Occasional Impressions - music, prose, poetry and prayer on the web
5. I am Judas...
I am Judas & I won’t Believe.
Nothing is between me & Destruction
only time -
I shall put that out of the way
and then I shall see Jesus.
I know how to be with Him
that to be with Him
I must be separate
live out my life.
Let others then live through me.
My love, how can I give my love?
He wants to die, what can I do but aid Him?
I want to live, what can I do but act?
How can my love be born but in destruction?
I was Judas
dead now, because He was my life,
My love, my pride, my Self.
I do not write this, for I have no hand
just nameless flesh with which to hang
my nameless flesh.
I am Judas, who also am the writer of this verse.
Christ was my brother, I know because I killed Him.
He knew, because He watched God bring me down.
We will be buried together.
lkm
6. Poem written in Florence
Snotty-nosed christ came to renaissance florence a thousand times
filled his artists with Beatific Vision
& some degree of intellectual precision
a new found joy in the awakening vision
of God as a breathing aristocrat.
snotty-nosed christ walks around florence in the eyes of
assembled potential visually Gods.
snotty-nosed christ never gave one artist
the means of taking the hump off the back
of a woman who sits in a bar.
loyally copying man as he is, they cracked around slowly
& copied the world to do quite a job
of making lumps beautiful
making crutches and cripples praise in the glory
the gift to the artist by snotty-nosed christ.
an artist can only hold a mirror
& paint a portrait of the volume that spills
through the polished marble of his excavate skull.
An artist can only hold up his body
& try & pretend that it’s his, not a gift
from an aristocrat to the nation.
ijf
7. That is a fulmar
[For the Revd Brian Hebblethwaite (who said on
receiving it that it had been post-rationalized)]
“That is a fulmar; that a cormorant.“
Why should I look?
I know they’re birds
or rare or interesting.
In fact, I know they’ll flyaway.
(No, that's true, too, they could have never come)
(like me!)
Why should I look -
As if I did not trust the general fairness
but must
keep on
checking
up.
(No, never do we learn
but - nearly - sometime know)
emn - mar 1972
8. Angelæ Trismegistæ
I, Paris, stand before her triad majesty
And how might see her if I dared to look?
As mother, or as warrior, or paramour
In unity - or severally, each all three?
The prime, the foremost aspect of her deity
Is that, maternal, balanced, sane;
The rock on which to build, to which to cling,
And yet, in which to mine the complex depth of mystery;
Whose largeness smiles, and smiling sighs
As though to know me so, needs must inflict her pain.
The second form is lighter,
Yet still firm, athletic, lithe,
She calls to service in her cause
To stand for what she knows be right
And sureness offers
No music thrills her ears
She hears but what she wills to hear
And thus is strengthened for the fight
And sweetness mingles
As to allure
To trust that innocence demure
To hide that taught-strung trap
That truly is not innocence
But roundly, firmly beckons
To that rest in strife - for certainly
Her cause is right!
The third is lightness spun to frailty;
Form holds up nought with which to beckon;
Not material, but movement must entice:
Her weakness is her strength,
Her joy is darkness:
And sorely sees a woeful world,
Maintained herself but by a fragile flame
Of innermost illumination.
I, Paris, stand before her triad majesty
And how might take her if I dared to ask?
As mother, or as comrade, or as paramour
At once - or severally, one by one?
The first is no delight to me:
To see her could enliven few.
But once of every grosser million,
Nature repents, as if to recognise
Her cruelty in gift of form,
And offers recompense
By gift of wisdom.
Could sapientia but only once
Appear enshrined in form of beauty, then...
...But idle is to so amuse,
For I am not allowed the choice of choice
And, to be honest,
Would not wish to choose.
The next’s creative muse seemed kinder
Who, if restrained from quite excess
Of birthright gifts of form and comfort,
Was not there mean.
But, sadly, further
Doubtful gifts were poured into that mould:
A calculating clarity - to see the world as black
And white
And willing made her act upon that sight
Yet sweetness mingles
With righteous cruelty.
She tells me what I ought to do
And easy would I be to act as she commands
Were that it not that I convicted am
With will for trusting in compassion.
Her moral cause is right?
Then must my loving action's lustre
Be as yet not quite so bright!
Ill nature played her cruellest trick
And in the last laid bare the quick
Of sensitivity.
This angel cannot rest,
And sleep but offers brief relief
From deep incisions, clumsy thrust
In peering of dull eyes
Belonging those she would to trust:
Which sleep for her is best?
Well, not my sleep.
As Hera smothers me in care
And bold Athene leads me out to war
Both to destroy me,
So Aphrodite, plainest of the three,
By needless care of such intensity
Would burn up both herself and me
And thus, that neither course can be
My way.
Thus Paris stands before that triad majesty
And sadly must the offered fruit refuse;
To take, would be to live a year as king
Then die, the sacred victim of the sacred three.
jdy - mar/apr 1971
Occasional Impressions Poetry Collections - The Gemini Poets (1972)