Easter Poem
Feb. 8th, 2005 02:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloOn 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2005-02-08 08:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-08 09:06 am (UTC)Atoms are clean, though, I think: too small for germs.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-08 09:11 am (UTC)I suppose.
It still feels kinda oppressive. As though the air around us were thick with ghosts.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-08 09:28 am (UTC)I was telling Kate about our conversation about the atoms of Jesus.
We had not discussed this, or anything even remotely like it.
Kate said: "I do NOT believe this. I was thinking about this exact thing this morning in Knoxville--at about, oh, 9:30 or so.
And I was thinking how crazy it was to think that was so special, because we also inhale stuff like Hitler!"
So I showed her what I'd just sent you--about Huns and Saints.
"Wow," she said.
Wow. Believe it or not. It really happened.
"I guess it's in the air," said Kate. But why not something important?
no subject
Date: 2005-02-08 10:15 am (UTC)And because the thoughts are trivial we don't voice them- and so rarely find out that other people have been thinking them too.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-08 09:32 am (UTC)I keep looking for that book, because it touched a chord in me. I believe it, somehow. I believe there are realms we can't see or sense but they are next to us or all around us.
Maybe the air is thick with ghosts! And intersecting worlds upon worlds...grass, rivers, skies, exotic animals! I wouldn't mind.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-08 10:39 am (UTC)Was he working at a theoretical level or did he have evidence of people crossing from world to world?
Have you come across Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy?
The boy in that has a magic knife which lets him cut doors in the fabric dividing one universe from the next.
It's a fun series. A theological adventure story featuring a plot to assasinate God, plus spectres and gay angels and bears in armour and allsorts.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-08 10:45 am (UTC)Sorry to say, Starup's book was science fiction. It must be out of print. And I may have his last name wrong and have forgotten the title! Hopeless.
Wish he were a scientific investigator with evidence!
no subject
Date: 2005-02-08 11:33 am (UTC)The books of the trilogy are
1 Northern Lights
2 The Subtle Knife
3 The Amber Spyglass
I hesitate to make the suggestion, but I think you'd like them.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-08 04:27 pm (UTC)My, I have a pile of good books at the moment! Several piles.
Tonight I'm reading a brand-new library book with the arresting title Lily Dale, the True Story of the Town that Talks to the Dead--and at the top: "Wake up and smell the ectoplasm! Lily Dale offers a fun trip!--Detroit Free Press"
Apparently Lily Dale, New York is a national center for mediums.
I just started it. Will report!