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It seemed the end of days, the
Roman empire loosening, the
New Christian one enflamed
With sightings of the reborn Lord —
Dreams for old men, visions for
Youth, revelations from the mouths
Of babes. History collapsed
Like walls from the spirit
Loosened by those throats,
The Word of God resounding
Like a first and final call.
All were certain that the
Master would appear in that
Empty tomb-door for good:
And He did: But that was not quite
What they demanded He redeem.
Their new Rome was built of empty doors,
A dry high womb empty of shores.
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See also “The Litany of the Shore”
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at end, a final and resounding sadness, Their new Rome was built of empty doors, A dry high womb empty of shores.
History collapsed
Like walls from the spirit
Loosened by those throats,
The Word of God resounding
Like a first and final call.
such sand imagery, i feel paralyzed with inaction seeing the futility of saving sandcastles with the coming wave.
xo
erin
Thank Erin — Just my opinion, but it seemed that early Christianity was obsessed with deliverance from this life into Heaven, a place free of earthly cares, lusts, bloody crosses, Romans whips, etc. Maybe I would be too, given the circumstances. But to build a church on so dry a hope? What about this life, this paradise? The heaven-fixed gaze misses all the wonder here. Just my opinion. My god’s eye-level — I see it/him/her in you, and all the other poets I have congress with here — and in my cats’ eyes — and in the garden — and on the shore where I was once baptized, caught from below by a pagan love of the sea which made a sort of selkie outta me. I don’t really want to pick a fight with religion over this — to each their own — as long as religion has the same tolerance with me.
Quite an Easter poem. I remember George MacDonald’s words in his poem “That Holy Thing” that did the same for me of Christmas: They all were looking for a King to slay their foes and lift them high; Thou cam’st a little baby thing that made a woman cry. Ah, how we have created our own man-made God, and not in the ways we have been speaking of in Rilke, not of the sort of being filled out with god.
The image of a dry womb of empty doors, in the context of the tomb-door, and thinking of my poem you helped with, and the womb’s “slippery, beating edges,” is very strong, and very sad. It leaves me in a state of despair, but one affixed with an image, and that makes such a different, I find. The state of things, however awful, when seen through poetry, somehow redeems everything. Because it’s humans who create the misery, but it’s humans who create with poetry, which is healing, somehow some way.
Personally, poetry is the only liturgy I can stomach, because we’re free to write our own bibles, fill full all the granaries of meaning we care to, burn it all down and start again, celebrate joys small and large. Celebrating, as you say, the womb’s “slippery, beating edges” — like the shore where terran life first emerged …. Poetry has that kind of resonance and power because it’s pre-literate; how the old-school celebrants of mystery said it; and because it’s on the edges of the literate, leaping off the page like an illustrated manuscript page from Kells or Lindisfarne. The word becomes world. ‘Tis enough for me … Easter, for me, is about celebrating what comes after the Christian myth, something older and next at the same time … Just my humble (ha) opinion … B
Beautiful poem, Brendan. they wanted what they thought he was, but he turned out to be something else entirely.
Thanks for reading, Glynn. Our higher — or deeper — Power is always greater than the sum of our conclusions. It makes the meaning game fun and enduring.
It’s always amazed me the power in the symbols, and how people will die for what they think they are–or kill, for that matter. Our history as a species seems full of these murky contradictions, fighting a thousand battles for the Prince of Peace, a thousand wars between close kin for a tribal political choice that became doctrinal (between Shi’a and Sunni) hundreds of years ago, etc. The womb is empty indeed of all but what we want to put there, it seems. But yet, the symbol dies and is reborn, and brings its harvest with it, as well. As I’ve said before, it’s all a mystery in a foreign language to me, but nonetheless real for all that. This is a deft summing up, and I like the play on “their old men dream and their young men have visions.”
Thanks as always, H — Joseph Campbell said that a myth dies when it ceases to be re-imagined. Literal Christianity which would have Christ’s life end on the cross and skeaddle to heaven kept the living mystery of his life from dreaming onward. A dozen or so centuries of that and the symbol of the cross began to wither and die — just my opinion. Other symbols, like that of the Grail and those found in creative literatures of every stripe to follow, had vitality, saw new creation, endless iteration. “The womb is empty indeed of all but what we want to put there, it seems” — guess that’s how dogma is born/borne. But life’s womb is never empty, nor is the imagination’s — and that’s a fluid freedom I am a staunch crusader for. My dad, in a fit of humor, made up a rubber stamp that says “Free Jesus!” — from every vault and tomb and scripture He’s trapped in. Become the living wonder once again. Anyway …
Maggie May at Flux Capacitor (http://poemsandnovels.blogspot.com/) has this in her sidebar: “what i thought love was is so much less than what it is”.
I can’t help but hear echoes and see threads upon reading Ends and Beginnings…to misread or obscure what is right in front of them to make it fit their notions is a tendency that seems inexhaustible in humans.
Empty doors is a powerful phrase.
Good to see you, me Irish friend … Comments are always interesting, aren’t they? You find all sorts of readings of your work, sometimes not the way you meant it at all, only to find the other reading very telling about something you never were quite willing to see or admit. My ability to misread and confuse and overwrite and misquote is inexhaustible.
P.S., y’all be sure to go visit Irish Gumbo, he’s got chops.
A beautiful piece of writing for Easter and the season of it…As Christ lives in each of us ..the tomb is rolled back a bit further…agreed with the Campbell take of mystery…a beautiful and insightful mystery if we choose to accept this part of ourself…one of many layers, one of many redemptions and baptisms of fire we pass through only to find there is one more…a beautiful season of renewal ….have a blessed one….bkm
Yeah, it wasn’t quite what they had in mind. Beautiful piece. Happy Easter to you and yours.