This poem came out of studying The Cappadocians, three men and one woman who were 4th centery Eastern, Greek speaking xtians who had a huge part in the formation of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. They were affirming the goodness of Creation in the midst of all the muck and dung that we seem to endlessly make out of our lives and world. This has often been a great struggle for me. So there are Hebrew and Greek words referring to various human, social realities. Nietzsche has breathed in my ear in times of agnostic, nihilistic struggle in the past so he shows up dueling with Macrina. I wrote it during a rain storm outside the GF Java Cafe in my hometown of Jamestown, TN.
Like Mercy
“Sweet Rain…like God’s own Mercy…”
What exactly is the connection, the connection between a world of harmonic order and a world of suffering, decay…death?
The rain pours upon the earth, invading but belonging in every pore, awakening parched roots. Dry and dead now leap for joy, springing to the sky
Water pours upon the earth, dancing and splattering…splattering/dancing…dattering splancing upon the streets, rolling over pavement, falling over steps in the ever-moving niagra of spinning cosmos
Water…one of those fundamental elements…rolls over and into the pores of earth and…and thunder rolls, lightening strikes
Harmony or discord?
Walls fall, lifeless bodies collapse down the collapsing hills of collapsing houses of collapsing earth. Lifeless bodies of deer and cattle and dogs and cats and Adam and…and it would’ve been a damn good time to be a fish
Soul rolls over and into the pores of Adam, ish and isha, man and woman, mother and son, son and sister and father and neighbor and polis and oikos and agora and oikonomia and…creation…and out of the Alpha Rhythms of participatory love bodies are enraptured, so babies are born in the midst of heroic words like “till death do us part.” Homes are built, gardens are planted. Games are played while laughter is shared. Songs are sung and enraptured bodies move to the rhythms of the dance
Pointing and jumping, laughing I scream “look! Look! LOOK! Harmonic order!”
Soul rolls over and into the pores of Adam and all the ways and webs of the knitting together of Adam and…and reputations fail, economies collapse as bodies collapse as families collapse as marriages crumble as children collapse as cities collapse and as lies are told lust takes over, giving forth torture and greed, hunger and rape, famine and coldness
All of a sudden that madman runing through the streets that night with the silly mustache shouting” God is dead and we have killed him” seems not so far from of right. Adam seems to care much more about power games than love games…and people are torn and lives collapse and…and it still would’ve been a damn good time to be a fish!
Harmony or discord? What is the connection?
This fish feels the jaws surround and the darkness elbow out the light
And in the darkness I hear Macrina sing, pointing, shouting, jumping up and down, “look! Look! LOOK! Harmonic order envelopes chaos. There is not beginning, no arche, without an end, a telos.” And her voice echoes
“Get up Lazarus”
“Shall these bones live?”
“Where oh death is thy sting?”
“The heavens are telling”
“He is not here, he is risen”
“Sweet rain…like God’s own Mercy..Mercy that upholds it because it is good. It is fallen but it is good…
Discord or Harmony?
Macrina I hope like hell you are right because…because the deaf want to hear, the lame want to leap, the dead want to live and…and I am just so fucking tired of wanting to be a fish…Amen
Like
0 Responses to “Like Mercy”