Poetry

Resurrection 22

Having been taught by saint John and saint Mark

And by the circumstances and the places

Having been taught, I was more spirit now

Than flesh and blood. But when he is transfigured

A soul receives attention and more focus

From devils and the adversary of all good.

The fallen and immortal evil spirits

They take more care to attack you after that.

If my art could enlarge itself enough

I would allegorise in these chapters

What happens in the invisible struggle between

The soul and the adversary of all good.

In the afterlife, I found, false spirits are

As prevalent as they were in the first life

With this distinction: there you see them clearly

You see the them, if you want, in the other life.

When the soul prays and pays attention to

Its wandering mind and observes its own mind,

There are two minds in play, the natural one

And that new strong eternal watching mind.

This enigmatic situation where

Two minds inhabit the soul is solved as follows:

When praying God is watching and is joined

To the soul, and He is that great second mind.

And that is how, in the eternal world

It’s possible to see the infernal ghosts

Attacking you, darkness is visible.

When you escape the world through meditation

You don’t escape the spiritual entities

The killing shades of the past like a dose of something.

“There is that woman, that great dark jelly

Angry and violent and sure indifferent

“To any human decency or dispassion.”

I said to my companion, that apostle

Who learned from Peter everything he wrote.

She was inside the court yard and came in

On her wheels or whatever those things were

That made her move. “It is not really her,

Is it?” I said. And he said: “No. It is

The thing which dominated you through her.

“Which worked against you all the days of your life

Through her carnal embodiment and madness.”

So I sat and despaired in resignation

And in regret as I had used to do

In years on earth. “Lord, have mercy on me

For my sin,” I said as the dark and smell

Surrounded me like spiders in the night

And like the damp debris which rats inhabit.

The terrible environment of sin

Which I embraced, the mother of my children.

I could not cure it in the past because

‘This kind is only healed by prayer’ it is said.

And I reflected, saying to my wise friend:

“It got the better of me in the world

By sucking on the English institutions

Which I myself loved when I was alive

“And now I hate them, and I hate my country

Because they all helped her, as I see it now.

What was in her made me despair, that bonfire

Of faggots and destruction burned me down.”

The saint stood still, and in the quiet hall

The sound of whispered singing softly fell

And lulled me into a sleep, which was when he

The foremost gospel writer left me there.

O damp grass and mud, O vast empty desert

O mountain side, O cold and windy castle

Without wood panelling or finished plaster

O endless timeless place where men can’t live

I made a home in you there for a while

And held my head in my hands a while there

When St Mark left me. When I raised my eyes

I saw that there were images on the walls

Like those that Michaelangelo inscribed,

(Another drudge on earth in his own eyes

As I in mine); and someone talked to me:

“The tragic dramas, and the life of Jesus

Show this, that with the love there is disaster

And suffering, until the end of the world

Until the eternal life, we always lose.”

“Who are you?” I asked. “I am that Wellbecq

“Whose books you worked on, translating and reading

Whose essays tell that I was Orthodox,

Although half-hearted, like the last English King,

Charles Third, whose father, Phillip taught him well

The love of God in that correct good way.

But we were secretive and reluctant

In France and England, both, respectively.

Do not take it personally that you were haunted

“By the satanic powers in the world.

They cast a net across the entire globe

A pentagram was drawn from point to point

A five point star upside down in a circle

Drawn on the land of France and England, too.

Abortion clinics, sperm banks, and the like;

Imported goods imported foreign people;

Transhuman microchipped souls; high finance.

“Demonic all of it, the enemy

Of good and the commandments of the Lord.

A sterile devil worshipping dead land

A place without life where love is punished

And suffers pains like yours, but where love fails

And has no place. Where crucifixion

Is allegorically the final end

Of following the two great holy laws.”

So he spoke, my contemporary, the writer

Who fled the muslims and the liberals

From France in exile to the coast of Ireland

Since he loved truth and it held him in thrall,

Because muslims and their white satanic friends

Had used their laws respectively against him.

“I want to talk to God about this matter.

Why do we suffer when we do what’s right?

“Why is the humble and most loving soul

Despised and poor, and more than that, aware

Of all his wrong? What I required was simple

To look after my family, son and daughter.

But they were born of that demonic woman

And so it was impossible though simple.”

He pointed to the centre of the room

Where was the stage for the sacramental drama

And there was singing from the open air

I went up on the stage or killing floor

Conscious it was the place for conscious prayer

And confession. The singing was like this:

‘Let us now lay aside all earthly care’;

I felt obliged to speak: “The infernal shade

And her persistent anger and attempts

To make me die are in my afterlife

“We turned a blind eye to it and excused it.

The lies she told that constantly ran free

Which we forgave or thought were natural

The ugliness and cheating and the power

And the coercion, by these means the children

Were taken from me. Year to year it went

Denial of love, absence of my dear ones

With unemployment, idleness life long

“While she was taking legally binding charity

Twisting and turning good to evil ends

Law into crime, chaotic life where each day

Devours and kills the promises we made

Mere hours before. We turned a blind eye on this

And walked on with the dog muck footprints marking

Where I had been. Without a place to stay

And when I had a home she came for that

“The theft of my last refuge by a court

And the estates of that diminished land.”

So I spoke, like a man blowing a bugle

For ceremony and under duress

On the boundary or in the heart of heaven

I did not know. Trying to exorcise

The wrong that I had done. When I looked up

Were people watching, massed ranks looking down.