St. Maleu Sequence Poem by Rob Dyer

Saint Maleu Sequence
I.
Once we were all tourists
seeking on foot,
by horse or boat,
by plane and camera,
some other place -
by book, museum, library,
some other time.
But now “Was it Portugal or Ponsonby? ”
we ask. “Is everything on tape? ”

I too once wandered everywhere,
by foot and thought,
in marriage and in war,
searching for other minds
and freedom from my own.
One thing only I have learned,
kneeling inhuman on and on,
hearing the soft lament
that others left for me,
at Gavrinis,
among its dreaming fingerprints
carved 5,000 years ago -
to raise this tiny index,
regard its intricate design
and ask it write a single line
to touch a silent lip
5,000 years from now.

II.
Think no more, dear mind;
the dissected brain has lost your delicate design
somewhere along its neural paths.
I loved you so for winning Plato’s praise.
But now I rise towards the Druid’s angel frame,
where your sweet categories fade and merge
into that One, through which the senses float,
receptacles of others’ dreams,
to touch the unreasoned truth,
man’s greater heritage.


III.
Where is cruelty: a bacchic diptych

Indiscriminate
Eva’s maenad dance demands
real man her lunar due.
In what dark human enthymeme
do we become her bestial sacrifice?
To satisfy her need last Adam
goose-stepped these steps before.
Carve no more his cruel glyphs
upon my disabled wrist.
The oven door swings free to Calvary,
the tortured body drifts as wraith
within the unremembering night,
to dream in the infinite stillness of death
lie shattered the knife of her desire.

No.
THERE is cruelty,
where
indiscriminate
the crashing sea demands the rock her lunar due.
In what slow dying enthymeme
do I become undeduced
the unchained sacrament?
His son was made to climb this rock before.
Its summit door swings free
beyond Calvary’s
tortured flesh
victorious
(Euoi! Euoi! The slain goat’s cry.)
man, as God,
beneath the entombed night
floods in the the light:
in the infinite stillness of love
lies shattered
the sword of human will.

Saint-Maleu
October 2002


IV.
Paul’s Rule of Thumb
(Epistle to the Ephesians, ch.5)

Husband and wife, Christ and his church -
no simile or vision that, a mystery indeed
but of a busy Zionist, protecting from Gentiles
and false messiahs soil proclaimed holy
sometime, somewhere, by some poet,
now converted to a church in need of social
rules by men like him to tell men what to do.
And yet from it we learn the sacrament of married life.

No God the fatherless and celibate girl child’s dream son,
conceived in an empty temple when the usurers went home,
raised by a carpenter, a good man, Joseph,
all like you and me, all guided by and to the Christ.
I should not mistake my role, Paul’s rule of thumb,
nor make myself God’s lonely representative,
mocked and cheated by pubescent glands in flower.

Oh to learn the patience that forgave
Peter’s abnegation, Mary’s wide embrace,
Judas’ capital, John’s passion for a smile,
to understand the animal response
and thieving weka’s love of gold,
to make redemption no hard thing
and pardon no act of arrogance,
but to give inspiration a gentle breeze
and stand unshaken by the noisy waves,
asking a little service when the meat is raw,
aware crucifixion is no lasting thing
and faithlessness no token of lost faith.


V.
Saint Maleu

Some cottage in an empty field,
no special place, some cows,
a little palace in the empty woods,
a chapel too dark for aught but candles,
a rivulet en route to make a Breton port,
some barking dogs, the stench of milk
sheds in the flush of autumn rains:
a place to talk to God, alone.