Tag: Christianity

Death’s death

On By robertalanrifeIn Theology / Spirituality, Waxing Poetic2 Comments

Live! Live! Not one minute

more to solemnize the squaring truths

of the dark, exasperating. Exsanguinating.

The probing luminant, juggernaut

of dawn brought down as a quickening

shade of brilliance over the tar-black,

songless night – now gasping out

its own greying reminiscence.

Kicking against the goads, a denouement

of despair, decay’s quietus comes to mock.

But its voice is too dry now for anything more

than the androgynous whisper of a skeleton.

The bones rattle and try in vain to spark, to scare,

to survive the day, already here.

Death, this needy after-thought, this choking

wheeze of duskish, tight-lipp’d groaning –

it can no longer hunt, its legs are

broken, a dislocated shoulder no longer

suited to hefting hopelessness.

Spring! Spring! O antediluvian Spring! How

many are your salted children, lined up

outside your garden wall. Someone

has unchink’d the tangled gate and trodden new

footprints – fresh, ancient and deep – in the Virgin soil.

We come too, having hid ourselves in

the wisp of your blood-colour’d sleeves.

Droughted, now, a tomb and the perfect surprise:

breaths in lungs once shut, re-sighted eyes,

and in the first of all new hours,

Someone has made light work of death.

 

 

 

Once we sang

On By robertalanrifeIn Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

Originally posted on the CenterQuest website, I wanted to share it here with you as well. That said, do come and visit us at CenterQuest and we’ll have tea or coffee with cigars…whatever.

Gabriel strikes Zechariah dumb

 

 

 

 

Once we sang the blustery tunes

of a people bloated on happy promises.

Now, we wait, the words long forgotten

of songs happier still but too faint

to make any difference.

 

Once we told tales of kings and giants,

maidens and madmen, serpents and swords

walls that crumbled and glories won.

Now, we inhale the night stars of a brittle,

unfamiliar sky into lungs long dry,

heaving for the breath of Heaven.

 

Once we sang in dulcet tones

with brothers strong, and sisters proud

the songs, full-throated of Yahweh’s arm,

God’s nurturing wings of holy enchantment.

Now, entombed in raspy voices, we sing,

unpracticed in liberating sounds.

We have lost more than a note or two,

suspended as we are

between the music of here and there,

once and again,

Gehenna and Gabriel,

ranting and ruach.

 

Once we sang a single song.

Now, too many disparate notes vie

for heart and hearth and the demands of presence,

too dim to matter, too far to see, too good to hope for.

 

Joseph’s bones still cry out from Egypt,

the one with onions, olives and overflowing fullnesses,

not the one the skinny prophets told us to avoid.

Broken reeds too weak to hold up heads

too bored, too forgotten to feel shame.

Even that would be better than

these furrowed grey skies, frowning in apathetic non-wonder.

 

Lately, we’ve heard rumors of a man

and his pregnant mistress.

Some girl from who knows where

who talks with angels.

 

Picture found here