By Richard Mather
The beginning is at nought: an arid place
of aerated concrete. A tower goes
to ruin, down, falling down, it falls,
it tumbles down. If colour is a grey shade,
then concrete is the colour of dryness
and separation. Nothing grows here
but neon-graven flashing images
of naked murder made of angry language.
Endless night unfolds a sky of darknesses
as pale lovers lie stymied, unblossomed
beneath unlit stars and a secret moon.
An ancient hate comes for us. It’s brother
versus brother and blood cries out shrill
as I repair to my self-made tunnel
to accuse an other who fault-festers
in his self-made tunnel, with every channel
of speech open to signal distortion,
interference and grey noise. Says big mouth
through clenched teeth: ‘Vengeance is mine alone,
for the wicked ones will surely perish’.
(The ego is always the first to speak
and the last to understand, says the Voice
for God.) ‘Wait’, says another, ‘Let us wait
for new eyes so we can far better see’.
Hours, like aeons, pass creepingly slow.
And then arrives the miracle of vision:
Cain the Convict is delivered up to
the judge’s quarters made of mirrors
and made to face himself. His own image
condemns him. ‘Your sacrifice is demanded’,
says his reflection. ‘The sentence of death
is passed and it cannot be repealed’.
But Abel, standing by a sun-washed window,
smiling as love often does when the spirits
are favourable, declares,‘Son of God,
you are innocent. Unmurdered I am.
I did not die. It was a nightmare, that’s all,
in Father Adam's fallen fevered brain’.
Cain is seen in new light and so are you.
Your pure soul, like mine, is seen afresh.
And in this holy instant when the mind
is still all our loveless thoughts are undone.
What’s arrested is freed and the words
we use mean what they say, and what they say
means well, and all kinds of forgivenesses
like so many flowers full-petalled upshoot
from the earth, in place of all those towers
that crumbled into wretched decay,
and joy’s oasis blooms green under dew
from a blue sky. For thine is the kingdom.
Grey’s no more a colour than sadness is,
and sadness is no more a dream than time is.
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