Fables of the Sacred Heart Poem by Dirk van Bastelaere

1)

Those were days of cycling in the mountains. Of climbing, descending.
Of enormous hunger for more and as long as they blocked the peak's
virginity from view in their groaning scent of resin,
pine trees acted out this problem to excess. But above the
treeline you feel free.

Trundling along a stony track, Jesus kept
catching the hem of his robe with his feet.

He'd missed the refreshment stations. Was the only cyclist on foot. The
wind was ripping his raiment to shreds. Lightning roamed through his hair.
We'd all cycled off
somewhere else.

When he reached the bare, snow-covered peak, Jesus turned
round, bewildered. No farmhouse. No place of
emotion. No strong, ascetic
birds. No-one had ever let him down as badly as Rilke.

That very second, Jesus saw his Father's dentures
flash white in the valley. By way of a message, His teeth formed the
words ‘YOU SUCK'.

As tattered as the state of his calling,
Jesus pulled two ribs apart in the white, marble glory
of his body and, as the blood gurgled
from his ribcage like a mudslide razing a mountain village,
revealed his Sacred Heart to a nation of TV viewers.

We saw the drivenness of a kid who's crawled his life through sewers.

This was no Jesus. This wasn't the Corcovado Jesus. Not the
Dear Lord who Speaks to us.

This was a mountain erupting out of its mountainness.

Translated by Francis Jones