Poetry

Resurrection 25

Birdcalls, grass, stone, eyes, memory, Criccieth

All as it was when we had visited

In the first iteration of the earth

Before it was rolled up and vacated,

My wife and I, a year before our death.

It is raised up, it is elevated

So I began the ascent and reached the gate.

There I was distracted. My eye was caught

By an old grey-beard slumped against the jamb.

His hair was thin on top, his beard was wild,

As Father Time is depicted, with a lamp

And staff; or God the Father as he is styled

In frescos. Some would say more like a chimp.

It was Charles Darwin, he who has been called

God’s great adversary since it was he

Who first compared man with the chimpanzee.

“I am from Wrexham,” I said, “You were born

At Shrewsbury, like my town, near Offa’s Dyke,

We are effectively both lowland men

On the English side of that defensive work.

You are not dead, but come to life again

It does not surprise me, but it would shock

So many others, that you made it here.

What is your story?” So that you may hear

The error of the way of atheism

Hear what he told me and be rectified:

“Just as the Romans never left for Rome

When Rome fell, but in England lived and stayed.

So scientists and Christians are the same,

Low Church, that’s true, but faithful to the Creed.

And for my honesty and perseverance

With curiosity I found deliverance

“When the world collapsed.” He ended, I sat down.

“Your mind is sharp, I need your help in this,”

I said, “My kids, and people I have known,

Here they are different and they are wise

As if they’re trained, as if they’ve undergone

An education and received the prize.

Have you trained, have you done some last parade

And passed? How do they put me in the shade?”

And he: “By now, you must have understood?

You don’t remember Berkley and Leibniz?

There is no one here but you. You’re on your tod.

Nobody else exists in paradise

But you alone. In this entire new world

I am the only person who matters

The one who made it, at the zero ground,

The entire universe is in my mind.”

I turned to God, and turned my face upwards:

“This can’t be true,” I said, “That James Merrill

The poet who spent his father’s milliards,

He said a beacon on a distant hill

An almost silent calling without words,

He said that God was like that, in peril

And anxious and cut off. Not us, not us

We are the ones being dreamed, not the dreamers.

“This world is real,” I said; better, implored.

“There is no meaning in an unreal place.

It must exist in itself, there, outside.”

Then he replied: “You make an open space

Of world and clearing that must be explored

Where other lives can meet you face to face.

They reach out from their own closed up prisons

To deal in truth and works, and art and science.

“But properly, there is no one here but you.”

That moment I decided I would be

A voyager on the earth and then break through

And explore the universe, as you will see.

Now I was anxious to get on and go

So Darwin and I said a quick goodbye.

Anxious to finish training, I went up

The winding stair, and when I reached the top

I looked toward Snowdonia, then I turned

Toward the low sun setting in the sea

The same sun from a previous life, it burned.

A man was there, familiar to me,

From training grounds in France and England,

And how I saw him driving locally,

His Rolls Royce, near his land at Eaton Hall

By where my son and daughter went to school.

He offered me his hand in that strange place,

And said: “I am the owner of this pile.”

“I know you, Sir. We were in the reserves.

You retired and you died with that scandal.

That was a shame. You own this old fortress?

But since this is my world, how can you call

This castle yours?” And he: “Your world is yours

In this respect: your mind and heart discovers

“Or unconceals, discloses, and reveals.

We don’t create each other, we discover.

And God has given me valleys and hills

To farm and work on, as it was forever.

You’ll find your own property somewhere else.”

He looked across the seas, casting his eye over

Then turned to me, to speak in confidence:

“You notice there is no time? Time makes no sense?

“The future and the past don’t seem to count.

There is no time. We saw it going forth

The world collapse, we died, and then it went

Backwards to the origins of the earth;

Now it is still, in an always-present.

We live beyond time in this second birth

Atemporally, eternally, outside

Of time’s works since we grew old, or we died.

“I cannot fixate on a future goal

We have no aims in mind, nor contemplate

What might or might not happen after all.

You cannot hope to have a future state

There is no continuity of will

And so no superficial personhood

And no distressing and obnoxious passions,

Which puts an end to personal ambitions.

“Have you noticed it, too? How we attend

To what was previously impossible?

I mean the present and this here moment:

Just Being. That was never possible

Unless by the most strenuous detachment

Of trained up praying in a hermit’s cell.”

I thought then said: “If you’re right about this

A man could live entirely in God’s grace.”