XIV
We have strong joy because His joy is stronger
And more robust, fuller, heartier than all those
Little firework-squibs and faint sparklers – those
Sporadic spurts of celebration we manage to find in
Our seas of steadfast gray. Out of the ennui endlessly
Lulling comes on occasion the lighthouse-beam
Needling a line of light through the night, the un-
Ending night of the long march. Here we have joy
Infused and fed to us unendingly, even in the waiting
Room, where cries can be heard down the corridor.
Here is joy foundationing everything else, like
The concrete slab beneath the bungalow. Here
Joy settles souls by being a pavement under
Pounding dog-howling funnelspouting gales.
XV
The Lord is the mothership of all our ecstasies
From Whom we finetune by faith those frequencies
That underlie the day-to-day din, screed and screech
Of life’s static. Thus while we mourn with the mourning
There is, under all, the unremovable pavingstone, the
Permanent plinth of joy beneath (beneath are
The everlasting arms and the scarce relenting cheers
That echo round the town square of the cosmos.
The heart of happiness lies between the city limits of
All There Is. It throbs the heartsblood of hope
Into billions throughout history, and heaven is
Foretasted on nonpalpable palates in
Numberless souls (while they pray, while they childbirth,
While they doubt their breathing will outlast evening).
XVI
But the rhapsodic cantus firmus under the anguish
Continues, can be heard, as presumptuous pain
Is prowling about the loutish body, or haunting the
Skull-house in which Mind finds itself a dubious
Master. In all our worry and thunder-weather we can
Resort to the Rescuer – the supplier of a surreptitious
Calm that Understanding understands not, and which
Ratiocination can only reconnoiter with doubt
And clouding confusion. Thrown into a spotlight
Both numinous and supernova-ing, the sceptic will
Revert to denial (“There must be a reason for this
Beyond my poor power to grasp, penetrate, and to
Explicate”). Yet a slow-growing taste for awe
Will awaken, and the phantasmal grow familiar.
XVII
Keep me on a short leash, O Lord my God, and let me
Not slouch off to those poisonous fields I am prone
To find pleasure in. Yank the leash, snap back my face
To face you once again, and again, so that ever again
I am eye to eye with your preconsciously-loved icon
Of a countenance – the face I knew in pre-uterine, pre-
Zygotic gnosis, which I will see and know when
All veils are dropped, the glass no longer darkened,
And there is nothing, utterly nothing, but Presence.
Keep my lanyard so short Lord that even now I know
Presence (though audaciously adulterated, though
Being by your side is not enough, is not your face, is not
The awareness by eyesight that is Life to me: in your
Eyes is my homecoming, my harbor at dusk, my home).
XVIII
My greatest fear, Father of fortitude, is not death
Nor the foul composting of decomposition, but
The sudden shock of a multisensory scene
Sucking from my spirit any semblance of breath. Who
Can conceive the scale of that adjustment, when
There will be no time for adjusting? when the soul
Is overcome, near to annihilation, by something
Utterly unknown: all the after-life thrown at one
At once – without preparation, without the harrow or
The slicing plow to prepare the soil of my senses
For the most vast and vivid of amphitheaters,
Extravaganzas? It will burst on my unburrowed brain
Like a fortissimo blast of blaring crashing brass.
Forgive my dread of showmanship on such a scale!
XIX
Of course it was not mere technicolor spectacle that
The Most High Host Commander dazzled His saints
With, for all those innumerable eons. He is not
A ringmaster reigning over a menagerie of hoop-
Jumping miracles, and kaleidoscopic cures. “Eye
Has not seen; Mind has not imagined”, what waits
Behind the scrim of seeming oblivion. There
There will be fullness of life so full that silly frights
Will flare up and then fade instantaneously – fall
Away like filthy robes. Then is the joy of seeing
Every passion-jewel placed in a perfect setting, your
Desires replaced with placidity, and heartache
Holding hands with what it wanted all along, Then
Is an unrelenting recess. Deeply relieved, you will see
There is nothing then to hurt or hold back our Playtime.
XX
I, I primarily, pose the prime threat and affront to
My own faith. Divinity delivers its vision all
Day long, through night into fresh mercies in
The morning, as dependable as the dawn itself.
The Numen is not the problem, nor is the archangelic
Absent without leave. Miracles still manifest and
Pass untrumpeted and unmarked – even the most
Eventful and enormous. But I and I alone find
Sin-leaven still leeching life from my interspatial
Sense of Him, my sodality, my comradeship with
The Christal Spirit. Where is all my growth – the kind
That only rarely grieves the Comforting Counsellor?
Where is my sanctification? Not wholly reborn, my
Own evil erodes more faith than any other wrong.
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