihilated without mercy

Was buried hastily by friends and family

“The master craftsman of reality

Has demonstrated that which matters most

And showed his calibre and quality.

How when you die full of the holy ghost

You live on, passing to eternity.

And if you pray you get a little taste

And turn yourself to Jesus.” So he spoke

“Turn into Jesus, not some random bloke?

“You mean, when praying, I am the Son of God?”

I asked. He made to leave, and to return

With the other gospel writers by his side.

“That potency has roots in everyone

But being so poor and meek is very hard

The Second Coming hasn’t yet been seen.”

He smiled and left me. Yet, another came

And walked me out the castle after him.

It was St Mark. When I looked back at it,

The place was from that same granite and lime

As all the towers of the Plantagenet

And the solid little chapels from the time

Which I have visited and worshipped at.

The unadorned strong buildings of my home.

I came away with nothing for my future

For wife and family, except this teacher

Since Mark was walking with me on the coast

Across a bridge toward Caernarfon’s strand.

The Church gives nothing but what matters most.

Now, Dante, he would have you understand

How the earth was made, he wandered on its crust

Point to the wandering stars which slowly wend

Their way around the sun by Newton’s laws

They were above me, too, and the fixed stars.

You should know what they are, each sphere and planet.

But consciousness is prior, more important.

So though I wandered forth so empty handed

I would be God’s Son, though a mendicant.

I was so wealthy now. I can’t explain it

Except like this, so, here is my account:

“I’ve known the taste of darkness in my mouth

When I was troubled, in my early youth.

“The most appalling tortures of the mind

Are rarely spoken of, and undergone

In silence, and as if without an end.

The darkness of despair I knew back then

I alleviated it with a close friend

A girl I knew, who held me in disdain.

My emptiness drove me to want her more

Her gentleness, her sex, and her nature

“Where is she now? I was betrothed to her

In my own mind at least, I made a vow

To come back and to drive with her somewhere,

When I was rich and famous. Where is she?

I used to love her, in my deep despair.”

And he said this: “She is not living now.

Did you desire her in your darkest hour

And run away from you, to find hope there?”

“Yes. Back then when I felt that depression

I fell into the worst deceiving snares

Back then, I wanted to be God’s own son

And get occult knowledge, wealth, grace, success.

It was my task to be Jim Morison

Aching to live, admired and so famous.

But where is the poet Morison, where is he?

Can I go visit him some future day?”

“He also did not make it. He was burned

Or gave his life up at a prior stage.

I’m sorry for them. Now that you have learned

The things you could not know at a child’s age

The turn to God. And so, not to be turned

Toward the fantasy and the image

Of unreal things, it’s possible to have

The job of God’s son here, and really thrive.”

“I did not thrive back there, and broke my vow.

Those things and people that I loved are dead.

When I was young, I didn’t know enough

But felt the drive to live shake in my head

And knew I must survive any old how.

It was the soul and mind which are hardwired

To want to live and love.” We left the Church

Carried it with us onward on our march.