Robert Verdon, #355, Remembrance Day
On the day I learned
that
Leonard Cohen had
died
A day after the
Trump election
On the day the
horseshoe bridge
Seemed to lead over
a cliff’s edge
A day I remember,
11th November
of Passchendaele and let the managers
manage
when the
consciousness of the ruling class
split like the
curtain in the temple
On the day,
Remembrance Day, one minute’s silence
for millions gone to
dust and Golgotha
unending, perfect as
a golden face
to mask the
shrapnel-holes
at the going down of
the sun and in the morning,
remember, remember,
on the day of the
Paschal lamb, of the
sprinkled blood, the empty tomb,
when nothing is left
but a dim diorama
with paint for
blood, remember the staring eyes
the burning
butterflies
remember, remember,
remember,
reassemble the atoms
of a dead society
bring it back as
more than a ghost,
to learn on waking
that all your dead are here again,
On the day that the
world is unfolded like a silk cloth
on a feast day, a
silk road to the setting sun,
the golden faces
staring, imagined smiles, the
dead have no faces,
life is clawed away by burning tigers,
over the cliff’s
edge by the killing fields in which poppies
blow amongst the
bones, rehearsals for the last days, the
war to end them all,
scaling the horse’s neck with the missing
head amid screams
echoing Guernica,
a single drumbeat
for each stopped heart,
celebrating the
luxury of the ultimate freedom,
Hallelujah, as we
learn to end prehistory,
I remember on that
day, reading the
Crucifixion story in
Sunday School, how the future is at
once fixed and
forever, how the women came to the tomb,
standing there like
Antigone, when you cannot breathe for if you
weep you break like
a temple wall, on the day that I learned that
I was a parcel of
infinities doomed to perish like an old balloon,
at the going down of
the sun’s golden face staring into the curlicues of a
wrinkled letter from
the front now under glass in a museum
the gold gleaming
living green knitting and purling a glorious new garment
On that day I
learned the way into the labyrinth of mortality
that aspires always
to be
more
ReplyDeleteIf you could
hear Shanghai
then the sound
of two hands
clapping.
That's as gnomic as my poem (to me at least)! :)
DeleteIf you could
Deletebe as gnomic
as my poem
then one hand clapping.
What a great poem Robert. Heartfelt and terribly moving.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much Susan — it just 'came over me'. :)
Deleteincredible, Robbie (sob)
ReplyDeleteThanks Efi.
Delete