PARTS OF THE WHOLE

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PART THREE: THE SACRED

Religion has no monopoly of the sacred
We all have the right to a full moon
This rapture is our birthright
Such is the splendour of our dwelling-place
Its glory reaches even unto the skies
No-one can stop us seeing
The reckless extravagance of a sunset
No-one can close our ears
To what the small birds are saying
And the windy rhetoric of trees
Only we can do that
By closing ourselves up
In small rooms in big cities
And looking for salvation elsewhere.
From a deep dark place we have seen the full moon
And lost our reason.
We open our eyes to encounter the brightness
Dazed and nonplussed
We open our minds to greet in person
The largest face we know.
What does it want?
We would sing if we could
We would dance if we could
Or go mad if we could
But we know a God when we see one
And are struck dumb.
Our celestial moon has emerged from eclipse
Bigger and better and sadder and wiser
It rolls through the sky as if it owns it
Our new improved Moon
Our born-again Moon
With its picture in all the papers.

Silence at Noon
Older than knowing or unknowing
This held breath
Tells us that we are mortal
That we are sacred
The answer to no known question
Silence at Noon
Nails us down senseless
Uncomprehending
A sacrament in another language
Beyond our grasp
Dense with meaning
With implications for our dwindled state
We can no longer hear
Silence at Noon
We know not who we are
Or why
Understanding has left us
The tide gone out
And we are stranded
Unfinished
Incomplete
Swamped by Eternity
Silence at Noon
Unpeopled streets and empty skies
A shred of light fidgets an oak-leaf
But nothing moves
Silence at Noon
For seven hundred years the Angelus bell
Flooded the fields and woods
Lifting the labourers face to heaven
Emptying skies and putting the birds to bed
And now we live in a secular age
This elemental energy holds us still
For no-one has told the birds that God is dead
And now a rose
Outside my window a perfect rose
Pink as a lollipop
A single stem head-height
Framed like a painting at the centre.
How did it get there?
Is it a joke?
Or a statement
Drifting slightly
Dreaming in the fragile air
Did I plant a rose outside my window inadvertently?

It is opposite my bed
I had a lot of pain this morning
A lot of pain
I opened my eyes and there it was
A token
A reminder
Thank you.
The forest is silent, a silence full of wind, soft and ruminative, a constant
gentle roaring, the heart-beat of the trees. It is a foreign country in the aftermath of
war. Strangulated branches deformed by winter gales and frosts hang, lurch and
tumble at vertiginous angles, throttled by swinging vines of ivy. The earth is
sleeping; a thick soggy mattress of dead leaves generations deep disintegrates,
sliding, slipping, rotting beneath my feet. A vast, dark, wet, ticking clock, it betrays
the passage of centuries, exposing the decades as they ripen into black slimy
bristles of burst chestnut cases, fallen acorn-cups, tight parcels of budding leaves
and sweetest greenest cushions of soft moss, all evidence of a dead year not yet
buried. In this ancient place that belongs to no man, only to itself, I trespass but I
am allowed to stay.
Did he feel this? Did the woodpecker startle at his coming and rock the swinging
branches? Did the roe-deer crash in fright and send the magpies leapfrogging,
squawking, through the trees?
What have we done that they should be so afraid? Birds fly in terror from me in the
woods. I am ashamed. I am a symptom of something, a disease. I am man. Ill.
Violent. Infected. Paradise is not for me.
This Peace hangs ripe and heavy in the air like fruit
Golden and soft
Breathing and shimmering
So thick you can slice it
As if the world has just been made and God is looking at it.
Is this what He meant then?
What He had in mind?
This dense and stunning consciousness
This awareness
The astounding energy of this stillness?
This now will never come again
We cannot keep it till later
We cannot bottle it
Or buy it
Or sell it
Or bury it
It is a gift
Because we dont deserve it
(Or what are gifts for?)
Nothing moves but the tiny stirring of insects
Birds are silent
The tranquilising dove is stupefied
And the dazed world has stopped in wonder

What has happened?

Should it go round the other way?
This chalice may not come to us again
Let us drink from it now and remember in days to come.

GOD SENDS THE FOOLISH TO RESCUE THE WISE

God sends the weak to rescue the strong.
I find I have a charm of finches
A charm of little people in the trees
Children of Hope
Flown in express to save my Paradise Lost
To fill it with mayhem and song.
Bedlam birds swooping and dancing
Babbling springtime slogans
Twittering anarchy
Seeds! More seeds!
Im a slave to their passions:
Your tummies are stuffed
You are completely round like blobs
How can you eat that much and still fly?
Watch this then Whoosh! Whiz! Were off!
Why? What happened?
Dont know, but were off.
Whoops! Whoosh! Were back again!
Why? What happened?
Dont know, but weve all come back.
Pandemonium.
Perfection.
In the wide sky at high tide
The red sun on a string of fire
Burns into the water
And the clouds sing as the fire dies
For the proud king of the high skies
Drowns in slaughter
And his knife bleeds for its aching home
For the cries of grief and the pain to come
For the tearing skin and the screaming bone
And
And
And
And

when his knife comes the flesh expects it

the pain is waiting to begin
when his night comes the day has left it
the darkness is waiting to close you in

But that is the joy of the globe of fire

And that is the peace of the swinging sea
And the thrush that sings on the steeple spire
Sings for thee

Nonsense my dear we dont do Magic here

Its only a Midsummer evening
With the golden chime of twilight in the branches
The last Goodnight of the slanting sun.
And there are no voices either
Just the tiny whisper of birdseed dropping from beaks
And the heady song of the honeysuckle.
Your soul is sliding into the sunset
Drowsy with sweet imaginings
And you ask if Ive doped your tea
Or put cannabis in the scones.
But what you sense is the witching hour of dusk
When the people of The Other Kingdom come out silently
To paddle in the rushes by the pond
And tickle the fish.
You only know that something is happening.
Dont ask my dear, its no concern of ours,
We only live here it belongs to them.
After typing all day Ive come up to watch the sun set.
The hill is suspended in a golden bowl of light. Far off a huge flock of little birds
wheels soundlessly and settles into a cluster of trees on the horizon. The mist is
rising. It dews my hair with the tiny jewels of moisture that saturate a silken net of
cobwebs filming the ground as far as I can see. Black shadows lie cold on the fields
then crawl into hedgerows to die. As the great red eye sinks into the forest to bleed
to death in the trees, the sky flings an astonishing pink silk peignoir over the
country, waits thoughtfully for a moment to consider the effect, then abruptly
gathers it in for the night. The show is over. Now I can go home.
(copyright E.J. Ward 2016)