Poetry

Resurrection 30

There’s logic and necessity and law

In heaven as on earth; so, when you use

Your shoes as pillow, they will still be there

At morning. God does not play dice or tricks.

Yet something had changed. A man was kneeling

Before the altar of the little chapel

Head bowed above his long transparent robe

His brown locks flowing richly down his back.

Hearing me move, he stood and faced the east

And sang: ‘Our Father who art in the heavens’.

So, I stood and I made my way outside

To leave him to his morning orisons

Embarrassed to have spent the night within

Another’s house. But he caught up with me

“A man used to the road. Familiar with

Accepting refuge where it can be found.”

He said that, and: “Do you know what you’ll find

At Aberystwyth? You are much too late

To see the ecclesial gathering of the saints

They’ve gone their separate ways. I do not know

Whether there will be anyone around.

The holy ones don’t hang around,” he said.

The lonely king, Charles First, the last true king

The last saint of the Catholic English Church

He it was, martyred on a lonely platform

In London; hunted down and murdered by

His enemies. Defender of the Faith.

I asked him how it was to have suffered so:

“You know how hopeful you are, right to the end,

That something will turn up? Like when a man

Goes slowly bankrupt, and yet carries on,

Believing it is going to be okay.

“Slowly it happens, then fast all at once.

We lost the battles one after the other.”

But I could see beneath this nonchalance

Deep reservoirs of sadness for his people,

And how his failure and captivity

And then his execution was divine;

So, when they cut his head off at the end

With that they’d tried to rub out God as well.

And as he said, the seventh holy mansion

Was bare of guests or hosts or occupants;

Like some old British Army garrison

So shrunken by the Twenties that you’d find

Infantry companies at half their strength

In regiments already patched together

From other county line battalions

And men thin on the ground for any tasks.

“The holy men who learned their holiness

In the kingdom of the first earth were once here

But you’re too late,” he said. “They’ve gone to work.”

And yet we found one waiting, all the same.

I mentioned her when I began this poem.

She was the most attractive woman born

In her own era, so her suitors claimed

The human body to perfection brought.

The place was empty but for some few chairs.

She sat and I said this: “Saint of my parish

Back home by Merseyside, tell me your story

And I will write your words into my book.”

And she explained to me in fluent English:

“They venerated me because I was

Another martyr to the Christian truth

I died the way I did for being Christian.

“I had the opportunity to leave

When Russia fell into its civil wars

Being grandchild of Victoria of Britain

And being a native German by my birth.

Lenin was hunting my Romanov family

My sister was the consort of the Czar.

But I continued with the work I started

In Moscow, where I served the orphan children

“The poor and sick we served with hospitals

And schools. The monastery was our base.

That was the life I chose when Sergei died

Assassinated by the atheists

His body parts strewn in the bloody snow

Which I picked up, and buried. After that

I turned to God’s work. When I met the villain

Who killed my husband, in his prison cell,

“I did forgive him, and approaching him

Told him the Czar would spare him execution

If he’d repent. But men like that were hard.

I took the veil thereafter. When the Cheka

Under instruction from the Marxist chief,

Imprisoned me years later, with my family,

They took us to a mineshaft like the ones

That fascinate you so much around Wales,

“An iron mine some twenty meters deep.

They beat us first with clubs about the head

Then pushed me in, and then my Barbara

Who stayed with me, though she could have escaped.

Down there, I prayed; and then we started singing

While the men above threw hand grenades at us.

They say that Lenin praised the murderers

Saying good and virtuous princes harmed his movement.

“Because you sang to me, how could I fail

To stand before the throne of God for you

And meet you for a while in this dark vale?”

“Where will you go now?” I said. “What goes on

In this brand new creation?” She was silent

But smiled, the finest woman in the world

Her suitors used to call her in her youth.

Charles, he got up when she rose, then sat down.

He pointed toward another: “Nicholas

Of Japan. That’s your patron saint, I think.

The man shook hands with me and then he said:

“Don’t ask about my life. I was no martyr

Performed no unnatural miracles of note.

I went as it were in enemy territory

And made friends, and converted Samurai

And learned the language, and the Buddhism

“Then set about converting many thousands

And building schools and churches for the faith.

And when the Russians fought the Japanese

In my day, and in yours the Russians fought

The British, I was neutral, neither side

Unable to betray my Christian people.

In your time Britain needed such apostles.

If God is with you, people can’t resist.”