V. What the Thunders Said
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty finger in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Treason and palace and accusation
Of thunderous wellspring taunts of distant mountains
He who was dying does now live
We who were dying are now living
With but little patience
Here is the red rock spring water
Rock and much water and the golden road
The road straightening over and through the mountains
Which are mountains of snow with much water
If there were not water we should not stop and drink
Among the rock one can but stop and think
Sweat breeze dried and feet are in wet sand
Is there yet only water among the rock?
Life mountain mouth of hallowed teeth that can but spit
In dust, the blind eyes to see here; one can neither lie nor sit
There is dance and laughter in the mountains
Not dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even icy night frost in the mountains
But red cheeked faces clear and mild
In doors of crystalline houses
Where there flows water
Out of rock
If there were no rock
Nor any water
No water
Nor spring
Nor pool among the rock
If there were the sound of cracked rock only
And scorpion tails
And grassless silence
But sound of blown sand over a rock
Where the vulture wings past dead pine trees
Woosh, woosh; woosh, woosh, vulture wings
But there is freshet water
Who is the first who walks always before you?
When I count, there is he, you and I together
And when I look behind down the golden road
There is always an angel guardian walking behind you
Gliding wrapped in a white mantle, unhooded
I do not know whether a man or an angelic wife
- - And here I am on the left side of you?
What is that song high in the air
Melody of maternal revelation
Look at those choral orders swaying
To an endless psalm, humbling the whole wide earth
Ringed by the azure horizon, a sea
What is the city before the azure ocean?
Taps and uniforms and horns to the violin air
Falling towers
Babylon Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
So real
A woman blew her scented breath ever so light
A fluted whisper music on those reeds
And cherubs with baby faces in the lustrous light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And dived head downward and back up again
And from a down an air from towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
Those voices singing, so were syncopated urns, throated wells.
On this gilded plain among the towers
In spangled glass light, the glass is singing
Throughout the vibrant naves, about the bright plain
As with the chorale in chapel, organ winded dome.
Unstained glass windows prismatic, and the doors gold,
Resurrected bones that harm no one.
A vain cock stood on the life tree
Cock a-doodle do, cock a-cock-a-caw
In a flash like lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rainbows about a throne
The Ganges rose the high mountains sank to covered leaves
The Monsoons cease, while hill water flows on
Gathered far distant, through Himalayan subsidence
The jungle cooled, the highlands warmed
Then spoke the thunders
Abba
Abba Elohim: what have you received?
My friend, blood flowing pierced heart
The awful pain that in a moment’s surrender
Which an age of folly can never repay
By this, and this only, we have life in truth
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories caught in spiderwebs maleficent
Or under seals tampered with by the mean solicitor
In our panic rooms
Abba
Abba Elohim: I have felt the key
Turn in my heart once and for all time
We think of the key, each in his rapture
Thinking of the key, each confirms a rapture
Only at Satan's fall, aethereal defeats
Revive for eternity Coriolanus broken treaty
Abba
Abba Elohim: The ark divine regales
Regales, as the hand expert tills the barque sublime
The river was calm, your heart skips with joy upon the waters
Regaling, when excited, beating obedient
To exalting hands
I waded up to the shore
Fish dancing, skipping like dolphins, water splashing like airs about me
Shall I at least set my hands in upon this ordered land?
London Bridge is falling down falling Arizona
Poi si rivela nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam come una colomba - - O eagle eagle
[trans. Then he reveals himself in the refining fire/When shall I flame like a dove]
La duchesse d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie. Dieu soit loué!
[trans. The Duchess of Aquitaine in the ruined tower. Praise be to God!]
These passages I have sailed to my salvation:
Why then he'll stiff you. Hieronymo’s faking madness again.
Though he feels he's in a play, he ain't anyway
The child knows, sees, the actor, the stage
Alas, all the world's a battlefield
But why, why?
Good, good, but you see it is
Till Abba Elohim comes
And never beat the sword of truth to plowshares
Lest you plow folly and your own grave.
Shangri-La, Shangri-La, Shangri-La
#####
Other Works by the Author
(Available online)
Elements of Physics: Matter
Elements of Physics: Space
Elements of Physics: Time
Logic: An Essay
Space as Infinity: An Essay
Space as Infinity II: An Essay
Unified Field Theory: An Essay
Collected Poems I
Golden Age Essays
Golden Age Essays II
Golden Age Essays III
Golden Age Essays IV
Golden Age Essays V
About the Author
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