Easter Poem

[poliphilo]

On Being Asked For An Easter Poem

The body once dead is- within four minutes I think- so much unusable carbon and water.
I don't like to think of that body on its ledge degrading.
I wouldn't have turned up three days later like Mary Magdalen.
I'd have been thinking- eugh gross!

So that miracle doesn't fly for me. I cannot feel it here
(thumps chest.)
I cannot think that anyone met Christ in a garden after his death.

I believe in ghosts but that's another matter.

In a churchyard in Kent there was a gravestone with a carving of the Noli Me Tangere.
It was dead clumsy.
Mary had huge hands and Christ, mistaken for the gardener, was leaning on a spade.
Last time I paid it a visit Mary's face had sheared off.
Loose knit stone, Easily carved, easily un-carved. Rub it with your thumb and you get a smear of Ordovician mud on the skin.

Nothing comes back as it once was. Nothing. That's the economy of Terra. There are only so many atoms whizzing around and they are continually being reconfigured. Nothing is lost but everything is remade. And the new thing is not the old thing come back. Does it remember what it once was? Does it hell!

Never before
Never again.

That's the song the midges sing, twirling under the overhang. How long do they last- minutes?

The body drops into dust and the dust is good for something- I don't know what.

It makes the weeds in the garden grow.

Yes, why not!

It makes the weeds in the garden grow.

Comments

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

It's Swedenborg, actually.

He said he could see spirits hovering around gluttons, or alchoholics.

They yearned to experience vicariously through the earthbound body the taste of liquor or chocolate. The spirits' intensity of desire could even cause cravings.

He said sometimes one person would be surrounded by two or three hovering spirits.

(One of the reasons I decided Swedenborg might be a bit loopy. But then there's that twinge of doubt, too: what if it's true? Because, really, what do we know of the Outer World except through our shamans and poets and cranks?)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've read that cases of "possession" may amount to this, the weakened spirit of the addict being unable to keep the hungry ghost from breaking into his body to experience drink or sex or lemon pie through him.

Pretty shuddersome....

I'd prefer it not to be true- which probably means that it is.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

God, protect us from You have invented--or at least take away our imagination if we must be possessed.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Imagination is, perhaps, a defence against possession. I should like to think so,anyway.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Imagination is, perhaps, a defence against possession.

Would you expand on this? It's a new thought to me.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Erm... it's a new thought to me as well.

I think what I mean is that the imaginative person is more likely to be sensitive to some ghostly bozo trying to barge in.

Does this make any sense?

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see: and, being sensitive to the bozo, can then psychically repel it.

I was thinking that, if someone was gnawing away at my psyche, and I knew it but couldn't do anything about it, I wouldn't want to brood about it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think possessing entities are quite easily repelled. They're only able to get a hold when the psyche of the possessee (is this a real word?) is very badly weakened and undermined by (for instance) alcoholism or drug abuse.

At least, that's what I want to believe.