Poetry

Resurrection 21

“What is that brown cone there that’s on the move

Composed of elements not listed in

The periodic table of known stuff

Rolling behind us? It scared my children

It made my young ones scared and drove them off

They claimed it was a demon inside heaven

That I had brought with me, but what is it?”

And my companion turned to me and said:

“That brooding dark thing is your former wife

Mammoth in size and infinitely old

Structure of evil and of anti-life.

But look ahead, and see, and now behold

Another monstrous fort of divine love,

Built for the Welsh prices when they rebelled

To Anglify them. In God’s imagination

It is a school room of investigation.

“Here learn the truth, and speak the truth, ramp up

The love of science, facts, and reporting.

The English virtues.” “What about the blob

That’s after me, that ruined everything

How can I make that evil being stop,

And find my daughter? She says that I bring

This sadness with me. Why is happiness

Mixed up with pain even in paradise?”

That’s what I said to him, and he replied:

“Again, let’s know the truth. Didn’t you hear?

That alien horror is what was inside

Your first wife. That great jelly was in her.

You ask me, why is torture side by side

With innocence and good even up here?

It is because the soul born on the earth

Was meant to undergo a second birth

“Physical carnal sense experience

Is filthy for the soul and intellect.

As William Blake set zero importance

On any world at all or any fact,

But set the entire creation in abeyance

So as to let imagination act.

So, set aside the world. But you did not

And now that devil follows you about.”

“You say that ugly thing is stuck with me?”

I said, and he: “Love that you freely gave

Brings her here now. Love won’t make you happy.

Love does not save you. Love can never save.

You suffer for it.” My response was: “Why?

Why do the children suffer for my wife

When our intentions were always the best

And God enjoined me to, I passed the test.”

He said: “You’re flesh and blood and you looked after

The fallen desecrated faulty world

And loved. But with the joy and with the laughter

Are sighs and tears and death and growing old

And love is intricately blent with slaughter

In the sublunary earth.” Thus I was told.

The great castle emerged from cloud and fog

The most majestic structure of the Gog

Where I was guard once to the Prince of Wales

When Charles the Third had yet to assume the throne

And we performed our ceremonials

In scarlet jerkins, formed up in a line

So it was now, but here was something else.

Before I tell you that, among the men

Who milled about inside the castle yard

Was one I knew, I went to him and said:

“I think that by your uniform and rank

And that Victoria Cross, and that big beard,

You’re Luke O’Connor, that is what I think.

You picked the Colours up out of the mud

At Sebastopol when our fortunes sank

And both the subalterns were lying dead

And led the company toward the fight

When other men preferred to turn about.

“The names of Balaclava and Alma

And Ireland, and America and China

The Spanish Succession, Penninsula

And Waterloo, and every major war

The English fought and won is written there

From Flanders to Burma and Africa.”

And he: “Come in the keep and settle down

Inside the warmth of the truth.” So we went in.

Now we see a strange place decked with light

A kind of stage laid in the hoary ruin

And on my going in I left without

All earthly chaos. Simple things remain.

The place was high, aloft, raised up a bit,

And in this shrine or holy mis en scene

It was as if you could not tell a lie

Or say a thing you did not know was true

A great hall of the facts and common sense

Beloved of Englishmen for ever more

Of writing down and reading of science

The disrespect for ideas a priori

And rules of logic if their adherence

Would lead him to do wrong or meet failure.

Empiricism of experience

Disdain for things that are not given by sense.

Such was the castle’s influence on me;

It bled into my bones while I stayed there.

But it has bled into me anyway

When I was breathing still the English air

The great school of British philosophy.

But here was something sense could never share:

The knowledge of the heart’s truth deeply hidden.

St Mark said “Stand!”, I did what I was bidden.

Around the stage were all the wisest men

Of Greece, I mean I saw Aeschylus and

Wise Sophocles, greatest tragedian.

The platform for the stage was strewn around

With bodies, and a dying hanging man

And trees were growing up on either hand

Just like the sacred grove. The hollow eyes

Of actors; eyeless, blood stained dead bodies.

It was a drama at catastrophe.

“The Greeks displayed the nature of the world

On stage, and feared it, and then became free

From fear and madness, and they prefigured,

No less than Hebrew prophets, all the joy

Of leaving this stage, and to hear the word

Of God himself. And that is tragedy

Where Christ dies and revives with God’s mercy.

“Here they were taught to turn a cold blind eye

On life, on death. And this is where they learned

What loving costs; and everyone must pay.”

They say that Shakespeare’s Globe theatre contained

The whole world on a stage. Greek tragedy

And that high holy castle brought to mind

The launching pad at Cape Canaveral

From which a man sets off on space travel.