I am trawling through the Medieval world
Thinking what was different.
Would I really have thought myself so important to God
That I had to be planned for with such a grand scenario,
That I could stir Him to anger and vengeance
That I was so worth loving and hating,
The errant child, the prodigal,
Wandering the world of remorseless tribulation, endless woe ?
Would I have imagined other worlds,
Or was this one so overwhelmingly entire ?
The world was very big, certainly,
Contained an oikoumene, a band where we could live,
Untold heat and cold beyond.
Traveling in this world could take months, years,
When life was shorter.
So now we live to be a hundred
And fly to Venice for the weekend.
What does that do to us,
What gives, what takes away ?
Ah, Time. It gets complicated,
We're in the age of the nanosecond, the billions of years.
I comprehend neither,
My mind cannot embrace them -
Atoms and electrons fizz quicker than a blink,
The mountains over there are clashing so slowly in deep time that makes me feel I am paying a brief visit,
Having a one night stand with beauty on Mother Earth.
No need to ask the name of the beast,
Some truths are plain and simple,
I have been the beast since I parted reluctantly from my mother
Acting my first role in a very medieval sort of play,
Painful, long and bloody,noisy,dangerous, unhygienic and full of joyous fervor,
As the timeless ritual wound along its uncertain path.
Nothing much changes except drugs and godless intervention -
The result is still the only miracle most of us manage.
So there I was, the bawling beast
Protesting as I left Eden for ever,
Angels guarding the gates with fiery swords and inhibitions,
Keeping me out for evermore.
Ever meant ever in this world of certainties.
So I uttered my loud babe-and -suckling kind of truth,
Been trying to stick to it ever since,
Easy to say, hard to do,
Just a pilgrim from the age of darkness
Feeling my way along the wall,
A good listener with little to say,
The mark of the beast upon me.
So we know the chemicals that cause it,
Have named the names:
This one gets me on my horse
And that one gives the charge
And this one intensifies my perseverance
Past reason and all the pains
The uphill griefs and stern angels
And the thousandth futile attempt -
The names don't help with any of that
They just explain the how and not the why -
And I have been riding a thousand years,
No, a thousand nights and one night,
The night that signifies for ever.
And Beauty's chemicals are fever in my blood
And I am the eye, the beholder,
Unerringly I reach for home,
Towards the angels and their swords
Towards that simpler world
Where Time has stopped
Where open arms await me
I am the Beast and this, this is my way
My path is strewn with flowers
My howls are poems
My love is good and true.
I dream I am riding in the garden.
