On Sinai’s peak; thunder engulfs the slopes;
Moses, exultant with the Tables, browed
With light, descends to mould men’s fears and hopes:
Moral truth is given and hence endowed
Is beauty – golden cherubim and tropes
Adorn the Ark. A proud propitiating
People is created, lacking but one thing.
The
Nazarene, transfixed with the Divine,
On
Shabbat day completes the Torah’s lack:“Stretch forth thy hand” – a flesh-transcending sign
Is given, pity more flagrant than God’s back
Seen by Moses in the cloud. Like sweet-scent wine
Compassion infuses dogs-in-a-pack
Humanity, and though men riot like fools
Their wounds are bound by hospitallers and schools.
Later,
the harmonic circle is smashed:
Vaunting
men, in love with experiment,Scrub Revelation’s face until it’s washed
Raw. Diderot’s book swells to a testament,
Newton by the sea of knowledge is splashed,
Paine’s pot of rights boils to a sacrament;
Hume demands freedom to die in his sins;
In France the clash of guillotines begins.
The
wheel turns. A Sixties scientist re-presents
The fruit; Eve swallows and fecundityIs balked. Man centres self and the ornaments
Of being are smashed in a futility
Of drugged desires. Harsh New Age hierophants
Propose fault-free fulfilment and absurdity
Is raised a god. Two thousand years of symbols
Are overthrown by dancers beating timbrels.
Destruction
triumphs. Pornography swamps
The
internet; man’s primal itch inflamed,Aggression surges and motel room romps
Turn rapes. Enthused, unnatural rights are named –
Gay marriage, gender choice – what tawdry pomps!
Careerist women have the boardroom tamed;
Children are objects, abortion’s in demand:
Moloch counts dollars with a blood-stained hand.
Saint
Damien sweats in Hawaii’s heat,
Dressing
ulcers, digging graves. The leper priest,In the eternal wrapt, with bandaged feet,
Scarred face and dragging legs, dies for the least
Of his charges. There’s no despair, nor bleat
Of woe, instead a pure-eyed grasp of the feast
Of being. Fulfilment’s not in drugs or vice
But in hands gone leprous in sacrifice.
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©
April 2013. Revised June 2016