A LIMIT ON INFINITY MICHAEL BOLERJACK

2012 Michael Bolerjack

The recuperation, the recoup, the dice thrown, the paradisiacal, the tree and the lifes He: Yes, that the logic of the impossible required that the thought of the impossible became the impossibility of thought, and he said the impossible was the only thing worth attempting, and nevertheless, in this therefore, this OR, this symbol or siglum, this turning point, this gold, was conversion, his and mine, in extremity, and that though I had seen did not yet believe, and inclined still toward the abyss, yet He saved me, and having said He would I did believe and came to be, conscience created, not by a smithy, not to be the conscience of my race, but to set out for a far country, that my race, a more meta- than marathon, to parry para- and carry on, toward Cecilias day and further, past deaths and rebirths and arrivals yet to come, looking back I found a fascist regime where none knew, and that the rapture has already happened, it is impossible, that the smoke of six million Jews in the Holocaust was the rapture, with their graves in the air, todesfugue, and Celan was not wrong, but crushed between mighty opposites, though he no baser nature, but he was it, the man, as each of us is, and it is the whole man who is the baser nature, as Hamlet knew, and we but caught between, and some knowing and some unknowing, and some knowing but uncaring, or inclining deliberately toward the abyss, on the horns of the dilemma, choose not the lesser of two evils, as the Church has always already done in practice, despite her theory, but break out of the vices, for God shows a way, and that is up, the dial pointing up, the indicator the direction the north of the future as Celan said, the Joycean gnomon, and the remainder, let that be, but you go on up, and only half make it, maybe, on Kilimanjaro, but let us incline to the half that will, and despising the shame, look at the man at the altar, whomever he may be and realize that in Luke, after the words of the institution of the meal, Christ plainly says that the hand of the one who will betray Him is on the table, and

therefore, every time a priest says the words of institution, his hand on the table betrays the words he speaks, but fulfills the prophetic word of Christ, whose word is eternal, since He is the eternal word, and His words will never pass away, and the standing now, the eternal truth always applies everywhere to everybody, as the Church says of her faith, and so the church then is the Church now, as Christ is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, for ever, his opponents are ever the same, the type ever the same, only so much the worse for all we know of them, how many murders in His name which he let take place, yet nothing will have taken place but the place, when a pair of dice thrown, with a chance of turning, with a chance of forgiveness, but the Lord says at the end very succinctly, It Has Already Happened, and meant it then, and even more now, and six sides, the cubic anti-Christ, the indeterminacy of things and meaning belies the truth which is certain faith, and in the details is the devil, but in the premium mobile, at the outer limit, the first moved thing this PM, postmodern, the pontifex maximus is the title of a pagan priest who became the Pope, God help him, and in their titles, in their reach, in the tiara, kings ruled, kings slew, and in the time between noon and midnight, or the hour of great mercy at which Christ died and the hour or minute just before Igitur, in those closing dusks of days, popes ruled and popes slew, and were slain, but one was not, but said in his first lie, be not afraid! When we should have been on guard, when we should have paid more attention, and cared that men were being silenced and persecuted for heresy by the anti-Christ, who could not allow dissent, disagreement, and this not a personal quirk of his, some trait, but strategic, to trap all the Catholics, who would love him so much and nearly worship a mere man, and who claimed it was Mary who saved him, to cloak and hide the plot, and all of them going back to 1854 to cloak and hide the snare and wickedness, to pervert our love for Mary and use her against, what greater evil than this I know not, but that the sacraments made void, because the thing does not work itself,

ex opere operato, but must be done with the intention of the Church, and where Peter is there is the Church, so if the man be not in communion with God, but in more unholy communion, what is to be done? So that therefore like deconstruction inwardly the Church was vacated Vatican dead at the top, de-capitalized already by the abyss of lie two sides Blanchot said, and that I had to leap, like Heidegger said, step back, and that I did, by the grace and mercy of God, and taking a long step back, did prepare the great leap forward, not of faith but by faith, to leap over the apocalypse, but how? To arrive and leap over the end of things, but how? And not like Macbeth standing on his bank and shoal of time, to see in to the life of things, and have a mind not mine own, oh Christ, re-mind me! Tell me of the things to come, when we will be there, ah, already there, the eschaton realized, as John and John and John my late friend said, fading on the dying horn, how we walked amid the ruins of shepherds and richmonds on a hot afternoon, though the battle was just as real as the battle of Britain, and death was near, I saw it in your face, but not yet in your eyes, you fading, John, John, John, oh the baptist! That I was too baptized by a priest in a Catholic Church just a mile away, and perhaps was written in the book of life, though works will tell, and so Hamlet had to perform, was that not it, after all, that the play was the thing, and the actor unable to act, has yet to perform, but though the rest be silence, and silence the work of fire, apotheosis, the funeral pyre, phoenix, rare bird, we did not fail like Falstaff, but fell with Hamlet, who said get ready, who said seas change, who said it is not near my conscience, and yet it were too curious to consider it so, I have traced the dust of Ash Wednesday back to Adam and forward to, fare forward, well, do not your alms or prayers in public but in secret, where your father who sees in secret can give you the reward, for insincerity is the greatest sin, and that hypocrisy, that did un-man the papacy, where would be saints did prophesy the death of popes, may your days be as the years of Christ, she said to John Paul I, and I did not know, though some

day we will all know just how and why he died, but that it might have been the cover-up, follow the money, and scandals appear and are hushed up just as quickly, and if we are to do it for the Church, and I think we are, if we have concern for the Church, and I think we should, it is for the souls of Catholics that we should fight, and the destruction of the hierarchy was like a neutron bomb of the faith, which destroyed not things but the thing-in-itself, despite the feigning and fawning and the abyss of power, the power of the abyss, which they had chosen, to hold sway, while claiming to be but mere servants, and the thousand years came and went, the First Reich of the Roman Empire, and a thousand years came and went like a watch in the night, the Second Reich, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Third Reich was defeated by liberal democracy enlightened enough to fight for freedom, but that the pretension of the Fourth Reich coming is almost here, en-framed by Heideggers fourfold, and Deriders semi-Pythagorean hypothesis of numbers, always squaring things, framing things, and we not knowing why, other than the bothand-neo-nor, which is the logic of the impossible, but writing, the text, became the net, and everything had to be done in the virtual space, so that time too would be but virtual, and oh, there hands were on the table, the whole wine, to sacrifice our daily bread, but the cup of her abominations, drink it not, that wine of astonishment, when a pair of dice, the shipwreck, the depths, may yet a constellation appear, all thought utters, all thought emits and admits risk, not chance, but a chance taken, to take the chance, to roll the dice, is not to either affirm or annul possibility, but to take action, so that the impossible became impossible, and the possible became possible once again, a limit on infinity, the eternal line, however zigzag which the dies falling took, did not go to the tomb did not fall to death in the abyss where nothing is, but since he could not say it plumb straight out, the double session of our lives is almost over and if he would hasten you to death, yet I would haste to love, and all was not between, we were not in the

middle as they claimed, to lull us to sleep with siren songs of literature, but in dialectical truth, which is the book, the name, the word and the sign, of glory, cannot not be, we were indeed very near the end, belated, related, in the struggle between death and love, and every time we took our places and rolled the dice one more time at the throne of our marriage, in the bed we read, we lay in love, and fought death to make love, though the house was burning, though the house was falling down, and even though we be buried in the debris, we would not cease from loving, oh, You and I! It was a Marinelability to learn my harmony, and justice that brought us love to symbolically defeat and therefore e-really, the time when all was veiled and unveiled simultaneously, all knowledge admits dice thrown, but the seat he sat on, knowledge better not to have had, and their bones under the altar, rather than their souls and relics bought and sold, and saints carved into pieces as if grace was wealth, as if the truth could still be rightly divided, as if, the poet said, as if, and the philosophy of as if we became and became what we beheld, so look away for union, gaze not on the spectacle, but listen, happy love, listen to the music of nature even pent-up in the city, as one would standing on a sea of mist mountainside see in the midst of the soul of the scene hear in the song of a gathering of birds more truth more beauty, still, be still, hear something real, as I have, morning and evening, in the days of my waking, but beautiful, the good God smiled on me, and praying did say me, as I said Him, so that the artist become an actor, you too could be said, despite, yes, and yet, for thee, for you, for you, I came for you, not in the night, not yet, not quite, but just at twilight, of idols, of ideals, and therefore of reality, in the nihilistic throng without a throne, and thrown into being, did implore and receive Grace, that the ring might be complete, for what would be His wedding without such a ring? A gift to Him who gave me to me, I stood beside the groom holding the ring, and oh, saw the bride, not bare, but bedecked and new Jerusalems she did shine, Virgin bride, had left all for Him who

stood beside me, she meta-, she mystic, she moral and more, and I having known para-, had become a friend of the groom, and a wedding guest, at the marriage of the Bride and the Lamb slain since the foundation of the world, which scholars do not know having voided all scripture of prophecy, but still His words ring true, and must be applied now, not then, and the Spirit will tell you things to come, and you cannot serve both God and money, and two did tell them, yet they would not believe, and just who is this Son of Man? Aye, that is the question he puts to one and all, that all may judge, discern, believe, hope and love, to really know the time, the day, the hour, He says he is like a thief, but a good thief, and he will take us away from the world, still separating out, wheat from tares, good from evil, as the world plummets into the abyss like in the wake of it, and we rise and shine with the resurrection, and today we shall be with Him in paradise, if you throw in with him, and not throw yourself away on the world, which is but a symbol, which, divided in two, the session double, mirrored, did like a lovely pool of broken water re-unite around Him, did gather at the throne, did placidly and with benedictions did more so unify and that than the universal church which was a broad and dangerous highway on which many walked, while he said the path was strict and hard to find, and that the children of the kingdom were thus always already to be thrown, to not sit with the elders at the throne, but having gambled for his vesture did proudly wear it, though he had never bestowed it, the pallium they claimed, the place vacated by the building of the palace, a tomb of faith, not the mountain of moral beauty, but the Book ever said it was Rome, and Rome it was ever to be, the eternal city, it had to be you, and it could not have been under auspices of Caesar, but under bridges of fathers, the ire of sires, it is today you are that city, and yet a little while, you will be destroyed, one might say, not literally but literarily, if that be possible, in that you are void of meaning, except what the Word of God says of you, which you may have known, but did avoid, and pious,

condemned reform, and forced our consciences rather than relinquish what you had stolen, and though you had the keys, the keys mark His word, did not un-lock, did not let in, oh my God, they have made your house a den of thieves and your Zeal does consume me, as all must say together, What Would Jesus Do? Indeed, do what he did, drive them out, re-form the old, tear it down to the ground, and prepare for the homeward journey, somewhere way over Jordan, over yonder, Ive been told, not tolled, but storied in, not a fiction less, but in truth did write no novel, nothing new, He said It Has Already Happened, because the mark of the beast was confirmed so that the economy of simony could go on, buying and selling grace, as they said, His hands are tied, are they not? Yet He did cut that knot with the Word of Truth, that complex catholic contradiction He did hit with a rock, and then use its own sword against it, like how many times, Lord did they love the better places at the feast, and how many times Lord did they pay lip service to the humility of Christ yet claimed to be without even the possibility of error? Napoleon did come thinking he without error, and Hitler did as well, along with popes that actually infallibly asserted the death of love and the love of wealth and power and now on the cusp of things we peer toward the next anti-Christ in this very late PM postmodern post-mortem, all the time they said one thing and did another, but which is abomination to God, and did not think like the Lord, and did not have the Mind of Christ, because they knew the truth and spoke oft of fine and living things, yet all the time behind the screen working to destroy our faith, but which if it be not in Christ will be destroyed, and holding not onto their Tradition-traitors, we Word in, we with meaning would be worded in, we scriptured, not historical but prophetic, not without pun, they did forsake prophets for profits, and outlawed prophecy even, and said none can arise, for God has spoken, but the Word will always be spoken and the Spirit leads you where He will, away, at least, at last alone with Christ be loved, let Him be loved without any

intermediary who usurps the place and vacates it, but that always His star does shine, past deconstruction of truth, and the dialectic of the day, past catholic love and catholic death, a faith abides amidst a crossing, paradise throne, for He chose it, as they unwittingly did, and hope and love as strong as death, which cannot hold Him or you or me, for were not bound, were free, the true city of the Bride, in Jerusalem we shall be, when we will be freed: Yes, His Word still cuts the complexities of the current complicity, for the crisis of the contemporaneity of the meaning of the mercy of Christ.